The controversy over protests during the national anthem at NFL games last season helped propel issues of racial inequality and social injustice to the forefront and gave athletes a stronger voice to bring about change
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The players, who spoke at a Harvard Law School summit on criminal justice reform, said they capitalized on the attention surrounding the protests to highlight issues they care about, like mass incarceration.
Now, they’re using their platform to talk to lawmakers, police chiefs and prosecutors across the country about injustices they see in the communities where they grew up.
”With all of the controversy and the fanfare around (the protests), it created a platform that was probably larger than any of us would have had individually, and we were able to leverage that,” said Malcolm Jenkins, a safety on the Philadelphia Eagles and co-founder of the Players Coalition
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Colin Kaepernick started the NFL anthem movement when he was with the San Francisco 49ers in 2016 to protest racial inequality and police brutality. Some players knelt during the anthem, an act that drew the ire of Republican President Donald Trump, who called for NFL owners to fire such players.
In response to the player demonstrations, the NFL agreed to commit $90 million over the next seven years to social justice causes in a plan that involves league players.
New England Patriot Devin McCourty said in an interview with The Associated Press that the NFL’s support of the players’ mission has been encouraging.
”I think the NFL has seen the bigger picture – that this is not just the players trying to do something to give back – but these are real issues that not just the players should care about but we should all care about,” said McCourty, who spent Thursday at the Massachusetts statehouse lobbying lawmakers on juvenile justice issues.
The athletes were joined at the Harvard summit by Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner and other lawyers as well as professors, judges and activists. The players participated in small group discussions about policing, prosecutors and sentencing reform.
During a panel discussion led by The New York Times Magazine’s Emily Bazelon, the players discussed personal experiences – like watching videos of police shootings of black men or hearing the stories of their own family members – that drove them into activism.
They spoke of the need for police to have stronger relationships with people in their communities and the importance of having real conversations about race, even when it makes people uncomfortable.
”We have the unique ability to bring people to the table and now we have the responsibility when we have everyone at the table to speak truth and kind of force that conversation
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The players said some athletes worry that getting involved in social or political issues will hurt their careers. But they said they hope that lending their voices to these causes will inspire others to take action.
”A lot of people just think about athletes as just jocks, but there are some brilliant minds in those locker rooms,” said Anquan Boldin, a former Baltimore Raven.
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This story has been corrected to reflect that Jenkins’ first name is Malcolm not Malcom.
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From time to time, Ben Roethlisberger makes news when doing interviews on Pittsburgh’s 93.7 The Fan. And it’s the kind of news that often makes us wonder why he continues to do it.
They pay him for the segments, that’s obvious. But they’re can’t be paying a $20-million-per-year guy enough to justify the problems that often arise from the answers he provides in a setting where he is far more relaxed, casual, and loquacious than when he’s at a press conference or standing with a bunch of microphones in his face in the locker room.
The biggest and most obvious headline coming from Friday’s visit by Roethlisberger to 93.7 The Fan arose from his comments about his reaction to the team’s decision to burn a 2018 third-round pick on a quarterback. Near the end of the 20-minute interview, the issue comes up again from the perspective of the team’s 2017 fourth-round quarterback.
Here was the question: “How about Josh Dobbs? A guy that gets picked last year as a fourth-rounder, now he might feel like he’s getting squeezed out or he’s the odd man out. Have you talked to him about his situation now with this team?”
Said Roethlisberger
Zack Martin Jersey , who interjected a “yeah, I know” as the question was being asked: “[Dobbs] and Landry [Jones] were the two guys I’ve spoken to the most. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t worried about someone taking my job. I feel confident that I can go out and beat whoever I need to beat out for my job, that’s just the confidence I have in myself. And I just got back to those guys. . . . I don’t know what’s gonna happen. I assume Landry’s still the [No.] 2. I don’t really know. And Josh, same thing, last year he was taken in the fourth round. So does that mean the like Steelers screwed up in that pick? Like, do they think he wasn’t the one that they thought? Or has he not developed the way they thought? Why else would you take a quarterback in the third round the next year?”
The host interjected at that point, saying that G.M. Kevin Colbert said Thursday that he won’t keep four quarterbacks on the 2018 53-man roster.
“So did they screw up the pick?” Roethlisberger said. “Or was he not as good as they thought? I don’t know, and I feel bad, because Josh puts a lot of work in.”
Then Ben brings the arrival of rookie Mason Rudolph back to himself
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“I wouldn’t think they’d get rid of Mason, keep Dobbs and Landry,” Roethlisberger said. “I wouldn’t think. Maybe they’re trying to trade me away or something, I don’t know.”
He laughed as he said it. The Steelers likely weren’t laughing very much when they listened to the full interview, because it’s clear that there will now be plenty of tension in the quarterback room, and that the guy who has led the depth chart since entering the fray as a rookie in 2004 won’t be bashful about stirring things up, publicly and presumably privately.
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