May 29, 2018

NFL bans national anthem protests

located:	USA
editor:	Shira Jeczmien

Last Wednesday, May 23, the National Football League (NFL) announced it will fine teams if players refuse to stand for the national anthem in the commencing of games – with a possibility for players to stay in the locker rooms should they refuse to stand. This comes two years after former San Francisco 49rs quarterback player Colin Kaepernick began a peaceful protest against racial injustice and police brutality. By taking a knee during the national anthem, Kaepernick demonstrated that he will not respect a country that does not treat its citizens equally. His gesture not only made him an international protest figure, but started a movement within the NFL players, generated a trending hashtag #takeaknee and raised further attention to racial inequality and police brutality in America. Kaepernick’s brave protest however has cost him his career and sparked nationwide condemnation of the act.

Trump, an avid critic of the movement who early on condemned the protest, was quick to comment on the NFL ban. "You have to stand proudly for the National Anthem. You shouldn't be playing, you shouldn't be there. Maybe they shouldn't be in the country...the NFL owners did the right thing." While in the interview Trump insists that “the people pushed this forward, this was not me”, him and Pence have shown a firm stance on players kneeling during the anthem and publicly condemned this form of protest; urging team owners to “discipline” players who participate in the protest. "When the president and vice president of the United States are this intimately involved in encouraging a private employer to adopt a workplace rule, the Constitution should have something to say." Wrote Harvard Law School labour industry professor Benjamin Sachs in an article for Vox.

Since the public announcement of the ban, protesters have gathered outside NFL New York City headquarters while investigations have begun in relation to the legality of such a ban and its possible breach of the First Amendment. "The clearest illegality derives from the fact that the league adopted its new policy without bargaining with the players union," Sachs writes. "If, as the NFL Players Association says, the employer implemented this change on its own, the policy is flatly illegal for that reason and should be rescinded by the league," he added. The players have been allowed to protest during the anthem in the commencing of the games thus far not because of a kind hearted gesture from the owners but thanks to the Collective Bargaining Agreement with the union. It is their right as employees to protest in the workplace.

In an article for The Nation, political sportswriter Dave Zirin argues that the real reason behind this controversial and igniting decision by the NFL is not so much about curtailing free speech as much as it is about controlling the labour force within the NFL. The movement of resistance ignited by Kaepernick is, according to Zirin, the greatest threat to institutional power, which within the NFL threatens the compliance of players to the teams and owners. What this league wide protest has sparked is not only the players using their public platforms to speak of the thriving racial injustice across the country but their agency as predominantly people of colour in a position of power that, potentially, supersedes that of the teams’ predominantly white (all but one team owner), extremely wealthy and largely republican owners.

As events unfold around what is now an unstoppable movement, Kaepernick’s #takeaknee has moulded into a microcosm of current American politics: repression of free speech, institutional muscle flexing, potentially serious offences on Constitutional rights and a desperate plea by NFL players and supporters of the movement to generate a momentum for change. What this ban has exposed is the fissures of both Trump’s aggressive rhetoric against freedom of expression as well as the NFL’s systemic racial structures. This fight is about labour power, racial equality and police brutality. It is not and never was about respect for the anthem.