Does Kaepernick's Settlement with the NFL Sell Out the Cause?

In recent days, former National Football League (NFL) quarterback Colin Kaepernick and current NFL safety Eric Reid settled their collusion lawsuit against the NFL.  The collusion suit resulted from Kaepernick and Reid correctly believing that adverse treatment they received from the NFL was retaliation for their leadership in the national anthem protests against police terrorism.  Kaepernick and Reid, when both played for the San Francisco 49ers in 2016, initiated the kneeling during the anthem and multiple players from multiple NFL teams began to engage in similar protests during the anthem every week leading through games throughout the 2018 season.  During that 2016 season, Kaepernick started most of the 49ers games and performed well enough on a bad team.  He completed 60% of his passes with 16 touchdowns and only four interceptions.  Those aren't Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers numbers, two quarterbacks considered the best in the game, but Kaepernick's stats were far better than a number of quarterbacks currently on NFL rosters.  

After the 2016 season, newly hired San Francisco General Manager John Lynch informed Kaepernick that the 49ers would not pick the last year of Kaepernick's contract, meaning the team intended to release him.  Choosing to have some control over his destiny, Kaepernick decided to opt out of his contract.  In other words, he quit before he was fired.  Then, from March, 2017, through today, no team has offered Kaepernick a contract to play for them.  At least two teams, Baltimore and Seattle, invited Kaepernick for workouts and each team expressed interest in Kaepernick playing for them, but each team also wanted assurances from him that he would not continue his national anthem protests.  When Kaepernick refused to agree to discontinue the protests, the teams each decided not to offer him a contract citing concerns about "distractions" of having Kaepernick on their roster.  Meanwhile, the NFL experienced significant loss in television ratings to which they decided to blame the protests.  This position by the NFL was reaffirmed when the person occupying this country's presidency engaged in public criticisms against the NFL protesters, calling them "sons of b - - - - - s!"  There were reports that this "president" even met with NFL owners and that an informal agreement was made that no team would sign Kaepernick.  To this day, no team has signed Kaepernick despite the clear and ill refutable argument that with his career credentials as a player e.g. 71 touchdowns and only 30 interceptions, and leading his team to within five yards of a Superbowl victory in 2012 and within five yards of another trip to the Superbowl in 2013, are far more impressive than about half the quarterbacks in the NFL today.   

Eric Reid's contract with San Francisco expired in 2017 and for several months he also received no offers despite being selected to the Pro Bowl, the designation applied to players who are the best at their positions.  Eventually, the Carolina Panthers offered Reid a contract, despite them also questioning him about the protest.  He played for them during the 2018 season, but he was subjected to at least seven so-called "random" drug tests.  The NFL and the NFL Players Association, the players union, have contract language permitting the random drug tests, but someone would have to be extremely naive to believe seven drug tests during one season for the same player when most players received no drug test request was not an intentional effort to harass Reid.  

So, Kaepernick and Reid filed their lawsuit claiming the NFL colluded to keep them out of the league as punishment for their leadership in the protests.  By collusion, the players meant the owners of NFL teams had collectively decided to keep Kaepernick out of the league and to harass Reid.  

Earlier this week, it was announced that Kapernick and Reid's lawsuit was settled with the NFL meaning a financial settlement was agreed upon to make the lawsuit go away.  Its being reported that non-disclosure agreements were signed by everyone, meaning Kaepernick, Reid, their attorneys, the NFL, and anyone in the know about the terms of the settlement cannot talk about it publicly.  As usual with something like this, there are going to be people who are aware of the specifics who will leak information to the media without being named.  In this case, its being reported that Kaepernick will receive as much as $80 million as a settlement (it hasn't been made clear what amount Reid was offered) and that Kaepernick, because he's still out of the NFL, signed an exclusion agreement, meaning he cannot play for another NFL team ever again.  

All of this has raised discussion within activist circles as to whether Kaepernick and Reid, by settling, have sold out their principled position of maintaining the protests.  Some are arguing that after the players held their posture despite intense pressure by their employers, the government, and a large segment of the population, particularly the mostly European (white) NFL fan audience, to settle now sends the message that the protest was only about money and once the right dollar amount was provided, the principles of the movement became subordinate to the dollar amount being offered.  Others point to the alleged exclusion agreement and non-disclosure agreements.  Despite the reality that these types of agreements are standard in U.S. labor dispute lawsuits, the position of those raising the question is that by not being able to continue to talk about the collusion and by not pursuing future employment as an NFL quarterback, the credibility of the NFL protests have been effectively muted. 

On the other side, people, particularly those within the African community, are arguing that Kaepernick was denied income by the collusion efforts of NFL owners and so consequently, he had the right to recoup that lost income.  Many of these people saw the protests through the vision of Kaepernick getting another job in the NFL.  To them, him being able to do that would be a victory, but him winning a financial settlement is equally as victorious. 

Since I've written much about this situation since it evolved two years ago and Kaepernick's own site has posted articles I've written here on the subject, I'll weigh in to say the largest issues with all of this are not even being widely discussed.  The first issue is those of us in the activist community in general, and the African activist community in particular, must reach a level of political sophistication where we recognize that celebrities, no matter how brilliant, how articulate, and how cute, cannot be the spokespersons for our movements, unless they are a part of organizations working for justice.  The reason this is important  because people who are not active in social justice organizations e.g. those who are out front primarily because of their celebrity status, not their organizational principles, are much more likely to take varying and inconsistent turns in their "activism."  The reason is they are not subject to organizational discipline.  An example here is Muhammad Ali.  When he took his principled stand against the Vietnam War in the 60s, he was not acting based on his individual celebrity status as the boxing champion of the world.  Certainly the celebrity status helps in getting attention, which we want in our movements, but Ali was always acting as a foot soldier in the Nation of Islam.  As a result, he had a firm ideological foundation for the position he took.  It was never necessary for him to waver in any way.  Kaepernick didn't have that same type of organizational foundation so when he first sat during the anthem we had to see him go through the worthless change of kneeling because it shows respect for the military.  This is a contradiction in so many ways because the U.S. military performs the same terrorism against citizens of the planet that the police perform against citizens.  Both represent the same power structures.  Both are committed to upholding the same capitalist, white supremacist, patriarchal values and principles.  With a strong organizational foundation, like Ali had, Kaepernick may have had the understanding to work through that hiccup.  He also may have had the direction to have a strategy for his settlement that would have permitted him and/or the spokespersons of his choice, to continue to use the NFL as the successful platform against these injustices after his settlement.  The settlement confirms that the NFL is wrong.  Its racist and regardless of how much players are paid, the league's handling of the protests smacks of the old slave/master relationship that is so much a part of the legacy of this country while still being one of the most misunderstood relationships in this country.  And, by extension, the federal and state governments, etc., who have played along and/or contributed to harassing Kaepernick and Reid need to continue to be exposed for their behavior.  A strong organizational basis could have provided the strategy to ensure these necessary things continue to happen.  That foundation could also provide strategic direction on how to frame the settlement so that it doesn't come off as a compromise to the principles of the protests.

Kaepernick has been a professional sports role model with how he used his earned finances, despite being unemployed, to fund worthy movement work everywhere from Black Lives Matter projects in multiple locations to children's schools in Somalia, to Indigenous people's struggles throughout the U.S.  I see no reason to believe he won't continue to use his newly acquired resources to continue that good work.  Still, at this stage in our struggle, there are countless efforts being made by Kaepernick, LeBron James, Marshawn Lynch, and other professional athletes to address oppression.  There are even more similar, and even better efforts made every day by every day people with no resources, only the desire and commitment to see positive change take place.  The weakness of this work, of which I have contributed much over the years, is our inability to spread our message to the masses of people in a way that they can understand and claim the work for their own.  This is the pathway to mass movements, but this next step requires us to abandon this individualistic celebrity interpretation of how change takes place.

So, I don't believe the settlement on its own is a sell out.  I think the shortcoming we have is our inability to understand and recognize that power conceived is the power of the organized masses.  There is no individual athlete, singer, rapper, actor, author, who is going to liberate our people.  There is no group of these people who can do this.  Only the masses of our people can being about our liberation and the pathway to that happening is getting our people involved in organizations.  This is even more difficult to accomplish today because social media has made everyone who has access to a computer an instant expert on world affairs.

 Our failure, which we can and will correct, is us not recognizing how the changes we desire will actually need to take place and the importance and necessity for everyone of us to play a role in that process.