Soldiers fought for our right to ‘take a knee’
By now we have all seen the astonishing display of protest by hundreds of NFL players, coaches and owners in direct response to Donald Trump’s challenge to team owners to fire any player who kneels during the American national anthem.
This act of dissent has trickled across the border as well — members of the Saskatchewan Roughriders linked arms during the national anthem in solidarity with their big-league cousins, and Toronto Raptors GM Masai Ujiri stated plainly that the organization will respect and support whatever form of dissent its players choose when the NBA season opens.
Equally loud in its response were the cries from the other side of the issue. Many Americans complain that these multi-millionaire athletes should know their place, that they are disrespecting their flag and their country and, more importantly, the veterans who fought for their freedom. There is a persistent belief that these predominantly Black athletes are not entitled to disrespect the symbols that so many soldiers fought, bled and died for.
Symbolism and sacrifice are important aspects of military service. Without the symbols — like the flag and the anthem — the sacrifices that we ask those in uniform to make may seem like they are being undertaken for an abstraction. Asking young men and women to volunteer to wear a uniform and defend their country is one of the bedrocks of the modern western state. Those who choose to take up that calling should be revered for their sacrifice of not just their blood, sweat and tears, but of their time, their families and their youth.
With military service comes honour, pride and strength, and with these comes great attention from society. Some of this attention is positive — services for wounded veterans, educational benefits and generous pensions. Some of it is negative — demands for reverence and casting aspersions on those deemed not sufficiently patriotic in the face of sacrifice.
This negative attention manifested itself last week, as the president and some members of the public argued that football players should be punished for taking a knee in protest during the national anthem, ostensibly for disrespecting the symbols of the nation and the sacrifice of veterans.
Allowing our political leaders to define when it is right or wrong to show dissent in front of our national symbols is in direct contradiction to the sacrifice of military service. These symbols are proxies for the legal constructs that define our rights as citizens and the values of our nation. Demanding certain behaviour and suppressing dissent in front of them erodes the rights and values they represent and makes a mockery of the sacrifices made to defend them.
These actions demand a forceful reply: Our sacrifice may have been costly in blood, sweat and tears, but it is made gladly knowing that it played a small part in guaranteeing the rights of people like Colin Kaepernick to take a knee to protest systemic injustice. When a citizen exercises their right to peacefully protest in front of those symbols, it only serves to strengthen them and further validate the sacrifices made on their behalf.
Allowing political leaders to control dissent contradicts the sacrifice of military service