For a moment and only a moment as the photo was captured, Colin Kaepernick’s name was unreadable.
The back of his head was merely a dot on the page. The white “7” on the back of his red San Francisco 49ers jersey just a small arrow. But the full frames of his teammates standing as the national anthem played were unmistakable as he sat there. Alone. Protected only by Gatorade coolers during the two-minute calm before the storm.
The grainy image from the 49ers’ preseason game against Green Bay on Aug. 26 may someday be stamped on a page in the history books, with Kaepernick as The Man on a Bench, silently protesting.
His name, however, is no longer a blur. It has been uttered more than that of any other professional athlete in recent weeks. The backup quarterback has morphed into somewhat of a civil rights leader, leading a movement among professional athletes that now includes Broncos linebacker Brandon Marshall and U.S. women’s soccer player Megan Rapinoe, among many others. They’ve chosen to stand — or sit or kneel — to protest police brutality and the oppression of minorities while the melody of national pride blares from the loudspeakers.
Sometime since that photo was snapped, the message was lost, replaced by debates over the method and symbol of protest.
“People believe in me, but a lot of the scrutiny is a diversion from the real issue,” Marshall said. “All they want to talk about is the flag and disrespecting the country by not standing. But they’re not talking about the real message, probably because it’s uncomfortable.”
Conversation alone is a significant hurdle crossed. Talk has reached a pinnacle. For Marshall and many others, the issue is real, rooted in personal experience and not ambition.
The questions now are ones raised by the athletes themselves: When will conversation shift back toward the original issue? When can they stop kneeling?
“I don’t want to kneel forever,” Kaepernick said. “I want these things to change. I do know it will be a process, and it is not something that will change overnight. But I think there are some major changes that we can make that are very reasonable.”
LOST IN TRANSLATION
It happened before Kaepernick could explain his reason for sitting while the national anthem played. The premise of the protest took a back seat to the backlash over disrespecting the flag, the military, the veterans who fought for the freedoms afforded to the players and their fans.
The protest was peaceful, but Marshall was on the receiving end of hate-filled, derogatory messages on social media. He lost two endorsement deals. He had his name scribbled on an orange T-shirt that was burned by a man outside the Broncos’ practice facility.
“It’s become this thing about not offending the military, but it’s not even about the military in the first place,” said Nate Boyer, a former United States Army Green Beret and former NFL long snapper. “What he’s protesting are some of the policies in policing and the police brutality issue. It’s interesting how it’s spun into something completely different.”
Marshall said he expected the backlash. He expected not everyone, including his peers, to agree with his actions, but hoped most would respect why he did it.
Virgil Green, a teammate of both Marshall and Kaepernick at the University of Nevada and one of the few people Marshall confided in before kneeling, has a wide lens. As the son of a military veteran, a high-profile athlete and friend of the two ring leaders of the protest, Green stood in the middle.
“For me, that’s not something I would want to do, taking a knee during the national anthem,” Green said. “Everybody has their different beliefs, and I think what Kaep is doing is noble and something that many people, in general, should do. This is a nonviolent protest, and it’s getting slammed. What can someone do or say when they don’t agree with something that’s happening in our country or in the world? What can they do without being chastised?”
Kaepernick and Marshall are far from the first athletes to face pushback for protesting. Muhammad Ali, John Carlos and Tommie Smith, and even former Nuggets guard Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf — to name a few — paid dearly for trying to take the conversation beyond the boxing ring or track or basketball court into the community.
The latest movement, however, comes after decades of mostly inaction from athletes, embodied most by Michael Jordan, who shied away from political dialogue.
The protests have spread from the highest levels to high schools and are expected to gain steam when the NBA’s season begins. Somewhere along the line, the message morphed into a national debate on American symbols and traditions. But the original message didn’t completely disappear.
“I think the message is still part of the conversation,” said Rashad Robinson, the executive director of the civil rights organization Color of Change. “I think every time Colin Kaepernick or some of the other athletes take the mic, they are once again having a conversation about their message. And I think people are being forced to have a real conversation around why this is so uncomfortable for them. I think there’s this idea that protest is supposed to make us comfortable. But protest, by nature, is supposed to be disruptive.”
THE ENDGAME
For nearly an hour inside Denver’s police headquarters last Tuesday, Marshall sat with chief Robert White to get his questions answered. The meeting was at Marshall’s request.
Marshall ran through his list of inquiries, many of which mirrored those of citizens across the country seeking explanations from local police departments about the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Eric Garner and Michael Brown and Tamir Rice, among others. About Marshall’s own run-in with officers in Miami over the summer, when he said he was wrongfully handcuffed and threatened by cops with a Taser. About officers’ training and policies.
The conversation was not unlike the ones that are taking place in living rooms and workplaces as a result of the protests. But the location and participants in this one mattered.
“This was an opportunity, to use a football analogy, to ‘move the ball forward,’ ” White said. “We can never address the issues that we’re faced with in this country if, No. 1, we don’t have respect for the other side of the table and, No. 2, we can’t find some common ground to move forward.”
White offered Marshall a list of ways to not only gain a better understand of how local law enforcement operate, but ways to further engage with the department and community. Ways to make a difference.
“That’s part of the endgame,” Marshall said. “That’s only one part of it. I’m going to continue to think of different things and continue to come up with different solutions, so that’s one thing, and I’m looking forward to other things as well.”
Marshall said he plans to take up White on his offer to join an officer in a ride-along. Marshall plans to bring some of his teammates to test the department’s simulator used to train officers in shoot and don’t-shoot situations. He pledged $300 for every tackle he makes this season to local charities to address “critical social issues.”
Kaepernick vowed to donate $1 million to organizations in an effort to parlay the heightened awareness and conversation into real change. Niners CEO Jed York followed with a $1 million donation from the team to “the cause of improving racial and economic inequality and fostering communication and collaboration between law enforcement and the communities” in the Bay Area. And Packers coach Mike McCarthy donated $100,000 to the Green Bay Police Foundation “to be part of the solution to make our community better,” he said.
“Hate to say it, but racism is never-ending,” Boyer said. “That’s a human condition that will not end. Things will happen, police officers will make mistakes, gang violence will continue. … The key here, the most important thing, is taking action. Actually doing something, like it looks like Brandon is doing. The other guys, they better do the same thing and not just with money. Don’t just write checks. That’s easy when you make a lot of money. Do the work. Boots on the ground in the community. Making a difference. Getting involved.”
Marshall, like Kaepernick, said he doesn’t know when he’ll stop kneeling. But his devotion to his beliefs won’t stop.
“Kneeling really was just to bring attention to the issues, an awareness factor, a symbol, so to speak, just like the flag is a symbol,” Marshall said. “It’s not about kneeling. It’s about other things, so now I’m doing the donation thing and I’m going to do other things to back up my kneeling.”