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The Kaepernick Effect spread swiftly through U.S. professional and amateur sports in the weeks after San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick first knelt duringthe national anthem at a football game in August. But only a single pro soccer player U.S. womens national team midfielder Megan Rapinoe chose to join the wave of protests, kneeling before games that the Seattle Reign played and before several U.S. matches. Apparently that didnt sit well with the people who run the U.S. Soccer Federation. Because this week, the U.S. Soccer Federation introduced a new policy designed to keep Rapinoe on her feet. From now on, All persons representing a Federation national team shall stand respectfully during the playing of national anthems at any event in which the Federation is represented.

Those who defend Rapinoes right to kneel point out the irony of telling someone how to observe a song celebrating her freedom of conscience. Its not like Rapinoe is scratching her armpits and making chimp noises, or, as a high school soccer teammate of mine once did, pretending to stretch while relieving herself in the grass. Shes making a principled statement befitting someone who takes seriously what it means to live in the land of the free.

Those who favor the new policy, such asformer mens national team defender-turned-commentator Alexi Lalas, say that playing for the United States is a privilege, so Rapinoe can kneel on her own time, away from the spotlight. Thats not protesting, though; thats yoga. According to this thinking, Rapinoe can either submit to the federation or continue to kneel and face the consequences whatever those turn out to be. The First Amendment wont protect her, either. U.S. Soccer already tells players when to go to sleep, what to eat and how to defend indirect free kicks, so why not this?

As the liberal editor of an American soccer magazine, Ive been watching with interest, because this issue brings the realities of our countrys familiar political divisions to the sport. And althoughI sympathize with the Black Lives Matter movement that inspired Rapinoes protest, I understand why U.S. Soccer would prioritize values such aslove of country and respect for symbols of national unity. Whats more, Rapinoe picked this fight, bravely subverting those values in the service of elevating others that she believes to be more important. She must have known that traditional forces would oppose her.

To me, though, the new policy isnt the story. Rapinoe was already violating a deeply ingrained custom. Now continuing the protest would be officially breaking the rules, not just flouting norms. What interests me about the unanimous decision by U.S. Soccers board of directors is that it verbalized a message that the soccer establishment has been sending to black Americans for decades: This sport is not for you.

[Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Insulting Colin Kaepernick says more about our patriotism than his]

That might seem harsh. After all, U.S. Soccer has overseen the games tremendous, decades-long growth in the United States, and there are numerous examples of black players who have made their mark for the national team. But the federation has done little to improve the basic model of youth soccer, which ensures that elite clubs are accessible mostly to kids whose families are rich enough to buy entry. There is a swirl of socioeconomic and cultural reasons so few African Americans play our sport, but the bottom line is that soccer requires less equipment than almost any other game and yet in the United States, it is one of the costliest to play.

We most white Americans are not in favor of a justice system that discriminates against black people, but we go about our lives largely indifferent to it. This is Kaepernicks message. As overt racism has waned in the past few decades, indifference has replaced it as the next great barrier to real societal rehabilitation. By kneeling, he forces us to confront that indifference. The participation of a white athlete such asRapinoe gives the protest another dimension. Shes an openly gay professional athlete she has her own battles to fight which makes her kneeling an act of empathy, of imagining a way to expand the boundaries we draw when defining the word we.

Forbidding it is an assertion of indifference. Were not in favor of maintaining structural barriers that keep black kids from playing soccer; were just indifferent to them.

Why has the National Football League, where scores of players joined Kaepernicks protest, not introduced a similar policy? The idea of patriotism is no less ingrained in the mythology of American football. It mayhave something to do with the fact that about70 percent of all pro football players are black. In Major League Soccer, our countrys most diverse sports league, the number is 12 percent. Not a single member of U.S. Soccers board of directors is black. Simply put, African Americans are part of footballs idea of we, but not American soccers.

I suspect that by snuffing out this protest, U.S. Soccer thinks it is escaping from a heated political environment. But the reverse is true. Forcing Rapinoe to stand is itself a political act. Had the federation preserved the right ofindividuals to act according to their beliefs, it could claim neutrality. Instead, it weighed two sets of values that Rapinoe forced into opposition and chose sides.

Youll find that same dynamic on any soccer team a tension between submission to the collective and individual freedom of expression. Lalas knows this well. He used the lessons of his rock-and-roll idols to build a wild-child public persona that surpassed his considerable soccer skills. But he was a center back, a position that requires structure, organization and discipline, and one that ultimately reacts to the gambits of offensive players looking to create. When his coach told him to choose between cutting his hair or being kicked off the national team, out came the shears.

Rapinoe has said she will stop kneeling. But she has the mind of a midfielder, and I hope she uses it to keep imagining things we havent seen before.

Read more:

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Israel may finally be doing something to stop its most racist soccer fans

Originally posted here:
Banning anthem protests means US Soccer is siding against Black Lives Matter - Washington Post

Sacramento Bee

A dozen arrests during Black Lives Matter protest in Stockton | The ... Sacramento Bee Following a Stockton City Council meeting Tuesday night, police say they arrested three men who were part of a Black Lives Matter protest for an alleged assault ... 12 arrested during protests near Stockton City hall - KCRA.comKCRA Sacramento Police: 12 people arrested during protest at Stockton City Council ...ABC10.com all 9 news articles »

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A dozen arrests during Black Lives Matter protest in Stockton | The ... - Sacramento Bee

Last Monday, students at the University of Connecticut Storrs Campus were met with a disturbing sight: Frat Lives Matter painted in (appropriately) white paint against a blue backdrop on the school spirit rock. It was soon repainted to read We are #UConn; but nothing could erase the feeling of disgust, disrespect and erasure that black bodies on our campus once again had to undergo at the hands of our more privileged peers. What may be the worst part of this latest slight, however, is that it is not surprising. This is not the first time the rock has been a site of racial tensions.

In fall of 2014, brothers of Pi Kappa Alpha verbally harassed women of Alpha Kappa Alpha at the spirit rock, using racist and sexist language as well as intimidation tactics in an attempt to stop the women from painting over their design. These women stood with strength no one should have to possess as they were called everything but their names, endured the torture of a trial by public opinion and had high-level administrators tell them that their experience was not racist or sexist enough to take action on. Still, no one saw them. When PIKE was later suspended from campus, it was because of hazing, as everyone knows that disrespecting black women is par for the course at UConn. To this day, the university failed to address the use of slurs against the women of AKA, including a faculty member.

This inaction only added to invisibility of black bodies at the university. In spring of 2015, the Resident Assistants for Social Justice Education used the spirit rock to bring light to this invisibility, painting the messages Black Lives Matter and Racism: In Storrs Now. The next day, students woke up to a rock defaced with gold paint covering the words Black and racism. Erasure in its most literal form. I walked around that day wondering if someone would like to erase me with a dash of gold paint.

Here we are again. On the same campus where megaphones are denied at vigils for Michael Brown and women murdered by police officers, a social justice framework used to uplift, affirm and highlight the painful experiences of Black America is being hijacked to bring attention to their lives. They cant seem to stop taking our voices. As if the lives of white frat boys have ever not mattered. As if those boys had to fear for their lives when they were arrested. As if a frat is as much part of someone's identity as the color of their skin. Like youve watched your kinfolk being gunned down like a rabid animal in the street on loop. Like youve watched their blood seep into the Earth that your ancestors toiled for centuries.

It is that deep. It will always be that deep. On a campus, at a rock where black lives have mattered neither to fraternity men nor the people responsible for keeping them in line, it is as deep as an ocean filled with tears of all the mothers and fathers of little black girls and boys taken away before their time. It is an identity erased in gold paint for the comfort of an overgrown toddler who needs everyone to remember that he too, matters. It is an isolated incident being compared to a phenomenon of unarmed black folks being shot, choked and pinned down into hashtags.

It is more than bad taste, you see. You wont let black women into the party that we hear Drake blasting at. You dont go to the protest, but you co-opt the language. You compare six arrests to our executions. Dont you know that a wrongful arrest is the least of our worries? Dont you know we pray for a black boy to be brought in to a precinct and not a coroner's office? To be tried and not mourned?

It is high time for you all to stop coveting things you are not willing to bleed for. Give thanks that you need not remind the world that your life is a life and not a plague to be rid of. Give thanks for your basic human rights, your privilege and your voice. You dont have to say radical things, say nothing if you must, but if youre going to say Lives Matter, you better put Black in front of it.

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Spirit rock and the erasure of Black Lives Matter at UConn - UConn Daily Campus

By Ray Lam

Pride is a protest and it is troubling to see it used as anything other than a platform for queer rights.

Pride is the foundation most queer organizations build their entire volunteer, outreach, and fundraising programs on. Millions are spent in media, advertising, and sponsorship over Pride. When we mobilize and wield this economic power, people notice. Pride has the power to change laws and influence multinational corporations because it stands for something indisputable: inalienable human rights.

The 2013 #DumpStoli vodka boycott protesting Russias record is an unintentionally hilarious example of the unstoppable power of Pride. Stoli is a Latvian company and a long-time supporter of Pride. Latvian activists defended Stoli, as did Stuart Milk, founder and president of the Harvey Milk Foundation. The New York Times even sent reporters to Latvia to debunk the boycott. To dispel lingering doubts, Stoli poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into Prides across North America, including World Pride in Toronto, and Vancouver Pride in the years to come.

Despite this tremendous power, queer rights are a mere privilege besieged everywhere with legislated equality facing an equally formidable power: ignorance and hate. Rather than fighting for trans rights or defending existing rights eroding under shifting political tides, Pride has lost its voice and Black Lives Matter Toronto (BLMTO) found a platform.

When BLMTO staged a sit-in during the 2016 parade, they hijacked Prides across Canada. Radical social justice warriors like BLMTO may start this self-immolation, but it has been fueled by community leaders who have lost their voice in the face of the scorched earth campaigns launched by trigger-happy allies from the troll-infested corners of the internet that make character assassination childs play.

BLMTO and the spectre of controversy are holding the queer community hostage. While seven or eight of BLMTOs nine demands arguably address longstanding concerns with Toronto Pride, that thin veil is a marketing ploy acting as the candy coating for BLMTOs most bombastic demand: banning police. This has dominated the national dialogue with police in Nova Scotia pre-emptively withdrawing and us-too-activists popping up to demand the same in Prides across Canada. This on-again off-again, will-they-wont-they drama with police is the sole creation of BLMTOs disrespect for Pride, akin to queer activists staging a sit-in on Selma to demand freedom at a time when our very existence was criminalized.

Extrajudicial killings may be the it-cause today but that is dwarfed by the socially acceptable killing of queers here and abroad. Queer murders are often diminished by gay/trans panic arguments in criminal courts throughout North America. There is a death penalty for queers in 12 countries throughout the world. In some, they are publicly tortured before being thrown off rooftops and left to die in the streets. In others, newspapers identify people with confirmed gay status, publish articles like 7 signs of a Gay, and debate laws literally referred to as a Kill-The-Gays-Bill, allowing lynch mobs to do the rest.

Queers can be jailed in 72 countries. Canada was number 78 or something until 43 years ago. Two years earlier, the Fruit Machine was decommissioned as a gay test used on over 9,000 suspected queers monitored by the RCMP, just as the last person was jailed as an incurable homosexual. Today, police protect us. Images of Pride being celebrated by police may be tedious those of us numbed by the privilege of equality. However, to others struggling to stay alive, they are messages of hope, sent to places hope does not exist. It is a picture of what life can be in 43 years.

The queer rights movement in North America was a response to police raids of queer venues. Our relationship with police is a source of Pride and sign of progress. This is reflected in Change.org petitions that overwhelmingly support police. In Vancouver, 2,831 people have signed a pro-police petition in under two weeks versus 966 who have signed BLMs petition in a month. Similarly in Toronto, its 7,943 pro-police after only one month versus BLMs 2,448 signers after six. That is over 13,000 voices that could be demanding equality in unison to create real change for trans people.Instead, 10,000 are left wondering how 3,000 silenced us while basic rights are slowly stripped away.

Whether it is Stonewall, Selma, or Suffrage, those who choose to deny us human rights place us in the same category: sub-human. BLMTOs tactics create headlines, not change, at the cost of stealing our voice and power as a community when we so desperately need to rise up and demand equal rights. BLMTO needs to take responsibility for this tremendous misstep before they cement their reputation in the queer community as a poorly planned guerrilla marketing campaign gone wrong, in the most epic fashion; and Pride need to step up because this fight needs leadership, not party planners.

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Ray Lam on Black Lives Matter and Pride: No one wins when you rain on our parade - Straight.com

Commissioner Matt Johnson

A judge issued a restraining order on March 1 against a Black Lives Matter activist accused of threatening Los Angeles Police Commission President Matt Johnson.

Johnson, who is only one of two African American police commissioners is also the managing partner at Century City law firm Ziffren Brittenham, LLP.

The Los Angeles Times reports that according to testimony, on the morning of Dec. 16, the activist, Trevor Ferguson, and about 20 other Black Lives Matter protesters went to Johnsons law firm. The elevator requires a key card, but Ferguson managed to make his way to the 10th floor where he ran into Johnsons law partner, P.J. Shapiro. Johnson was not there.

Ferguson spoke about the evils of the LAPD and accused Shapiro of being complicit in the killing of innocent black children because he is Johnsons law partner.

Ferguson has denied any wrongdoing. He is part of a group that regularly attends commission meetings and often disrupt the proceedings by shouting or chanting primarily criticizing police shootings of black suspects. Ferguson and others have called Johnson a houseboy amid demands that police Chief Charlie Beck resign and the entire department be disbanded.

In a court declaration, Johnson alleged that Ferguson made a gratuitous reference to his children at a November police commission meeting and stated at another meeting that Johnson should be scared of him, The Times reported.

Despite Fergusons contention that his actions were lawful protesting, and did not cross the line between insults and threats, Los Angeles Superior

Court Judge Carol Boas Goodson granted the Citys request for a restraining order.

The order requires Ferguson to stay away from Johnson and his family, but it does not prevent him from attending Police Commission meetings.

Johnson told The Times following the March 1 hearing, There is a line, and for me, that line is when you threaten the safety of my family, he said. Like any father, Im not going to apologize for taking steps to protect the safety of my family.

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LA Police Comissioner Obtains Restraining Order Against Black Lives Matter Activist - Westside Today