The world has officially gone mad. The president is calling protesters “Sons of B*tches” (Seriously, why does he have time to wage twitter and press conference wars in the middle of natural disasters and looming war?), and the NFL is reneging on their dislike for sideline protests and politicking to stand in solidarity of players. “We support the vets when it’s convenient in silencing others” twitter is up in arms. But honestly, I am not too sure what they are so up in arms about. Disrespecting veterans? The US Government does this everyday and none of the key board warriors type vigorously away about it. The flag? It is a piece of cloth. Not a single solider died for a mass produced cloth you buy printed on your napkins in July. The anthem? Written by a slave holder in 1812, and not the anthem until 1931 in a move started by neo-confederates.

But anyway, if you are mad for some reason: I want to remind you that freedom of speech exists. And a president is legally not supposed to interfere with private sector employment.  Moreover, I need you guys to consider Martin Luther King’s final speech before you accuse the NFL players of being disrespectful to the flag. In this speech you will find exactly what they are fighting for. Why Kaepernick took a knee in the first place. It is called “I have been to the mountain top” and can be found here (http://www.americanrhetoric.com/…/mlkivebeentothemountainto…).It’s the speech you don’t indoctrinate children with in school, because it’s not rainbows and sunshine. It’s real. It is honest. It’s the MLK you choose to ignore and sweep under the rug.  In this speech, MLK told us: “All we say to America is, ‘Be true to what you said on paper’ “. That is all we ask.  When Kaepernick first sat he said “I am not going to stand up and show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color”.  What we are saying is what is the point of “respecting a flag” that doesn’t give what it promises? Black soldiers respected the flag in WWII. You know what they got when they returned home? Told to sit in the back of the bus while the Jewish people they rescued who relocated to the United States got to be in the front. Those men went over there for us to NOT be killed in the streets and cops to get paid leave for it. So until you give us that; stop invoking them. Be true to what the flag promises if you want us to respect it. I know it is upsetting; but so is being murdered in the streets and not receiving justice. WE are asking America to live up to it’s constitution. Just as MLK did. If YOU can fight for the second amendment “right to bear arms” WE can fight for the 14th amendment that states: “ nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”. Murdering back men is taking away life without due process of law. Pointing out that we, as a country are not honoring the flag, and therefore we should not bow to it, is not “divisive”, it is patriotism and it’s peak. We ARE standing up for the constitution and the rights the flag promises; you want us to accept the negating of constitutional rights based on color of skin. But supposedly you are the patriot. The same person waving the flag of a group of people who were traitors to the United States government wants to question our patriotism. Ask yourself why you are so bent on silencing us instead of actually living up to the constitution? Why you are so focused on a piece of cloth that you refuse to let us have what the flag supposedly represents? MLK and the sit ins were “divisive” and he knew it: “I knew that as they were sitting in, they were really standing up for the best in the American dream, and taking the whole nation back to those great wells of democracy which were dug deep by the Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.” Even in 1968 King understood that by sitting, we could stand for a greater good.

Now, there ARE people who will say none of what I said matters: politics just don’t belong in sports (Stupid because the US Government itself paid the NFL to do the whole anthem thing anyway as means of military propaganda). I was told on social media today that football players should play and not think. Which, honestly was flooring and well… racist. The idea that black men should just shuck and jive for white amusement and be incapable of thinking any other time is honestly ridiculous. The idea that entertainers are only there to agree with you and be silent when you want them to is peak entitlement and honestly ridiculous. This is coming from a generation that was raised during the infamous 1968 black power salute, a generation raised when Sidney Portier and Harry Belefonte regularly used their entertainment platforms to speak social justice. I wonder to myself why it was okay then and not now. And then I remember. It wasn’t okay then. Bernice King Spoke out Saturday to say: “People didn’t approve of the way my father protested injustice either; said he was causing trouble, called him an ‘outside agitator.” Remember, those people were on the wrong side of history. But yet, the same people complaining then, bore children who complain now. Children who believe black men are there for their amusement and not to have brains. Children who think black men are so inferior, they should not share opinions and should be grateful to throw a ball. They have even gone as far as to use Martin Luther King for their own amusement. Cherry-picking his words, twisting his legacy, and invoking him at will to condemn people he would actually stand with. Bernice gets it. “Many who quote #MLK today, and use his words out of context to deter nonviolent protest, would have hated him openly then”. You hated equality then, you hate it now. And you are misusing a man you would have (and potentially did) spat on back then and we all know it.  It’s annoying. It’s nasty. It’s the ACTUAL thing that is disrespectful. And the reason we know racism won’t just “die out”.

Kaep is not “divisive”, Curry is not “divisive”;  racists are. Cops who kill black boys without impunity or conscious are. George Zimmerman is. Dylan Roof is. Nazi’s who march in the streets are. Your granny that speaks about “the blacks” at Thanksgiving dinner is. Consider handling them and not the people who rightfully believe they are problematic. Newsflash: there can be no “racial harmony” until there is actual equality. The idea that blacks should be passive in the name of “harmony” while they are being murdered in the streets and not receiving justice is… odd. Where white Americans concerned with “harmony” with the British when they wanted freedom? Absolutely not. So why ask us to “harmonize” at the expense of our lives? Even Mandela wasn’t concerned with “harmony” without equality and wasn’t afraid to rock the boat. MLK’s whole plan was to rock the boat to bring attention. Bloody Sunday wasn’t “harmony” and he knew it would not bring harmony. It got people mad enough to get violent with peaceful demonstrators. And made those people look like terrible folks. He pressed the issue, no matter who it upset. And admitted so. “Now we’re going to march again, and we’ve got to march again, in order to put the issue where it is supposed to be – and force everybody to see that there are thirteen hundred of God’s children here suffering”. His whole point was to force the issue no matter how much it upset people. That was in no way harmony. As Bernice King spoke out Saturday: “No form of protest, even nonviolent direct action, will be approved by people ‘more dedicated to order than to justice’ or by the unjust”. We are not here for your approval. We know we won’t get it. It is not that we don’t WANT harmony; it is that we refuse to disadvantage ourselves for it. And we shouldn’t have to. This IS America after all is it not?

And I know, your next move will be “GO BACK TO AFRICA IF YOU HATE IT HERE SO BAD!” Nope. I’m here. And I’m going to make it better. Kaep is here. And going to fight until it’s better. Mad about it? You can leave.  (Plus, it’s kind of dumb to bring people to a country and then insist they leave. Don’t like our presence, please take it up with your ancestors. Visit their graves and gripe about it. Their fault. Not ours.)  As MLK said “If I lived in China or even Russia, or any totalitarian country, maybe I could understand some of these illegal injunctions. Maybe I could understand the denial of certain basic First Amendment privileges, because they hadn’t committed themselves to that over there. But somewhere I read of the freedom of assembly. Somewhere I read of the freedom of speech. Somewhere I read of the freedom of press. Somewhere I read that the greatness of America is the right to protest for right. And so just as I say, we aren’t going to let dogs or water hoses turn us around, we aren’t going to let any injunction turn us around. We are going on”. If we WERE in North Korea, maybe we’d understand the unarmed and unjust killings. But we’re not. We’re in America. And America is supposedly greater. So we have every right to demand it live up to the hype it gives itself. And, regardless of any injunction Trump TRIES to send our way: We. Are. Going. On. And. You. Will. Deal.

So just so you know: The NFL protest is not “divisive”; it is the brand of patriotism MLK was killed for. So don’t bring his name up to deter us. We know what our leader stood for and you need to learn before you speak his name again.