A couple of years ago, Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the National Anthem to leverage his platform and visibility and turn our collective attention toward the injustices people of color experience as a daily occurrence here in this country. Other players followed; some kneeling, others sitting down or locking arms or raising a fist in the air.

They silently, respectfully, stoically made an appeal to our shared compassion on behalf of people who do not have a voice.
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This should have been enough ... We should have told these players that we hear them and that we are as grieved about the premature deaths of young black men as they are.
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Trump did what he’s done all the way through the campaign, election, and his Presidency: he exploited easily manipulated, angry white people looking for someone to ratify their prejudice and consent to their enmity. He purposefully used his position of power to try and steamroll people of color asking to be treated equally, into silence—and in the process, he and his supporters proved exactly why these athletes were kneeling to begin with.

This predatory President, spineless NFL owners, and complicit white fans treating players like expendable animals—all conspired to made Colin Kaepernick’s point for him.
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You can pretend this is about when and how these athletes are protesting—or just admit that it’s the fact that they’re protesting at all that really offends you, and you wish they’d stop inconveniencing you with truth that you’d rather not deal with.

This is about what it’s always been about: us choosing to defend white privilege or black lives.

https://johnpavlovitz.com/2018/06/06/white-people-this-anthem-thing-is-really-simple/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=johnpavlovitz

IN JULY 2015, Black Lives Matter activists bravely interrupted a town hall with Sanders at a liberal political event, demanding that he center structural racism in his message. The following month, Black Lives Matter activists in Seattle again interrupted a speech from Sanders — demanding that he center the struggle for black lives in his campaign ... A few weeks later, in the wake of those two moments, Sanders met privately with another group of black activists to discuss criminal justice reforms. I spoke directly with many of the attendees that day, including DeRay Mckesson, and was told that the meeting didn’t go well – that attendees sensed very little emotional connection from Sanders and that some wondered if he truly even wanted to be there.

So, three years later, to be willing to co-host a public event in front of over 4,000 people, alongside six radical women of color, without ever asking what they would be talking about or knowing if they would plan on calling him out publicly yet again, was a pretty big deal.

Backstage, I met privately with Sanders, and was immediately struck by his vastly improved mastery of core issues around criminal justice reform. But it wasn’t just his newfound fluency on these issues that surprised me — it was his emotion.

“It’s disgusting, Shaun, that our country is basically criminalizing poverty. I’ll be honest with you. I really didn’t know this was happening. I had no idea hundreds of thousands of Americans, particularly African-Americans, were being held in jail, for months or years, even though they’ve never been convicted of a crime, simply because they can’t afford bail,” Sanders told me in a tiny dressing room backstage before the event.

“I’ve learned a lot,” he continued. “I see the racial disparities clearer than ever. I want to help – just tell me how I can best help and we’ll do it.” I was touched. He wasn’t reading from a script. He was admitting to me, as he soon would from the stage, in front of thousands of people, that he hasn’t always gotten this quite right.

https://theintercept.com/2018/06/14/bernie-sanders-criminal-justice-reform/