Colour me surprised

[Guinevere]

Yvonne!!

[rubato]

I am heartened and encouraged by the intelligent and respectful way so many schools and NFL teams have responded to this. Most of them have refused to condemn the protesters and reaffirmed the individual's right to express themselves. Many have said that it does not represent their opinion but they do not criticize someone who expresses themselves with so much dignity and respect . And the 49s team has pledged to donate $1 million to the cause.




http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/arti ... 226081.php

As Kaepernick’s protest spreads, SF prep team takes a knee

By Hamed Aleaziz
September 15, 2016 Updated: September 15, 2016 8:52pm

Photo: Scott Strazzante, The Chronicle
Image 1 of 6
Mission High School football player Cheko Wells practices Wednesday. The whole team knelt Saturday.

Greg Hill, the head football coach at San Francisco’s Mission High School, was standing on the sideline Saturday afternoon before a game in Marin County when it occurred to him that a player or two might take action during the national anthem.

As the song began, Hill, 41, turned toward his team and was taken aback by what he saw.

Every player on the roster — black, white, Latino, Asian — was on one knee, an echo of the hotly debated move by 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick to protest racial inequality and police brutality. In that moment, Hill said, he saw a team that had decided to experience “this historical moment” as a unit.

The coach, who is black, also had a more immediate dilemma: What am I going to do?

“I decided I’d stand for them,” he said. “I’m gonna stand for my team.”

The players at Mission High plan to kneel again at their game Friday night at San Mateo High, and they won’t be alone. In the weeks since Kaepernick sat, then knelt, for the national anthem, scores of professional and amateur football, soccer and volleyball players in fields and courts across the country have joined in.

The protests have been criticized by people who see them as an affront to the country and its military veterans, and defended by others who either applaud Kaepernick’s message or simply support his right to deliver it.

But the larger trend is that of athletes awakening to the power of their stage, said Jeremi Duru, a professor of sports law at American University’s law school in Washington.

“Throughout the nation, athletes on different levels are finding their voice and recognizing that they have a platform,” he said. “We haven’t seen this level of athlete activism in nearly half a century. This is a movement.”

Last week, more than a dozen NFL players, including the 49ers’ Kaepernick and Eric Reid, knelt or raised their fists during the anthem. High school football players in Kentucky, Massachusetts, Maryland and other states also knelt.

The athletes’ reasons for protesting have varied, as have the responses. While the 49ers pledged $1 million to aid causes cited by Kaepernick, Denver Broncos linebacker Brandon Marshall lost two endorsement deals after he knelt during the anthem.

A high school football player in Massachusetts who took a knee said he was hit with a suspension, though school officials soon announced that he would not be disciplined. A private Catholic school in New Jersey said it would suspend players who did not stand for the anthem.

But at public schools like Mission High, students have constitutional protections for peaceful, nondisruptive speech and action such as sitting out the national anthem or the pledge of allegiance, said Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center in Washington.

In California, a private school student who protested the anthem would be protected as well by the state education code, he said.

“A student in California has the legally protected right to engage in any speech that would be considered constitutionally protected if it took place in the off-campus world,” LoMonte said.

The silent protest by the Mission High football team wasn’t spontaneous, nor flippant. According to the players, the conversation over whether to do it began in earnest between a few players during Saturday’s bus ride to Redwood High in Larkspur.

Then, before the game, Niamey Harris, a 17-year-old senior team captain and the starting quarterback, along with a few teammates, explained to the rest of the players that they would take a knee to bring attention to racial injustice in America. They asked their teammates to join in so they could do it as a unit.

The pitch to the other players, Harris said, went like this: “This is for helping everybody else in the world to understand that black people and people of color are going though difficulties and they need help. It’s not going to take care of itself.”

Kaepernick the man has done more than Kaepernick the football player, or any football player, could.


yrs,
rubato

[Econoline]

A private Catholic school in New Jersey said it would suspend players who did not stand for the anthem.

It seems to me that "taking a knee" is identical to the Catholic practice of genuflection--which is and always has been a demonstration of respect.

[Econoline]

[Bicycle Bill]

A private Catholic school in New Jersey said it would suspend players who did not stand for the anthem.

It seems to me that "taking a knee" is identical to the Catholic practice of genuflection--which is and always has been a demonstration of respect.

I was thinking the same thing, E-line, and if Kaepernick and the others were not also making public statements as to why they were kneeling I too would have considered it to be a silent sign of respect in much the same manner as I would stand silently while they played "Oh Canada" when the Blue Jays used to come to town to play the Brewers or they hoisted another country's flag and played their anthem at the Olympics.

-"BB"-

[Burning Petard]

There is a vast range of religious practices, even in Christianity. I could understand the Roman Catholic objection to 'taking a knee' during the playing of the National Anthem as a form of idolatry. The first 'free speech' Supreme Court decision I ever read had to do with something very similar--individuals who refused to salute the flag because of religious beliefs. I think it was back during WWII and the religious group was Jehovah's Witnesses. The Supremes upheld their right to refuse.

I have similar problems with the Pledge of Allegiance, with its clause about 'under God'. For me that is a declaration that this One Nation is under the control of a sovereign God. I personally agree, but it is very personal. Legally, I believe this nation's citizens are the Sovereign, and not under any god.

But most of all I believe the daily actions of many organizations, private and public, are actions which deny and frustrate the establishment of a more perfect union, as well as other ends that are the purpose of our Nation, as spelled out specifically in the preamble of the Constitution. "Taking a knee' or refusing to stand, or raising a fist during the National Anthem seems to me to be a gesture of very high respect for that preamble and a call to face up to our failures to accomplish it.

Yes, I know this is an international board, and I do respect the unwritten constitution used in other places.

snailgate

[Lord Jim]

There are so many things that are offensive and disingenuous in that piece by Yvonne Abraham that Sue posted, it's hard to know where to start...

I guess I'll start with her odious attempt to tie anyone who criticizes the behavior of Kaepernick and his wannabes to Donald Trump:

a world of condemnation has descended, calling the protests disrespectful and un-American. Let’s go straight to the orange oligarch on this one.

“I think it’s a terrible thing,” Donald Trump said of Kaepernick’s protest. “Maybe he should find a country that works better for him, let him try.”

Love it or leave it, right? You don’t criticize this country. Not unless you’re Trump himself, who has spent more than a year conjuring a dystopia, arguing over and over that America has gone down the commode, a fact with which millions of his followers — almost all of them white — seem to agree.

Somehow, saying the lives of white Americans are bad — because of Mexican immigrants (rapists and drug smugglers), Muslims (terrorists), or the president (possibly a Muslim immigrant) — makes you a patriot

As a person who has been relentlessly and vociferously condemnatory of Trump and all his works, but who also sees the actions of Kaepernick and his wannabes as ignorant and disrespectful (though I will say that taking a knee is less disrespectful than simply sitting on your ass...one could argue that the kneeling thing is more an expression of mourning than disrespect) I find the attempt to taint anyone who criticizes Kaepernick with the Trump Brush deeply offensive, and intellectually dishonest...

As though no one but the most ignorant, mouth frothing, hardcore Trumpanees would ever criticize this...

Maybe we need to add a new phrase to the lexicon:

"The first one who yells 'Trump!' loses"...

But let the people who are suffering, personally or in sympathy with others, be black, and suddenly, criticizing the way things are in this country becomes an act of treason.

Who the hell has accused Kaepernick of being a traitor? I'm sure in a country of 330 million people there must be some in the knuckle dragging blogasphere who have, but this is certainly not a dominant theme among those who have been critical of Kaepernick.

It's a complete strawman. Kaepernick is wrongheaded in the target he has chosen to protest, but he is certainly no Edward Snowden...

Kaepernick and other players have done a vital thing, shining more light

Again, I find this assertion puzzling to the point of bewilderment...

Has Ms. Abraham been stranded on a desert island for the past two years? (If so she hasn't been with the crew of The Minnow...at least they had a radio...) Because if she hasn't, surely she must have noticed that there has been a whole bank of media klieg lights shining non-stop on all the issues involved with policing and minority communities...

The only thing Kaepernick and the wannabes have "shined a light on" is themselves...

And now we come to the crux of the matter:

The NYPD officer who put Eric Garner in the chokehold that killed him was never indicted. And none of the officers involved in the death of Freddie Gray was convicted: Apparently he broke his own neck in that Baltimore police van.

Faced with that infuriating pattern, silently taking a knee during the anthem is the picture of respectful dissent. It isn’t a rejection of America; it is a wish for a better America.

To restate that last bit with its true meaning:

It isn’t a rejection of America; it is a wish for the legal system to render decisions that they approve of.

Beyond Kaepernick (whose actions really amount to a fart in a hurricane in all of this) this is what I have always found troubling about the Black Lives Matter movement...

That the definition of a fair criminal justice system is one that yields the results that THEY have predetermined are the correct results...

Facts of individual cases be damned, evidence be damned, due process be damned, presumption of innocence be damned, the wording and requirements of the laws be damned...

THERE IS NO JUSTICE UNTIL WE GET THE RESULT WE WANT!

Well I remember all the folks who were ready to lock up Darren Wilson and throw away the key when they had none of the facts...

It's the modern day equivalent of the Old West scene where the mob converges on the jail house with a rope yelling "string him up!"...

What I find interesting, is that some of the attorneys on this board, who are usually among the first to say, "Now hold on a minute, we don't have all the facts, we shouldn't pre-judge" whenever someone posts a story here that they see as being a gross miscarriage of justice...

Appear to be willing to discard that circumspect "reserve judgement" approach when it comes to this issue, and instead embrace the "the results determine whether the process is just" view...

[rubato]

http://www.espn.com/blog/nflnation/post ... -in-week-2

"... Or you may be in a similar situation, and if you're in a situation like
That, there's only one thing you can do:

Walk into the shrink wherever you are, just walk in, say, "Shrink, . . . you
Can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant", and walk out.

You know, if one person, just one person, does it, they may think he's
Really sick and they won't take him.

And if two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots and
They won't take either of them.

And if three people do it! Can you imagine three people walkin' in, singin'
A bar of "Alice's Restaurant" and walkin' out? They may think it's an
Organization!

And can you imagine fifty people a day? I said FIFTY people a day . . .
Walkin' in, singin' a bar of "Alice's Restaurant" and walkin' out? Friends,
They may think it's a MOVEMENT, and that's what it is: THE ALICE'S
RESTAURANT ANTI-MASSACREE MOVEMENT! . . . and all you gotta do to join is to
Sing it the next time it comes around on the guitar.

... "

You can get anything you want if you have balls to stand up, or sit down, take a knee or raise a fist in solidarity and then take what comes. Especially if what you want is a more just world where black people are not murdered.

Kaepernick is a privileged black man. He will live in the kinds of neighborhoods and drive the kinds of cars and have the face recognition which will make him immune from the kind of treatment he is protesting. He is taking a risk and sacrificing on behalf of others. His parents are proud of him.


yrs,
rubato

[Lord Jim]

Supreme Court Justice Ginsburg on Kaepernick's anthem protests: 'It's dumb and disrespectful'

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick's decision to protest the national anthem in the name of social justice - which sparked a movement that has spread across the NFL and other major sports - has drawn passionate reactions from fans and fellow players alike, and now a member of the highest court in the United States is weighing on on the debate.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States who assumed office in 1993, said in an interview with Katie Couric that she believes Kaepernick's actions are "dumb" and compared the protests to flag burning.

"I think it's really dumb of them. Would I arrest them for doing it? No. I think it's dumb and disrespectful. I would have the same answer if you asked me about flag burning. I think it's a terrible thing to do, but I wouldn't lock a person up for doing it. I would point out how ridiculous it seems to me to do such an act.... If they want to be stupid, there's no law that should be preventive. If they want to be arrogant, there's no law that prevents them from that. What I would do is strongly take issue with the point of view that they are expressing when they do that."

http://www.foxnews.com/sports/2016/10/1 ... ctful.html

[Burning Petard]

Thinking about the events in the USofA after the end of the Obama presidency.

Can anyone here actually imagine conditions that would accomplish "one nation, with liberty and justice for all" when that "all" includes Lord Jim, rubato, Liberty, Donald Trump, Al Sharpton, and me?

snailgate

[RayThom]

Thinking about the events in the USofA after the end of the Obama presidency... Can anyone here actually imagine conditions that would accomplish "one nation, with liberty and justice for all" when that "all" includes Lord Jim, rubato, Liberty, Donald Trump, Al Sharpton, and me?... snailgate

Yikes! That's a scary new national order. None of you people would have time for my nonsense. I'd surely be living out my final years in the balmy federal resort of Guantánamo-by-the-Sea.

[oldr_n_wsr]

You're always welcome at our meetings. And we live by anonymity.

[rubato]

Thinking about the events in the USofA after the end of the Obama presidency.

Can anyone here actually imagine conditions that would accomplish "one nation, with liberty and justice for all" when that "all" includes Lord Jim, rubato, Liberty, Donald Trump, Al Sharpton, and me?

snailgate

It is a goal which we try to approximate to an increasing degree with the passage of time.


yrs,
rubato

[dales]

His parents are proud of him.


yrs,
rubato

Ah, no, not really. His father abandoned him and his mom is ashamed of him.

Colin Kaepernick’s Mom, Heidi Russo, Tells Him To Stop Being Disrespectful



Colin Kaepernick’s biological mother, Heidi Russo, has sent out a series of tweets, telling him to stop being disrespectful and shaming the country.

Russo is Kaepernick’s biological mother. In his recent article, Dr. Ron Martinelli details Colin Kaepernick’s background:

Colin Kaepernick was born on November 3, 1987 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to a white mother Heidi Russo (19) and a black father. Unfortunately, like many black children, Colin’s father disappeared soon after discovering that Heidi was pregnant and abandoned the pair. To this day, Russo refuses to identify Colin’s biological father. Russo gave Colin up for adoption by a white couple Rick and Teresa Kaepernick soon after Colin was born.

Kaepernick supporters on Twitter started attacking Russo for giving up her son for adoption when she didn’t have the resources to raise him alone. This prompted Russo to fire back:

With the firestorm that Kaepernick created, do you think that he will ever be man enough to admit that he was wrong? Or will he have to sit through what’s left of his short career? Let us know your thoughts on our Facebook page

[Long Run]

Who cares what his birth mother thinks about this? As far as has been reported (and I have not done an exhaustive search), the parents that raised Kaepernick have expressed no opinion, other than to continue to fly an American flag at their home. Colin has said they support his general protest, which is against unfair treatment of minorities and not against the U.S.

In other news, NFL viewership is down 11% year to date. It is likely that the protests started by Kaepernick are partially responsible for the drop off.

[Scooter]

She did a very brave and selfless thing when she entrusted him to parents who could give him a better life than she could have. Something she might have learned, had she decided to be a parent, is that her love is supposed to be a shield to protect her son from the bullies on the playground. She isn't supposed to join them.

Posting public criticism of her "son" on Twitter isn't the act of a mother. It is the act of an attention whore trying to cash in on the fact that she contributed an egg to creating him.

[BoSoxGal]

I agree wholeheartedly, Scooter.

[Bicycle Bill]

You're always welcome at our meetings. And we live by anonymity.

You mean like this?

A N O N Y M O U S   A L C O H O L I C S

-"BB"-

[rubato]

"...

In other news, NFL viewership is down 11% year to date. It is likely that the protests started by Kaepernick are partially responsible for the drop off.

Because NFL fans would never turn it off for beating wives and girlfriends senseless or running dog fights.


yrs,
rubato

[Lord Jim]

And how many players have taken a knee, raised their fist, turned their backs, or shown any kind of protest at all when his name is announced as he runs onto the field?