Colin Kaepernick is standing up to the National Football League
Colin Kaepernick is standing up to the National Football League.
The former San Francisco 49ers quarterback, who ignited protests in the NFL, is accusing the league's owners of working together to keep him out of professional football.
Kaepernick has remained unsigned since March 2017 after he played for the 49ers during the 2016 season. That's where he first decided to take a seat during the national anthem. Kaepernick's protest began to gain attention when he started to kneel during the anthem—inspiring some other players as well.
Player prottests started to gain attention at the end of August and still remain a controversial part of each game. Just last week, Vice President Mike Pence left a game early after he witnessed players kneeling.
Kaepernick's lawyer tweeted out confirmation that he officially filed a grievance with the NFL. Kaepernick has hired attorney Mark Geragos, who issued a statement about the grievance Sunday. He said the decision came “only after pursuing every possible avenue with all NFL teams and their executives," according to Fox News.
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"Athletes should not be denied employment based on partisan political provocation."
By filing this grievance, Kaepernick is hoping to terminate the NFL's collective bargaining agreement, NBC Sports reported Sunday, citing an anonymous source with knowledge of the situation. Changing the collective bargaining agreement would potentially affect all NFL players and allow them to have shorter contracts. That would require team owners to negotiate more frequently with the players.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell denied any league-wide misdoings against Kaepernick back in June.
“I believe that if a football team feels that Colin Kaepernick, or any other player, is going to improve that team, they’re going to do it,” Goodell said, according to ESPN.
But the movement to kneel has only gained more national attention since Goodell's comments. In September, President Donald Trump suggested NFL owners should fire any the player who chooses to "disrespect the flag" by kneeling.
“You cannot disrespect our country, our flag, our anthem, you cannot do that," Trump told Fox News's Sean Hannity last week.
Current and former football players instantly condemned Trump's comments. Jaguars owner Shad Khan, who donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration, chose to lock arms with his team:
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Topics Activism Donald Trump
Kerry Flynn is a business reporter for Mashable covering the tech industry. She previously reported on social media companies, mobile apps and startups for International Business Times. She has also written for The Huffington Post, Forbes and Money magazine. Kerry studied environmental science and economics at Harvard College, where she led The Harvard Crimson's metro news and design teams and played mellophone in the Band. When not listening to startup pitches, she runs half-marathons, plays with puppies and pretends to like craft beer.
