Colin Kaepernick has the youth moving. Ever since he chose to protest by sitting then kneeling during the national anthem, plenty of other athletes have done so, mainly at the high school level.
Watkins Mill High School Football & Soccer teams kneeled during the national anthem during their respective games.
The WMCurrent asked about the protest and here’s what the athletes, coaches and teachers had to say about it.
Junior Mark Grant said,
“The National Anthem means nothing if everybody isn’t being treated the same,”
There have been stories of coaches reprimanding athletes that choose to kneel or sit, however Watkins Mill Football head coach Mike Brown said,
“I refuse to tell my kids whether they should sit, kneel, or stand for the National Anthem because it’s their right,”
It is their right and plenty of people fail to understand that.
Since the football team didn’t receive any punishment and the girls soccer team saw how brave they were, they acted too.
Junior Heaven Atta said,
“We were talking about how brave the football players were and how we believe in the exact same thing about how minorities are still being oppressed.So we [said] we should also kneel down at our next game, which happened to be the game against Springbrook.”
It’s great that the school and teachers are supporting them. We’re hearing plenty of stories where schools are forcing students to stand for the national anthem or teachers lowering grades of the students that choose to protest.
To those teachers and administrators that are docking points and suspending students for protesting then they better skip chapters on the American Revolution, the Boston Tea Party and the Bill of Rights because it would be incredibly ironic.