By Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired
Member DSA
I don’t follow the National Football League gossip or the game too much anymore although I will always be a raider fan as it was the team that introduced me to the game back in 1977. And what a team: Stabler, Branch, Casper, Hendricks, Ray Guy, Lester Hayes etc. The problem was I went to the game on Sunday and came home Tuesday.
I don’t follow the National Football League gossip or the game too much anymore although I will always be a raider fan as it was the team that introduced me to the game back in 1977. And what a team: Stabler, Branch, Casper, Hendricks, Ray Guy, Lester Hayes etc. The problem was I went to the game on Sunday and came home Tuesday.
So I don’t really know much about Ray Lewis or Von Miller. I
have heard the names, especially Lewis who was involved in a murder trial and
eventually had the murder charge dropped to a misdemeanor after agreeing to
testify against his companions that night.
I just now watched Von Miller interviewed on NFL.com. The
interviewer was asking him about Kaepernick and whether he should be playing in
the NFL or not. Miller was strongly supportive that he should be playing in the
NFL, there’s not 64 quarterbacks in the game that are better than Kaepernick he
said. But beyond that he was very weak.
He refused to say that Kaepernick is being denied a job
because of his very mild protest against racism and police brutality by
kneeling or sitting during the US National Anthem that they play at football
games, part of the militaristic and nationalistic sports culture in the US.
Miller was nervous and afraid he would say the wrong thing and be punished for
it himself. Kaepernick’s kneeling had
nothing to do with disrespecting the young workers in the military or veterans contrary
to the propaganda.
A short while back Aaron Rodgers of the Green Bay Packers
spoke strongly in support of Kaeperncik, "I think he should be on
a roster right now," Rodgers said. "I think because of his protests,
he's not."
He told ESPN’s Mina Kimes it would be “ignorant” to suggest otherwise. He
defended the right of players or people not to stand, "I'm
gonna stand because that's the way I feel about the flag — but I'm also 100%
supportive of my teammates or any fellow players who are choosing not to,"
he said. "They have a battle for racial equality. That's what they're
trying to get a conversation started around."
I
was a overly critical of Rodgers when I first heard about it but to be fair,
this is a much stronger stand than most and some people do feel the need to
stand for a flag or anthem for decent reasons, a genuine respect for the
working class people, friends or family members that have fought and died
defending what they believe is right and a just cause. The ruling class plays
on that feeling.
Then
I read today Ray Lewis’ pathetic contribution to this on Showtime’s Inside the NFL. Lewis, who spent his entire career
playing for the Baltimore Ravens claims that he’s been fighting fiercely for
Kaepernick, who he refers to as “this
kid” “…..behind the table like nobody has…..” .
That means, privately so we have no
knowledge if it’s true or not. It’s like saying, “I have your back, trust me.”
Lewis
portrays himself as Kaepernicks’s chief defender, and has been discussing all
this with Stephen Bisciotti, the Ravens owner. Meanwhile he openly ingratiates
himself with the billionaire owners who are blackballing Kaerprnick because it
might eat in to profits. A politically conscious sports fan is not a good
thing. We are always told in the US what should not be talked about and what
should not mix, religion, politics, sports. “I’ve
never been against Colin Kaepernick. But I am against the way he’s done
it,” says Lewis. He
doesn’t say what Kaepernick or others should do to protest racism and police
brutality other than score points on the field. We have terms for this in the
workplace, Kiss ass, brown noser, bootlicker and for those of us that like
words, sycophants.
After
getting the murder charges against him dropped by snitching on his partners
back in 2000, Lewis was asked by the relatives of the dead three years later
what he had to say about it, "God
has never made a mistake. That’s just who He is, you see.... To the family, if
you knew, if you really knew the way God works, He don’t use people who commits
anything like that for His glory.” Religion, the cover for it all.
Lewis
is now claiming, as a cover for Bisciotti, that Bisciotti was about to hire
Kaerpernick when a tweet from Kaepernick’s girlfriend portraying Bisciotti as
the slave owner in Django and Lewis the slave as played by Samuel L Jackson
went public (See tweet on right). Pretty accurate except Bisciotti is a capitalist and Lewis a
highly paid wage worker or wage slave if you like. The violence and coercion in
the capitalist system comes in a somewhat different form from chattel slavery.
Bisciotti also owns the Allegis Group, which owns Maxim Healthcare,
Aerotek, and TEKsystems (Wikipedia) and is
worth almost $4 billion
according to Forbes. And he is the
dirtiest of them all. A month ago when he, with input from Lewis according to
the media, was considering hiring Kaepernick but fearful that doing so might
not be appreciated by Raven’s fans and cut in to his $4 billion, he appealed to the fans and god
for help, “We’re sensitive to it, we’re monitoring it,
and we’re trying to figure out what’s the right tact,” Bisciotti said, “So pray for us.”
There is one thing that is certain about people like
Bisciotti, and I feel compelled on a rare occasion to use the language of the
workplace or the street perhaps, one has to be a ruthless piece of shit to
accumulate $4 billion.
Miller was nervous because he would just as easily lose his relatively
privileged position he has thanks to football, a hard way to earn it. Lewis,
has already messed up once and is a totally owned subsidiary of Ravens Inc. Jim
Brown and Floyd Mayweather are attacking kaepernick for the same reason, to
keep what they’ve got. Rodgers may well be genuine but he too is vulnerable and
is not doing enough and
the other thing to be conscious about is it’s easier for Rodgers, he’s in a more
valuable position on a team and he’s white. The players have a union
which is even more disgusting as we’ve heard nothing from them or the heads of
organized labor s a whole.
When the Vietnamese workers that made the shoes Michael
Jordan was being paid some $20 million a year for selling on TV came to the US
to appeal for support in their struggle against the violent and inhumane
conditions they faced in the sweatshops, he dodged them. Capitalist is a system of coercion and
violence. Kaepernick has been honest and said that he is fortunate to have what
he does and is using this safety net to speak out. He is now a pariah for
that. That’s why workers can’t join
management or the labor bureaucracy (Unless forced in from below) and defend
their members. Those who pay the piper call the tune.
I
just read a piece in the Miami Herald about the statues and US history. It
wasn’t bad although the author, in response to Trumps concern about where will it
all end, (the statue removals) is Jefferson and Washington next, wrote, “How could a patriot be confused with a
traitor? How can leading a war to bring forth a new country be confused with
leading a rebellion to tear it in two?” The revolution was to unite the
country on a capitalist basis and herald the domination of the Industrial
capitalist over the slaveocracy. It was a progressive historical step but not
based on some moral ascendancy. Lincoln never freed the slaves of the North.
And of course, black folks were betrayed yet again in the Great
Compromise of 1877. Hopefully one
day we will be rid of all the monuments to ruling classes.
But the author does point to the coercion and incredible
open and state sanctioned violence that kept whites from opposing slavery. We
have to always see things in their time. How can a US institution like Guantanamo
that has imprisoned and tortured people for decades and never bring them to
trial exist before our eyes, or the US prison system, a brutal warehousing of
human beings, where rape and torture are common. Aren’t we all guilty?
Lerone Bennett in The Shaping of Black America also stressed
the pressure of the state when he wrote about US slavery, “……. laws were also passed to leave a mark on whites, who were
instructed under pain of punishment, how to act in relation to blacks. Under
these laws, whites of all classes were penalized for expressing human impulses.
It therefor became very expensive for a white person to like black people or to
love them. This was not, it should be emphasized, a matter of hints and vague
threats. The laws were quite explicit. Symptomatic of this were the laws passed
to punish whites who befriended blacks or ran away with them.”
Coercion, violence in the form of poverty, homelessness,
unemployment, prison, this is the threat that is being used by the billionaire
NFL owners. It’s why Von Miller was so scared in that interview lest he side
too much with Kaepernick. In the high-end world of football stars and
entertainers, you can survive it, but it won’t be easy. They can take it all away
as quickly as they gave it.
Kaepernick and the issues he’s raising won’t go away and
he’s been getting more and more support. I am a member of the Democratic
Socialists of America. I have raised a few times and still think that if DSA
were to contact Kaepernick and offer to organize some meetings and take up a
campaign for him and if those of us in or still connected to local unions were
to get their locals to join it and have speakers help link Kaepernick’s cause
with the wider issues for jobs, education, health care etc., this would be well
received, particularly by black folks. It would raise DSA’s profile further.
Kaepernick is already speaking of these issues and he may well respond favorably.
Billionaires
like Bisciotti have the money, but we have the numbers. With that in mind we should heed the words of
Martin Jay Levitt when he wrote in
Confessions of a Union Buster:
"The enemy was the collective
spirit. I got hold of that spirit while
it was still a seedling; I poisoned it, choked it, bludgeoned it if I had to,
anything to be sure it would never blossom into a united workforce...."
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