Hi ACLU Supporter,
If Donald Trump is not a white supremacist, his
actions and words show a great deal of comfort with the values of white
supremacy. We saw this most recently in his response to the NFL protests that
included standing against racial injustice and police brutality. This started
with Colin Kaepernick last season and shows no signs of stopping.
This
past weekend over 200 football players – and performers and athletes in other
sports – exercised their right to protest after our president resorted to
time-tested racial code words to marginalize protestors as unpatriotic. He asked
his overwhelmingly white audience in Alabama to get angry because
"people like yourselves turn on the television and you see
those people taking the knee." Those people – before
Saturday, almost all of them Black. The sons of bitches. (Racial code words? What? "People like yourselves," that is, people who aren't getting paid millions of dollars to play a game, people who simply want to turn on the TV and watch highly skilled athletes and not be assaulted with political agitprop, people who enjoy the strategy and spectacle of the game of football... that's the people we are talking about.
And it's "those people," those pampered, privileged, coddled multi-millionaires who pervert their access to the national stage by dragging in highly charged, controversial issues. "Those people" are alienating half their fan base.)
Trump has
dominated the conversation, and in doing so, from the beginning, he has misled
people into thinking the protests are just about the flag, or the national
anthem. So let’s turn to what this protest was about at the beginning: the
epidemic of police in this country killing Black and Brown people with no
accountability. (That is not what Kaepernick said was doing. He said, "I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way."
Michael Bennett agrees with Kaepernick: “But I don’t love segregation. I don’t love riots or oppression. I just want to see people have the equality that they deserve. And I want to be able to use this platform to continuously push the message of that.”
There was no mention of police brutality.)
Prosecutors and law enforcement should be
accountable to the communities they serve. Join us in making five clear demands
to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and the Department of
Justice.
What we’re talking about is structural racism. Our
justice system has suffered this plague long before Trump and Sessions came into
power. (Why didn't Obama solve it? What did he do for 8 years?)
But this administration is doing all it can to dismantle what little
progress we have won. (Unsupported assertion.)
Programs to build trust between police and
communities are gone. (Examples?)
Prosecutors have expanded power to dole out the harshest
charges possible. (Documentation?)
Police departments have new access to weapons of war – and new
leeway to use them. (Proof?)
We will not accept this. We must take action to
ensure real accountability and community safety. Join us in making five clear
demands to Attorney General Jeff Sessions today.
If you are
a person of color in America and you remain silent, what you risk is the future
of your children and grandchildren. (Hyperbole.)
Athletes in the past – Muhammad Ali, Tommie
Smith and John Carlos, Wilma Rudolph – risked their careers and reputations to
speak out about racism. Today’s athlete-protesters like Colin Kaepernick and the
brave women of the WNBA did not risk what earlier athletes did, but their
courage stands out. (Hardly any comparison. There was an actual danger in the 1960s for someone to do that. Today's athletes simply come across as spoiled and petulant.)
On Sunday these athletes showed real courage taking a
stand – or a knee – against racism. That’s what we all must do to make the
change this country so desperately needs.
Thanks for rising up,
Jeff
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