#anthem protests

On Opening Day of the 2020 MLB season, players, managers, and coaches of the New York Yankees and Washington Nationals knelt in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement before standing for the National Anthem.

‘We wanted to do something united, something together,’ Yankees slugger Aaron Judge said after the Yankees’ 4-1 victory, called in the sixth inning due to rain at Nationals Park.

‘We’ve got a lot of guys in this clubhouse with different beliefs, different feelings, different walks of life and from different countries,’ Judge said. ‘And we want to respect all that and as a team we came to the decision to kneel right before the anthem.’

The Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Francisco Giants also took a knee before the anthem, and some players remained kneeling for the anthem itself.

At Dodger Stadium, Opening Day featured a pre-game video from The Players Alliance, a group of more than 100 Black players led by CC Sabathia, Curtis Granderson and Edwin Jackson, calling for racial justice and reaffirming that ‘Black lives matter.’

The San Francisco Giants team, coaches, and managers wore T-shirts that read ‘Black Lives Matter’ during the pre-game warmups.

‘It just shows unity,’ Dodgers right fielder Markus ‘Mookie’ Betts said of kneeling. ‘I think everybody is on board with what’s going on in the world. We have to make some change. It starts here. We have to do our part. It’s amazing to know that everybody here is on board with something that we have to find a way to make change. This is the first step.’

This is just fucking stupid on the part of the NFL. I love watching football, the Detroit Lions and Denver Broncos are deeply interwoven into my Sundays in the fall, but if the NFL keeps moving in this direction I am going to have to stop watching.

Just announce “For every player that chooses to exercise their right to protest by kneeling for the anthem, I will donate $10,000 to a local veteran’s organization”.

Fuck it, double down too. “For every player that chooses to stand for the anthem, I will donate $10,000 to Black Lives Matter or a local outreach program.”

Colin Kaepernick is available as a player in the new Madden 21 video game, due in large part to popular demand by fans. Kaepernick has not played in the NFL since 2016, the season he began kneeling during the national anthem to protest police brutality.