Players and Owners Take the Next Step in Cooperating on Social Justice Initiatives
Source: Sports Illustrated
The NFL will announce today the latest step in its seven-year, $90 million commitment to players social-justice issues, forming a committee of five players and five owners to further advance what the league says is its effort to assist players in trying to make improvements in education, relations with police, and the criminal-justice system in the leagues communities.
The committee includes Kelvin Beachum and Josh McCown of the Jets, Washington cornerback Josh Norman and retired players Anquan Boldin and Aeneas Williams. On the owners side are Arizonas Michael Bidwill, Atlantas Arthur Blank, Shad Khan of Jacksonville, Stephen Ross of Miami and Clevelands Jimmy Haslam. The owners were appointed by the NFL; the players were appointed by the Players Coalition, a social-justice group led by Boldin and Malcolm Jenkins of the Eagles, among others.
I think its unprecedented what has happened, Boldin said this week. I dont think its the NFLs job to end racism in America, but the NFL has helped us expand our platform, and the NFL has backed us, and helped bring about change.
From the Players Coalition standpoint, weve been able to show how unjust our criminal-justice system is, and weve been able to work on that. We want change to come from this protest.
Boldin said one way he would like a transformation to come nationwide from the seeds of this NFL movement is through encouraging legislation where there is accountability across the board in communities in which the players think sentencing guidelines are onerous on African-Americans, among other issues. A start came in October when Seattles Doug Baldwin and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell co-authored a letter to Congress supporting the passage of the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, which is designed to reduce the minimum sentence for non-violent drug offenders.
Read more: https://www.si.com/nfl/2018/01/23/nfl-players-owners-social-justice-committee-criminal-justice-reform
mountain grammy
(26,619 posts)and wish them all well taking on this issue and hope to see more publicity on our grossly unjust justice system.
bluedigger
(17,086 posts)Let's hope it's all for the best!
cilla4progress
(24,726 posts)So conflicted on the NFL...
Could the fact that the majority of players are AA have anything to do with this unique move?
RandomAccess
(5,210 posts)it doesn't devolve into just another way to co-opt the movement.
And my heart hurts that Kaeppernick STILL isn't playing somewhere. But I sure do honor him.