PROTESTS LEADING TO CHANGE
NFL players, teams taking active role in local communities
Protests, by their very nature, are not meant to be popular or even comfortable.
Their purpose is to turn the spotlight on inequities or injustices and force us to confront biases, be they innate or openly embraced. That’s unsettling, maybe even enraging.
Eventually, though, change will come. It always does.
And so it is with the NFL protests. As the players, with very public help from the league and some of its teams, become more vocal in explaining why they’re demonstrating during the national anthem and what they’re doing beyond kneeling and locking arms, public opinion is beginning to shift.
According to an HBO Real Sports/ Marist poll released this week, 51% of Americans now believe professional sports organizations should not force athletes to stand during the anthem while
47% believe they should.
It’s a small majority, yes. But consider that when a similar poll was done in September 2016, the results were reversed, with 52% saying athletes should stand and
43% saying they shouldn’t be required to do so.
The HBO Real Sports/ Marist poll also asked if players were doing the right thing by protesting racial inequality during the national anthem. Of the 1,093 respondents, who were surveyed by phone, 52% said yes while 41% said no.
Those findings are similar to a USA TODAY/Suffolk poll done last month. In that poll of 1,000 registered voters, 51% said the protests by NFL athletes were appropriate while 42% said they weren’t.
Derisively cast as “SOBs” by President Trump, NFL players have been more forceful in the last month in explaining why they’re protesting. For those who missed it the first 100 times they said it, it has everything to do with racial injustice and biased policing, and nothing to do with the anthem, flag or military.
Malcolm Jenkins, Chris Long and Torrey Smith let that be known in powerful fashion Tuesday, going to the Pennsylvania state capitol to lobby for criminal justice reform less than eight hours after their Monday night victory over Washington.
But Trump’s repeated attacks have drawn the league into the fray, too. By refusing to order players to stand or punish them for peacefully demonstrating, the NFL risks alienating a section of fans. (Never mind that it’s on the right side of history.)
By taking an active role in finding ways to further a cause so important to its players, the league and its teams are helping to change the tone and the tenor of the conversation.
It’s no longer just rabble-rousing players who should be grateful they live in a country where they can become millionaires. It’s the Cleveland Browns organizing a summit with police officers, the mayor and local high schoolers to address community perceptions and cooperation between residents and law enforcement. It’s Commissioner Roger Goodell, on behalf of the NFL, urging support for a sentencing reform bill that’s before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.
And, on Thursday, it was the San Francisco 49ers teaming with eight law enforcement unions on a “pledge for a more understanding and safer America.” In addition to calling for a ban on “bump stocks,” devices that raised the death toll in the Las Vegas massacre, the group is promising to enlist other sports franchises, businesses, community leaders and faith-based organizations to foster better relationships between police and the communities they serve.
“Having that NFL support is paramount,” 49ers safety Eric Reid, the first player to join Colin Kaepernick in protesting more than a year ago, told USA TODAY Sports last week.
“There will always be a group who will think what they want to think no matter how many times you try to say what your inten- tions are,” Reid said after the first “social justice summit” between players and owners.
“But we think it will help open their ears if the NFL supports us.”
These are small gains. Players will have to continue battling the court of public opinion — to say nothing of the bully pulpit of the president’s Twitter account — along with racism and inequality. But much like the civil rights protests of the ’60s, widely unpopular at the time but now seen as watershed moments in our country, history will have a much different view of the NFL protests.
We’re already starting to see the change.