By Will Bunch
The Philadelphia Inquirer
As the first full slate of NFL games kicked off this Sunday, it was hard not to feel that this peculiarly American institution entering its 99th season was haunted by a ghost — a presence that was not on the field yet felt palpable to anyone watching.
OK, maybe that’s because the image of Colin Kaepernick looms so large. Aided by Nike, the image of Kaepernick towers over San Francisco’s Union Square and Manhattan’s Times Square, and a glitzy ad featuring him and sporting idols like Serena Williams (quite a fitting juxtaposition, as we’d all see just two days later) crashed the party that was Thursday night’s nationally televised Eagles victory.
In the Trump era, where everyone from comfortable suburbanites turned “resisters” to “senior administration officials” writing anonymous op-eds in the New York Times is trying to gauge how bad things are and how far to go out on a limb, Kaepernick is something of a lodestar for America’s great ethical quandary. Arguably, not since the life-or-death decisions posed by the Vietnam War have so many citizens been pondering the challenge raised by the Kaepernick/Nike tagline: “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.”
Much like Vietnam-era athlete Muhammad Ali, the 30-year-old quarterback’s political stand cost him playing time during what should have been his peak years. So much has happened since the last time Kaepernick took the field (Jan. 1, 2017), you have to take a step back to remember what the athlete was actually protesting (police brutality and other social injustice) or what has been accomplished (a lot).
I’ve been thinking about Kaepernick these last few days as the end of summer brought not only the return of pro football but the re-emergence of Barack Obama in American politics. The 44th president’s first campaign-style speech, delivered Friday at the University of Illinois, walked the tightrope between the historical constraints we place on our ex-presidents and the need to sound the alarm about rising authoritarianism.
“If you are really concerned about how the criminal justice system treats African Americans, the best way to protest is to vote — not just for senators and representatives, but for mayors and sheriffs and state legislators,” Obama said.
“If you don’t like what’s going on right now — and you shouldn’t — do not complain,” he said later. “Don’t hashtag. Don’t get anxious. Don’t retreat. Don’t binge on whatever it is you’re binging on. Don’t lose yourself in ironic detachment. Don’t put your head in the sand. Don’t boo. Vote.”
Obama managed to get it both right and wrong in that one key riff. Complaining without voting is indeed an empty and somewhat hypocritical way to live your political life. (And, indeed, the most valid criticism of Kaepernick is that he has failed to vote.) But at the same time, voting without complaining — especially, risk-everything protest that changes the conversation and calls attention to the gross contradictions in American society — can be a futile gesture as well. That’s because protesting and complaining create the conditions where your vote actually matters.
In fact, it was during Obama’s eight years in the White House that millions of progressive-minded Americans — many of whom had once thought the Democrat’s 2008 election had been the dawning of an Age of Aquarius — launched two of the most successful protest movements in modern U.S. history.
2011’s Occupy Wall Street movement started a national conversation about an issue that elected officials in Washington pretended did not exist — income inequality — and morphed into the Bernie Sanders movement and now into majority support for issues that weren’t even on the table seven years ago. It was beyond irony that Obama endorsed Medicare-for-all in his speech Friday — after not pushing for it during his eight years as “leader of the free world.” Obama’s change of heart happened because of a protest!
Then there’s the #BlackLivesMatter movement that arose from the ashes of the killing of Michael Brown and the subsequent unrest in Ferguson in 2014. Again, very few people were talking about the disproportionate killing of black men by police — let alone related issues like America’s insane incarceration rate or the unfairness of policies like cash bail — until these risk-taking folks hit the street. Again, Obama was president for eight years, but it was only after #BlackLivesMatter protests that he spoke out against mass incarceration.
Kaepernick’s decision to kneel during the National Anthem in 2016 was a turning point. Protests are most effective when they can no longer be ignored by those most resistant to change. So bringing the fight against police brutality to the all-American spectacle that is the NFL was an act not just of conscience, but also of bold creativity.
Indeed, the inspiration for this column came not just from Kaepernick but from a tweet by Bree Newsome, the political activist who shimmied up a South Carolina flagpole and took down a Confederate flag, changing the way we talk about how white supremacy is memorialized in this country. Newsome responded to the Obama speech with a stirring defense of activism as augmenting voting for political change. “Engaged citizens,” she wrote, “are those who vote when possible and protest when necessary.”
Indeed, Obama’s “don’t complain” seems like a bizarre message in the wake of the 2017 Women’s March, which spawned literally hundreds of first-time women candidates, who will in turn be giving people a reason to go out and vote Nov. 6 that they might not have felt otherwise. Even “don’t hashtag” is kind of an insult not just to #BlackLivesMatter but also to the #MeToo movement, which has brought the biggest revolution in gender politics in the last 40 years.
America won’t change if you don’t vote Nov. 6, but it also won’t change if you don’t complain, hashtag, protest and risk everything in the days before you go to the polls. And the ghost of Colin Kaepernick’s NFL career is your living proof.
