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Elijah Johnson, now 21, speaks at a youth summit at Milwaukee's City Hall in 2017. The summit was part of his ethnic studies class, which included programming on Black Lives Matter, a course he called the most powerful of his educational care.(Photo: Submitted photo)

In her Tuesday Zoom class, Milwaukee teacher Angela Harris set aside the lesson she'd planned to help her first graders process the protests and unrest that had erupted in their neighborhoods and across their city in recent days.

They had so many questions. They asked about George Floyd, the black man whose killing by a Minnesota police officer sparked the protests a familiar story for children who already know the names of Trayvon Martin and Tamir Rice. They asked ifshe could hear the shouting,the sirens and the helicopters,the bangs that sounded like gunfire.

Harris answered them all. But first, she shareda video she'd taken of them reciting their scholar's declaration, from the days beforea global pandemic sent them home. In it, they see themselves, all black and brown children, chanting:

I will not die young.

I matter.

I'm worth it.

My future has a purpose.

"I told them, 'I want you to remember the things we say about our lives in our morning meeting, and how that's importantto what isgoing on in our community," said Harris, who teaches at Milwaukee's Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary Schooland sits on the national steering committee for Black Lives Matter at Schools Week.

"We talk about how black lives matter in our classroom from the first day of school to the last," she said. "At the very least, I want to show them they matter in a society that makes them feel like they don't."

School districts across the country, most of them large urban districts,have worked in recent years to develop and implement Black Lives Matter programming in their schools, courses that explore the histories and present day experiences of black Americans through a social justice lens.

Milwaukee Public Schools, with almost 75,000 students, mostly low-income students of color, has struggled to create a comprehensive curriculum and scale it district-wide. But it's hoping to restart those efforts next year.

Last week, just hours before demonstrators spilled onto Milwaukee streets to protest the killing of George Floyd, school board members voted to add five new ethnic studies teachers and fund the development of a curriculum that would include programming around Black Lives Matter.

"The nation is crying out," said District 3 board member Sequanna Taylor, a former MPS teacher's aide who put forth the budget amendment to fund the additions.

"It would include the study of all types of ethnicities. ... But it has to include Black Lives Matter," she said. "It's 2020, and we're in the same place we were 50 and 60 years ago."

The Black Lives Matter atSchoolsmovement is a national coalition of educators thatgrew out of the protests following the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman in the fatal shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida the year before.

Itoffers free resources and lessons for teachers who want to incorporate tenets of the Black Lives Matter movement into their lesson plans. And it promotes a number of demands, including the hiring of more black teachers, mandating black history and ethnic studies courses, ending zero-tolerance disciplinary policies and investment in school counselors rather than policing.

"It's about centering the black experience in the classroom, and acknowledging the struggles and contributions black people made to this country and the world," said Jesse Hagopian, a Seattle high school teacher and co-author of "Teaching for Black Lives,"published by Milwaukee-based Rethinking Schools in 2018.

"For too long, the corporate mainstream curriculum has reduced the black experience to slavery," he said.

Philadelphia high school teacher Nick Bernardini, who sits on the social justice committee that launched the first Black Lives Matter week in education, called it "bottom-up history."

"We focus on the actors in the historical context that don'tget agency in the traditional text," he said. "The goal is to really connect the past to the present ... to show how the struggles of the past are connected to the struggles of today, and that the Civil Rights Movement never ends.

"And it has to include teaching on anti-racism. In order to combat racism, you have to be anti-racist. It's not enough to just be neutral."

MPS adopted a Black Lives Matter resolution in 2015thatincluded the creation of a curriculum, though it never really got off the ground.

Many MPS teachers have embraced Black Lives Matter and incorporate its tenets into their lessons. And the district has offered professional development in culturally responsive teaching practices. But there's no comprehensive district-wide programming.

MPS has struggled to hire and keep ethnic studies teachers, and seven of the eight current positions have gone unfilled. Its lone ethnic studiesteacher LucasWierer at Obama School of Career and Technical Education includes a unit on Black Lives Matter in his class, which draws a diverse group of students via teleconference from Obama and Washington high schools and Milwaukee School of Languages.

A few weeks into the class last year, Wierertook his students to the Sherman Phoenix, a popular gathering place that rose, literally, from the ashes of the unrest that erupted in Sherman Park Neighborhood in the summer of 2016.

It was really just an ice-breaker, to give the kids a chance to meet and hang out.

But they would talk in the weeks before and after about the genesis of the Phoenix and the context in which it emerged.

They talked about Sylville Smith, the black man whose fatal shooting by a Milwaukee police officer sparked the unrest that many, including Wierer, call the "uprising." They talked about racism, disinvestment and police brutality;thepower of political action and civil disobedience; the difficult community conversations that followed and how the Phoenix grew out of those.

"It's really about tackling the some of the most serious issues that exist in society today," said Wierer.

Elijah Johnson, a 2017 MPS graduate who took a similar class when it was offered at the James Madison Academic Campus, called it "the most phenomenal experience" of his academic career. It culminated with his sharing what he learned at a student summit at Milwaukee's city hall.

"That class helped me to evolve," said Johnson, 21, who now works at Silver Spring Neighborhood House and took part in peaceful protests this week in Milwaukee, Green Bay and Appleton.

"I became more of a people person, more of a leader, more mature.And I definitely feel like I'm making a difference," he said.

The 12 ethnic studies positions in next year's budget if the district can find and hire the teachers to fill them would allow MPS to expand the courses to every high school and one middle school. The idea is for them to develop a curriculum, parts of which could then be shared with teachers across the district.

And that can be difficult, too, said Wierer, in a district like Milwaukee where the majority of teachers, including him, are white.

White teachers, he said, may be interested and comfortable with the content but struggle to connect with the students. Others may struggle with content around white privilege and bias and find it difficult to accept that their longstanding methods of teaching may not be pedagogically sound.

But getting the curriculum into the younger grades is crucial, said Wierer and Harris.

"Most racial ideas are formed between the ages of 2 and 12," said Wierer. "By the time I get them in ethnic studies, they're pretty much firmly in place."

Contact Annysa Johnson at anjohnson@jrn.com or 414-224-2061. Follow her on Twitter at @JSEdbeat. And join the Journal Sentinel conversation about education issues at http://www.facebook.com/groups/WisconsinEducation.

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As unrest grips the nation, MPS hopes to bolster its ethnic studies and Black Lives Matter programming - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Will the outcomes prove similar as well?

News Analysis

As the preliminary hearing gets underway in Georgia for Travis McMichael, Greg McMichael and William Bryan in the death of Ahmaud Arbery, it has not gone unnoticed that the fatal shooting of Arbery, an unarmed Black jogger in February by two White men, bears a striking resemblance to another slaying eight years agothat of Trayvon Martin.

Both the 17-year-old Martin and the 25-year-old Arbery were accosted by self-appointed White vigilantes who shot them at point-blank range after a scuffle. In both cases, prosecutors initially declined to prosecute and charges were filed only after weeks of sustained pressure from the Black communities in both Deep South states.

In the Arbery case, charges were brought against the McMichaels only following protests and the release of a gruesome cellphone video that depicts a clearly unarmed Arbery merely jogging down a neighborhood street in the city of Brunswick in the southeastern part of the state.

No attorney wouldve called the States case against George Zimmerman for murdering an unarmed teenager airtight. But prosecutors were so ineffective in the 2013 trial that it left more than a few trial lawyers and legal scholars wondering aloud whether the prosecution didnt intentionally lose the case.

In a 2016 law review article, Boston College law professor Mark Brodin wrote that prosecutors in Florida bungled the Trayvon Martin case by committing the most inexplicable strategic and evidentiary blunders of a type that experienced prosecutors would very likely not commit in a more earnest effort to convict.

Of the prosecutions many missteps, Brodin wrote that the most damning mightve been the failure to to convey to the trial jury this simple narrative of racial profiling and stalking by a vigilante not acting under color of law.

Calling the trial an homage to racial vigilantism, Mark K. Spencer, a former deputy states attorney in the Washington D.C. suburbs, concurred with Brodins assessment of the prosecutions failure. The Trayvon Martin case represented one of the gravest miscarriages of justice Ive ever seen, he said.

The default position of the criminal justice system, according to Brodin and many other attorneys, is to reflexively protect the killers of Black males, particularly if they are law enforcement officers or their surrogates. This raises a profound question as the state of Georgia prepares to try the McMichaels: Are prosecutors in it to win?

In an email to the Spokesman-Recorder, Brodin wrote: This playing to lose strategy is a theme that runs through many prosecutions of White police or vigilantes who have killed Black men. As you know, there are structural and institutional barriers that interfere when police officers commit crimes, as they are viewed as part of the law enforcement team by prosecutors.

And then systemic racism (tainting judge and jurors) often raises its ugly face at the trial when its a White cop and Black victim. Thankfully we have a few progressive prosecutors (Philadelphia, Boston, Brooklyn) who are starting to fight the influence of race and class in our criminal justice system, but they are clearly the exceptions.

The result has been a greenlighting of gross police misconduct across the nation.

Zimmerman was, of course, only a police wannabe although he was friendly with patrol officers in the community. The elder McMichael, on the other hand, was a retired officer who had worked as an investigator with the local prosecutors office.

The Thin Blue Line

The video of the assault on Arbery is damning but it is not, in and of itself, enough to win a conviction, explained Spencer, who presently serves as inspector general for the Prince Georges County Sheriffs Department. The often cozy relationship between prosecutors and police tilts the playing field in favor of law enforcement, he said.

During his early days as a prosecutor nearly 30 years ago, he saidit was not uncommon for the prosecutors to encourage defendants to sign a waiver absolving police officers of any liability for the use of excessive force or other misconduct.

The challenges with accountability for potential acts of police misconduct were, are, and will always be problematic because of the structure of our justice system, Spencer said. In my experience most prosecutors avoid being assigned police accountability cases becausethere has been little reward in pursuing them. The cases are always difficult to assess and present because each of the working parts involves many sometimes interlocking relationships.

He continued, Imagine prosecuting a case where the police are the principle or only source of evidence. The police were the first responders to a crime scene or complaint. The police control the crime scene and the quality and quantity of evidence that is collected.

And the police are potentially the principal witnesses or sole witnesses to an event that may have included police misconduct. Trying to pierce the Thin Blue Line is mostly a daunting task.

The Martin case is by no means unique. When the Bronx district attorney in 2000 failed to procure a conviction against four New York City police officers for the fusillade of gunfire that killed an unarmed African immigrant, Amadou Diallo, some immediately questioned whether the State intentionally undermined its case to shore up support for the Citys aggressive police tactics.

One African American juror, Lavette Freeman, told reporters at the time that she understood the protests that followed the verdict, but jurors felt they had no choice but to acquit. I have to take it back to the district attorneys office. They didnt give me anything. Nothing.

Another complication in the case against the McMichaels will undoubtedly be the states Stand Your Ground statute, which was cited by the original prosecutor in the case, George Barnhill, in declining to pursue charges.

Stand Your Ground effectively overturns a legal principle dating back to 17th century British common law requiring that a claimant demonstrate a defensive posture before using lethal force. The Castle Doctrine, however a mans home is his castle provides an exemption in the case of an intruder or burglar.

Stand Your Ground laws expand the legal justification for lethal self-defense and give prosecutors broad discretion to apply the law. While Zimmermans lawyers did not rely on Floridas Stand Your Ground law in their defense, jurors in Martins murder trial were instructed to consider the law in their deliberations. Trayvon Martin was betrayed by the entire American legal community, decried Spencer.

Jon Jeter welcomes reader responses to jjeter@spokesman-recorder.com.

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Killings of Arbery and Martin tragically similar - MSR News Online

IOWA CITY Hundreds of protesters gathered in downtown Iowa City Saturday in solidarity for a black man who died after a Minneapolis police officer pinned his knee on the mans neck, resulting in his death.

Rally organizers as well as a number of black elected officials from Johnson County and Iowa City raised their voices condemning police brutality and calling on their white peers to do more in support of people of color.

Eighteen-year-old Lujayn Hamad and her sister, 20-year-old Raneem Hamad, organized Saturdays rally. Both sisters grew up in Iowa City but now attend college at New York University in New York City.

Even with the risk of exposure to the novel coronavirus, organizers estimated at least 750 protesters filled the Pentacrest lawn and on Clinton Street and Iowa Avenue, which were blocked off by city officials in anticipation of large crowds.

Throughout the event, the crowds chants of black lives matter and hands up, dont shoot echoed throughout downtown.

On Monday, George Floyd died in police custody after officer Derek Chauvin pinned his knee to Floyds neck for at least eight minutes, despite the mans pleas of I cant breathe. Chauvin was arrested this week and charged with third-degree murder and manslaughter.

Despite the arrest, the violent unrest in Minneapolis continued for a fourth night Friday and into Saturday as rioters continued to loot and vandalize businesses and set fires throughout the city.

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Throughout the speeches at the Iowa City rally, a common thread was the belief that sometimes violence is needed to inspire change.

Im not encouraging the violence, but Im not necessarily discouraging it, either, Lujayn Hamad told The Gazette.

She recounted hearing about the death of Trayvon Martin while a student in Iowa City. Despite his death happening more than a decade ago, nothing has changed, Lujayn Hamad said.

Martin, a black, 17-year-old high school student, was fatally shot by George Zimmerman, who is white, in Sanford, Fla., in 2012. Zimmerman later was acquitted of all charges.

You cannot place blame on the protesters, she said. You cannot blame others for the way they grieve because its been years of silence and years of peace.

Johnson County Supervisor Royceann Porter, the first black county elected official, said the rioters in Minneapolis got to that point because theyre tired.

People are not being heard, she told reporters after the rally. It should not have to move to lead to looting and rioting and go on and on, but if thats the way that the people are going to hear us, thats the only way that people know to do it. Thats why they do it, so that we can get the message across.

She added, We had a murderer at home free, and he needed to be arrested. And if thats what they had to do to get the attention of the people, so then thats what they did.

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On Friday, a peaceful protest in Des Moines attended by hundreds escalated into a violent melee, with the crowd throwing items and jumping on patrol cars. Officers in riot gear responded, using pepper spray on the crowd and arresting more than a dozen protesters, according to reports.

Gov. Kim Reynolds released a statement Saturday afternoon condemning the protest, saying it is never right to react with violence.

The violence that happened last night in Des Moines undermines the message of change and hope that so many seek, Reynolds wrote. A thousand people gathered to exercise their right to protest and to speak their mind. It was a powerful message. But the lawless actions of a few drowned out that message.

But many who attended Saturdays rally in Iowa City seemed to disagree. The first speaker at Iowa Citys rally, who stated individuals should not answer violence with violence during his speech, was met with a chorus of boos and chants from the crowd.

At the same time, Porter said the rally was not calling for similar events to take place in Iowa City.

We dont want it to be violent, were not trying to be violent, she said. We can get our message our without being violent, so thats what (this rally) was all about.

Instead, Porter said she and others are having conversations with other Iowa City leaders to address issues facing people of color in the community, including about affordable housing and meeting the needs of students in local schools.

Lujayn and Raneem Hamad, along with 13 other individuals, left immediately after the rally for Minneapolis, where they plan to join the protests there.

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A GoFundMe page created by the pair for water bottles, masks, gloves and other items they plan to take to protesters reached more than $3,000 by Saturday afternoon. Lujayn Hamad said they plan to donate excess funds to George Floyds family and to the Minnesota Freedom Fund.

Other rallies were scheduled over the weekend for Cedar Rapids and Waterloo. Another rally is planned for 4 to 7 p.m., June 6 at 450 Fifth Ave. SE, Cedar Rapids.

Comments: (319) 398-8469; michaela.ramm@thegazette.com

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Iowa City rally in response to George Floyd death draws hundreds to downtown Iowa City - The Gazette

In the wake of George Floyds murder by Minneapolis police officers, a call to defund police departments has gained traction across the U.S. More people than ever are embracing the idea that the time for police reform has passed.

As an anti-police brutality organizer, Kandace Montgomery has observed the Minneapolis Police Department undergo years of reform efforts. After 24-year-old Jamar Clark was killed by police in 2015, she helped organize a Black Lives Matter chapter in the city. By 2018, it was clear to her and other organizers in the city that only a plan to take money away from police and give it to other community-led safety initiatives would protect black and brown people. The organization she directs, Black Visions Collective, campaigned alongside its counterpart Reclaim the Block to defund the Minneapolis police, yet the mayor still raised the police budget more than $8 million this year.

In the immediate aftermath of Floyds murder, the organizers brought their demands backto city council members that members never increase the police budget again, that they cut the polices budget by $45 million to help manage Covid-19 shortfalls, expand investment in community-led health and safety strategies, and compel the police to cease violence against community members.

The Intercept spoke to Montgomery about the movement to defund police in Minneapolis.This interview has been edited for clarity.

Paint for me a world without police. Where would all that money go instead?

A world without police would look like safety that is controlled and is led by our community, that focuses on transformation and transformative justice. A world without police means that everybody has what they need to survive and what they need to live healthy lives. It means we have the money that we need for education, health care, housing, workers rights. It is a total transformation away from a racist and violent system into one that truly fosters our safety and well-being. When we are talking about police reform, what were not talking about is the fact that black communities actually need resources to keep ourselves safe. We make the choice to resource punitive systems instead of stabilizing and nourishing ones that make communities safer.

How did you get involved in this movement?

My experience as a young black queer person just called me to it. Honestly, I think I didnt really have any other option. Especially the experience of my family, of most of the men and the women experiencing incarceration and police violence directly, called me to want to fight up against that. And over the last few years, after the murder of Trayvon Martin and theacquittal of George Zimmerman, and then the murder of Mike Brown and the nonindictment of Darren Wilson, I have specifically committed my time and my energy and my future to fighting for black liberation for all black lives.

In 2015, I think that we were very righteously angry, and we were clear about the problem. Now, we are clear about the solution.

What did the anti-police brutality movement in the city look like at the time Jamar Clark was killed by police in Minneapolis in 2015? Whats different now?

In 2015, I think that we were very righteously angry, and we were clear about the problem. Now, we are clear about the solution. I think thats the distinction. Now in 2020, we know that justice is not just arresting the officers. Justice goes so much further, because we are interested in not having to be out in the streets anymore, grieving and angry, protesting that another life has been lost. We know that we cannot continue to invest in strategies that call for police reform. The only path forward is transitioning completely away from the Minneapolis Police Department and policing across the country and across the globe really.

What are the biggest wins and the biggest failures youve seen since 2015 that laid the groundwork for this moment?

When George Floyd was killed, the Minneapolis Police Department had plenty of reforms in place. Theyre ineffective and insufficient. It is putting a police officer in a T-shirt instead of a uniform. Its still the same thing.

Reclaim the Block began in 2018. Organizing has always been the thing behind transformative change. MLK didnt march alone. He actually was part of an entire organization that was in it for the long term. Having an organization allows us to collectively raise the resources necessary to fight for our rights and move a long-term agenda, because this work isnt free.

In 2018, we engaged our community and articulated a story about whats possible if we divest from the Minneapolis Police Department and invest in community-led safety. That work resulted in $1.1 million moving away from the police department and into opening the Office of Violence Prevention, which does street-level violence intervention that prioritizes not involving police. The money also was rerouted to supporting other organizations that were doing community-level intervention and safety work.

But the year after that, we saw a really huge pushback. What we didnt fully anticipate was the mayor and the police department working together to create a smear campaign and create a false narrative that crime in our city was increasing. We saw about six months of article after article about this.

The mayor ended up increasing the 2020 police budget byover $8 million. So, what we know is that when you push really hard for transformative change, we will get even harder pushback. And so we have to be really strategic and smart. This moment we have been building for it.

How has Black Visions Collective responded to George Floyds murder? How did your organizing contribute to the actions in the streets?

People took to the streets organically. That was not us. Without any organization, without any nudging, people decided that it was necessary to protest, and it was necessary to ignite an uprising across the country and the globe. As an organization, what we did immediately was called for the defunding of the police. Because we had been calling for that beforehand, we were able to quickly pivot and make it really clear to our city council members that our community was no longer going to be OK with settling with maybe an arrest that doesnt actually result in a conviction that we want a total transformation, and we had been waiting too long. The national attention creates an opportunity. Georges spirit as an ancestor has allowed us to have a much larger conversation across the country about what justice actually looks like in these situations.

Most importantly, we are grieving the loss of a black community member. Were doing that again. Many of us helped found Black Lives Matter and Black Visions Collective for Jamar. Its incredibly unfair, especially for young black people, that we have to be out here in these streets, putting our lives at risk during the pandemic to fight for justice.

Its incredibly unfair, especially for young black people, that we have to be out here in these streets, putting our lives at risk during the pandemic to fight for justice.

Some of our organizers have been out there nightly, just helping to hold down the space at the different occupations in the city, grilling food, doing things like that. Weve been offering community trainings around direct action and how to stay safe while protesting. We planned a direct action ourselves in which we left art in memory of George Floyd at each of the city council members homes, calling on them to defund the police.

Much of our work has been organizing with other black Minnesotans. We have a call every single day with about 70 different black organizers who are trying to coordinate how to get supplies to our folks, how to get donations to our folks, how to train people to be medics, so that we can provide medical support on the ground at protests, who are thinking about art and how we can tap into artists to create expressions of what we are talking about that are accessible to our community members, as well as organizing healers to provide healing for organizers on the front line and community members who are involved.

How do you think about the property destruction that took place in the city?

I honor and respect the ways in which my community has decided to grieve, even if its not how I personally choose to grieve. I want to make sure that all of the small businesses of color are able to redevelop and rebuild and continue to provide necessary services to our community. And Im calling on our elected officials to ensure that developers do not come in and take away all of those businesses from black and brown people.

What do you think about the reactions of public officials in the city? How have they responded to your demands, and what has gone unanswered?

Im deeply disappointed in Mayor Jacob Frey. He has not reached out to our group, has not reached out to several groups, actually, to talk about what is the solution forward. It is time for him to get out. He is not the visionary leader that Minneapolis needs and deserves.

For our city council members, they have been much more responsive, and many of them have actually committed to us to really disband the Minneapolis Police Department and transition over the next few years away from having policing in Minneapolis. Theres still work to do with some city council members who just arent able to truly imagine what the future could look like.

Minneapolis Public Schools ending its contract with the police is a watershed moment. I know many of the young people who have been calling for school resource officers out of their schools for the last five years or more. Folks who are able to take bold steps are doing it quickly, because they know we dont have time to wait.

Whats next?

This is going to be a transition and not a transition thats going to take 20, 30 years. It needs to happen within five or less. But we do have to be patient with ourselves that we dont know all of the answers. Right now, we are stepping up and figuring them out as we provide the support to our community.

The mutual aid groups that have been created over the past week are super critical. Theyre literally feeding people who would not be able to eat, would not have diapers for their babies. Theyre essential, and theyre allowing community members to sustain their needs. They are building in real time models of community safety.

Thinking about a transition plan away from the Minneapolis Police Department is going to be critical. Whats next is continuing to engage our city council, but I think even more so engaging our community to continue to bring this demand to their doorstep. We cant allow this energy to die down. Minneapolis is going to be watched all across the country.

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Minneapolis Organizer Kandace Montgomery on Defunding Police - The Intercept

Basketball has never felt less essential. Worldwide protests against racial injustice and police brutality have pushed a global pandemic below the fold, and yet the NBA is moving toward resuming its 2019-20 season.

There was a time we hoped the league could provide a welcome distraction for Americans quarantined and isolated because of the coronavirus. That time has passed. We should no longer welcome any distraction from the movement currently spreading across the country. All eyes should be focused on a broken system.

Everything going on right now, basketball is not important, Los Angeles Clippers guard Patrick Beverley tweeted on Wednesday, surely echoing the thoughts of many of his colleagues who have joined protests and spoken out in the wake of George Floyds homicide in custody of the Minneapolis Police Department.

I had my reservations about the NBA returning in the midst of a pandemic, so sports seem even sillier now, but basketball is coming back, and I am trying to reconcile with that, because I write about basketball. Here is where I have landed: The league has a chance to dominate this conversation in the next five months, and seizing that opportunity could carry the current movement forward in a way that creates a lasting impact.

Former NBA player Stephen Jackson (right), a friend of George Floyd's, poses for a photograph at a memorial for Floyd on Wednesday. (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

When the NBA returns at the Walt Disney World Resort next month, players and coaches will have a massive audience as the faces of the most popular North American sport resuming games this summer. Among the four major North American sports leagues, the NBA has the highest percentage of African-Americans at every level of its organizations from players to coaching staffs to executives to the league office by a wide margin.

Three quarters of NBA players are black, according to the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, and many have been among the most vocal social justice advocates. Malcolm Brogdon of the Indiana Pacers joined a peaceful protest in Atlanta partially organized by Jaylen Brown of the Boston Celtics on Saturday, and the two rising stars made public pleas to a crowd of thousands in their hometown, a few hundred miles from where a black man, Ahmaud Arbery, was gunned down while jogging last month.

This is a moment, Brogdon told protesters. We have leverage right now. We have a moment in time. People are going to look back, our kids are going to look back at this and say, You were part of that. Ive got a grandfather that marched next to Dr. King in the sixties, and he was amazing. He would be proud to see us all here. We got to keep pushing forward. Jaylen has led this charge, man, and Im proud of him. We need more leaders.

Former NBA player turned popular broadcaster Stephen Jackson was a close friend of Floyds. He was seen in recent days holding Floyds young daughter on his shoulders as she told onlookers, Daddy changed the world. Flanked by All-Star center Karl-Anthony Towns and other Minnesota Timberwolves, Jackson spoke passionately from a justice rally in Minneapolis Government Center Plaza last week.

When was murder ever worth it? he said, referencing Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer since charged with Floyds murder. But if its a black man, its approved. You cant tell me when that man had his knee on my brothers neck, taking his life away with his hand in his pocket, that that smirk on his face didnt say, Im protecting.

NBA players have been increasingly vocal about racial injustice in the years since LeBron James tweeted a photo of his Miami Heat donning hooded sweatshirts in honor of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old high school student who was shot and killed by Orlando-area neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman in 2012. James was also among dozens of players to sport I Cant Breathe T-shirts in protest of a grand jury opting not to indict New York City police officer Daniel Pantaleo for the choking death of Eric Garner in 2014.

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LeBron James was among the NBA players who wore "I Can't Breathe" T-shirts in protest of police brutality in 2014. (Rich Kane/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

James has criticized Donald Trump for furthering the racial divide on a number of occasions, notably after the president referred to Colin Kaepernick and other NFL players protesting police brutality as sons of bitches and also after he defended very fine people on both sides of a 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a neo-Nazi drove into a crowd of anti-racism protesters, killing Heather Heyer.

Over the past week, James has pledged support for protests to tens of millions of social media followers.

I wont stop until I see change, James wrote on Thursday.

The audience for James and other NBA players will only increase when they convene to resume the 2019-20 season in Orlando next month, when the league will take center stage on national television. The most predominantly black sports league in America, a league that empowers its players to voice their opinions, will have one of the most powerful voices in the world in the months leading up to the presidential election.

Racism and social justice are not inherently political issues, but they become more so when the president of the United States responds to protests not with a consistent unifying message but by calling Minneapolis protesters thugs in a Twitter rant that also suggested, when the looting starts, the shooting starts, when he called on the nations governors to dominate protesters or risk looking like a bunch of jerks, and when he promoted the use of tear gas on peaceful protesters to clear his path for a photo opportunity.

In one breath Trump once suggested Kaepernick and other NFL players peacefully protesting racial injustice during the national anthem should be deported, and in another he said this week, I am ... an ally of all peaceful protesters. It is clear why Stephen Curry, Steve Kerr and members of the Golden State Warriors repeatedly clashed with Trump over his divisive remarks and why Trump rescinded an offer to visit the White House that was never extended to the champions of the blackest sports league in America.

The NBA also features a number of white men who have pledged their support for social justice and anti-racism efforts and put their face to white privilege. Kyle Korver, a senior member of the Eastern Conference-leading Milwaukee Bucks, penned an essay on the subject for The Players Tribune. Kerr and former Detroit Pistons coach Stan Van Gundy joined the Players Coalition in endorsing a letter to Attorney General William Barr last month that called for the arrest of the men who killed Arbery.

Steve Kerr and Gregg Popovich, coaches together on the U.S. men's national team, have been vocal critics of President Donald Trump. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

I've never met a single black parent that doesn't have to sit their kids down and talk to them very directly about how you deal with the police if you're stopped, Van Gundy told Yahoo Sports in late May. You do this, this and this, so you come home alive. I started getting more of that in my career. I'm like holy [expletive]. I've never once talked to my kids about that or felt the need to. If my kid got pulled over, it was because they deserved to get pulled over. Even if they mouthed off, nobody was gonna shoot them.

Kerr hosted San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich this week on his Flying Coach podcast with Seattle Seahawks coach Pete Carroll for a conversation about how they, as privileged white men, can engage players of all backgrounds in meaningful conversations and assist the effort to bring about systemic change. Popovich has long been one of the NBAs most vocal critics of Trumps leadership.

The thing that strikes me is that we all see this police violence and racism and weve seen it all before but nothing changes, Popovich told The Nations Dave Zirin in a conversation prompted by the oft-private coach. Thats why these protests have been so explosive. But without leadership and an understanding of what the problem is, there will never be change. And white Americans have avoided reckoning with this problem forever because its been our privilege to be able to avoid it. That also has to change.

Popovich went so far as to call the president a deranged idiot. Kerr has called Trump a blowhard. Curry called him an asset, if you remove the et. James called him a bum. The NBAs voice on this is glaring.

Players and coaches have two months before the season resumes to craft a more effective message to the American public, one that elevates the national conversation from name-calling and attempts by detractors to conflate peaceful protests with looting and the excessive use of force by police with assaults against police officers. There is an opportunity to further a sports activism cause once carried by their predecessors at the 1967 Cleveland Summit, including Bill Russell, who also had a front-row seat as a guest of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at the March on Washington and for whom the NBAs Finals MVP trophy is named.

The National Basketball Coaches Association recently condemned police brutality, racial profiling and the weaponization of racism as shameful, inhumane and intolerable, forming a committee to combat social injustices with tangible reform in NBA cities. That is a start. There is a long way to go, but coaches and players can undoubtedly serve as leaders in carrying the momentum of this movement into the most consequential election of many of their lifetimes.

The best reason to welcome the NBAs return in the face of a pandemic is what might unfold off the court in Orlando during the months before another champion refuses to accept a White House invitation. In that way, basketball might just be essential again.

Ben Rohrbach is a staff writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at rohrbach_ben@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @brohrbach

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The NBA's return brings with it a leadership opportunity in the social justice movement - Yahoo Sports