NorthStar News Today.com/BlackmansStreet.Today Editorial
President Trump is trying to change the narrative concerning protests by NFL players, and black men must stop him.
Colin Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback, took a knee before games last year to protest cops shooting to death unarmed black men and black women.
This reason either wasn’t mentioned or barely mentioned during Sunday’s news broadcasts.
The number of black men and boys shot and killed by police is great. Too many lives have been needlessly lost. Those killed by police shooters include Tamir Rice, Sam DuBose, Philando Castile, Terence Crutcher, Alton Sterling, Michael Brown, Akai Gurley, Eric Garner, Anthony Lamar Smith and Rekia Boyd, and yet not one of the cops who either shot to death or choked to death unarmed black men and women has been held accountable.
The cops always claim they feared for their lives before firing five, six or seven shots or more.
Mostly white juries or judges believe these cops or give them a pass because their job is hard and have refused to convict the cops. Meanwhile, the cops collect thousands of dollars in back pay for the time they were suspended from the job for each deadly shooting.
Blacks, whites and others are left to protest the deadly shootings with street demonstrations that change nothing.
Trump claims the NFL players who take a knee prior to a game are disrespecting the flag and the national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which many scholars argue is a racist song that promotes white supremacy (see today’s video).
Trump called white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville, Va., during a demonstration in which a woman was killed, “good people.” Yet the black NFL players who peacefully protested at games are “sons of bitches” who should be fired, he said. Trump’s racist base of supporters clapped loudly and cheered wildly.
Trump is trying to change the narrative away from police who murder blacks to something else, and we must change the dialogue back to what Kaepernick originally intended.
Black lives do matter. So do first amendment rights. And sometimes kneeling is another way of standing.
Frederick H. Lowe, Founder and Editor
