Petra

With the rising sun at my back

And in my sails,

Morning rays push me through cresting waves of desert sand,

And light the way to wonder..

KSM

Mike Pence knew fully well that players would be kneeling in protest today before he ever attended the game. He seems to be trying to make a statement and blow up the issue by himself becoming the distraction he claims to be against. 

When Colin first began kneeling, and they tried to shame him back into the shadows of compliancy by saying that he was opposing the nation’s troops who fought and died for his freedom (“to make millions” as they love to say, because apparently that’s the only freedom that young black men can understand), thousands of those same troops came out in support of him. They were very vocal. That support systematically goes unreported, and the voices of those very troops (who also fought for the voices of those protesting the protests) have been silenced. 

Are there suddenly now no troops to support these protests?! There are no troops who on US soil have been treated worse than they have been treated in foreign countries? How many of them have escaped enemy fire abroad only to return to an inhospitable environment they call home, if not to be literally assailed and fired upon? 

Mohammad Ali spoke of it. 

Nina Simone spoke of it. 

James Baldwin spoke of it. 

And in the subsequent decades the narrative continues to be that it’s all a big black lie. 

Mike Pence should be ashamed of himself. , because not once today has he addressed the root cause, the issue being protested, only the protest itself.. 
#dontchangethesubject

Society defines people in terms of money when they intend to vilify them. “Athletes” and “Rappers” lose their individual indemnities and have the label that groups them hurled at as epithets, often preceded by the word “these”. They lose their identities when the suddenly impatient masses stop being entertained. Their blackness once aspired to during windows of superhuman acrobatics, and superhuman cool, become conveniently discarded like so many toothless dogs. When each thinking black man starts thinking, especially if it is before he goes limp, he becomes a threat. He may not even be thinking about much, only what is fair. He may not be saying much or even anything, he may simply take a knee and quietly pray beyond the hearing of man, perhaps for times beyond these. 
To label a thinking man as unthinking, as a threat even in his docility, undignified in his civility, to label black men as “athletes”, as thoroughbreds, work horses.. to label them this way harkens back to the days of treating men as chattel. When any name was as good as another (except, of course, for the too common names that no mother would ever call her child), back to the days when any black hand was as good as another, to pick cotton, catch chickens, or catch passes. 

When Donald Trump speaks about the “privilege of earning millions of dollars” (just like many other elements of society today, and most historically) is he not referring to the sycophantic gratitude that the enslaved felt for an extra piece of bread? For an extra piece of meat? 

When these people speak about the “privilege of earning millions of dollars” are they ever referring to the owners, the ones who own the whole pies and the whole hogs? Are owners not also privileged to be able to PAY their EMPLOYEES millions of dollars as part of a scaled up business model? Are they not privileged to live even more privileged lives than the millionaires they employee? Instead, what is said of owners is that they should beat their boys back in line or toss them aside for bigger, stronger, more compliant hands that are just as good for throwing the ball. They should fire them; today, using “fire” only figuratively. 

Now that owner money is at stake, when the lives of some others are always at stake, it has been said that the owners should remind “these athletes” of how fleeting the privilege can be for those who don’t stand erect at all times as they have been commanded to, even under threat. Even under fire. 

But who owns what?