Brave pair of Seattle elementary schooler take knee while singing anthem at Mariners game
When two grade school kids decided to kneel while giving their rendition of the National Anthem, they got a shout out from their inspiration
Prior to Sunday’s game between the Seattle Mariners and Cleveland Indians at Safeco Field, two elementary school students Seattle’s Mount View Elementary School who were singing the national anthem with a grade-school choir took a knee.
The picture first went viral thanks to a tweet by Tacoma News Tribune sports writer Ryan Clark, which shows the kids at Safeco Field kneeling alongside their standing classmates from. It was then retweeted by none other than Colin Kaepernick.
Here at Safeco Field where an elementary school sung the anthem and two students took a knee while performing. pic.twitter.com/HwHIsowsxN
— Ryan S. Clark (@ryan_s_clark) April 1, 2018
Conscious kid action
A spokeswoman for Seattle’s Highline Public Schools told the Huffington Post that it an “individual act by the students.”
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The protest comes nearly two years after Kaepernick started sitting and later kneeling during the anthem when he was as a member of the San Francisco 49ers.
“Obviously, the school district respects the First Amendment rights of our students,” Catherine Carbone Rogers told HuffPost.
It mirrors a move pulled by Rico Lavalle, a Detroit singer who took a knee while singing the anthem prior to a game between the Detroit Lions and Atlanta Falcons last fall.
The small protest rubbed a few people the wrong way. One of them being U.S. Army officer and opinion writer Jeremy Hunt, who told “Fox & Friends First” Tuesday that patriotism “must be safeguarded” and that children aren’t being taught patriotism but rather, “revisionist history” surrounding the “sins of our country” rather the “good things that we’ve done in our country.”
“I definitely wish there were a different way to do that other than disparaging the national anthem of our country,” he added, insisting that kids don’t know what they’re protesting.
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Setting it right
In actuality, one bit of revisionist history is that Kaepernick was kneeling to “disrespect the flag,” a false narrative that has been widely pushed. He, along with hundreds of other athletes, have been kneeling in protest of the very real instances of police brutality against Black and brown citizens.
It was former Army veteran and NFL player Nate Boyer who convinced Kaepernick to kneel instead of sitting for the anthem as a way to, ironically, avoid disrespecting soldiers while patriotically expressing himself via the First Amendment. The movement spread to other players and other sports ― and even eventually to members of youth teams and now elementary school kids.
Do you see anything wrong with these kids taking a knee during the Anthem? Let us know.
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