This post will updated throughout the day… See below for pictures and dispatches from scheduled games…
Sunday is game day for the National Football League and the hashtag #TakeaKnee is going viral as people across the nation see how players and teams respond to calls by President Donald Trump to punish players who do so.
For the earliest round of games that began at 1:00 pm (EST), dozens of players knelt while many teams chose to stand with arms locked together in a show of solidarity (see below).
Despite that the NFL has been a vocal (and official) sponsor of the U.S. military for years—acting mostly as a high-profile promoter and recruitment center for the Pentagon—a wave of protest initiated last year by players trying to draw attention to racism and police violence has swept the league into the political conversation this week after Trump, first at a rally on Friday night and then in a series of weekend tweets, called on team owners to fire or suspend players for voicing their views on social issues.
In the first game of the day, the Baltimore Ravens vs. the Jacksonville Jaguars, many players did take a knee during the National Anthem as others stood with arms locked in a show of solidarity. As journalist Shaun King noted, with “27 players and staff” from both teams participating in the protest took, it was the “most ever in one game.”
As the ACLU of New York put it ahead of Sunday’s scheduled games, “If peaceful protests did nothing, the powerful wouldn’t try so hard to silence them.”
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