Mike Freeman - Footballs Fearless Activists: How Colin Kaepernick, Eric Reid, Kenny Stills, and Fellow Athletes Stood Up to the NFL and President Trump

Copyright 2020 by Mike Freeman

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Jacket design by Brian Peterson

Cover photo credit: Getty Images

Print ISBN: 978-1-68358-350-9

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-68358-351-6

Printed in the United States of America

To Ella, the best daughter in the universe.

The future is bright because you will help change the world.

There are many heroes in this story. Some of the names, like Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid, you may know. There are others you may not. One of those is Kenny Stills. Of all the heroes in this inspiring, sad, tumultuous tale, he is one of the most unique.

When Kaepernick began protesting in 2016, changing the sports world and attracting the attention of US presidents, world leaders, civil rights activists, NFL leadership, and white nationalists, Stills seemed like an unlikely candidate to join Kaepernick and other NFL players taking a knee. He grew up near a military base in San Diego, California, a staunch military town. His mentor, like a father to Stills, was a marine for over twenty years. The protests were often portrayed by right-wing media as anti-cop and anti-military. This was far from the truth, yet the narrative was set.

I dont think you should do this, the former marine told him. They seem like theyre against the military.

Theyre not, Stills told him. They just want change. They just want the police to stop killing us.

I felt that if I did nothing, Stills says now, I wouldnt be able to live with myself. I didnt want to look back at my life and say, You could have done something. But you didnt. You were a coward.

Stills prepared for what he knew would be an arduous trip, from a relatively unknown wide receiver for the Miami Dolphins to a well-known and revered freedom fighter to some, and ungrateful anti-cop, anti-military, anti-American troublemaker to others. Like other NFL players, like Kaepernick, he didnt care. The league needed player voices to counter what was a plague of police violence against people of color, and he was going to be part of the choruseven if it cost him.

Stills began reading extensively about the civil rights movement and any lessons that could be gleamed and utilized for this fight. He listened to Malcolm Xs biography on audiobook. He traveled to various places in the South that were epicenters of the fights for civil rights in the 1960s. He went to the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King Jr. was killed. He walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where protesters were assaulted by police. He read the biography of Congressman John Lewis, one of the men attacked that day in Selma.

Stills looked inward too. In a mini documentary he made in 2018 titled Kenny Stills, he spoke of the impact police brutality, and to a larger degree racism, had on people of color: I dont think people really understand what its like to look in the mirror and feel like youre not important, nobody gives a shit, said Stills. If you didnt play football, youre irrelevant, because of your skin tone. I didnt choose this [skin]. I was born [like] this. This is me. Did I do something wrong? Or I was just born, so Im wrong?

He also listened to the opinions of not just teammates and friends but family as well. All while continuing to work with kids, at the time, in the Miami community. No Dolphins player had donated more time working with the community than Stills. It was a normal scene for Stills to leave practice and drive directly to a charity or community event.

Its in this space, and in this time, where heroes are birthed, though not always recognized, and where sacrifices are made, though not always seen. Kaepernick and Reids bravery were the ignition source, but a handful of playersmaybe five to seven total out of the approximately 1,700 active NFL playerskept protesting for several years after Kaepernick first took a knee to protest an unjust criminal justice system and the shootings of unarmed people of color by the police. Stills was one of those players.

He refused to lose his sense of independence and wanted to do what he believed was right, even after it was revealed that Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross, a Donald Trump supporter, once hosted a fundraiser for Trumps campaign. Not long after the protests began, the NFL invested almost $90 million into a newly formed social justice partnership called the Players Coalition. Kaepernick, Reid, Stills, and several other players left the Coalition not long after its creation believing the moneya pittance to billionaire NFL ownerswas being used to buy off players and stop them from protesting. The original $90 million was divided by all 32 franchises, or about $2.8 million a team. The NFL is a private entity, so knowing exactly how much the NFL makes in totality is impossible. Bloomberg estimated its profits, mainly from television revenue, were $13 billion in 2016, $14 billion in 2017, and $15 billion in 2018. Commissioner Roger Goodell has targeted $25 billion in revenue by 2027.

Part of Stillss story, as well as that of a handful of other players, is the impact protesting had on their physical and mental health. Kaepernick, of course, after the 49ers, was unable to get another job. As of late 2020, he remains unsigned. Other players suffered in different ways. One player who protested briefly said the ensuing death threatsseveral dozen over a three-month period in 2018caused him to contemplate suicide.

Some players lost lifelong friends. There were teammates who stopped speaking to them. Relationships with loved ones suffered.

This was just part of the toll that some protesting players, who took a knee or raised a fist, endured for years while we all watched from afar, having no clue they were paying this price.

Stills said once he began protesting, he began receiving racist and threatening notes and horrific messages on social media. People told me to kill myself, Stills explained. To hang myself.

At one point, during a game at Carolina, a persistent heckler kept verbally attacking Stills all game. Carolina was awful, Stills told Natalie Weiner of Bleacher Report. This guy was pretty liquored up in the front row right behind the bench. Sometimes its pretty sad, honestlythe fact that people really dont understand and theyre not trying to understand. It kind of breaks your heart.

Brandon Marshall, a linebacker with the Denver Broncos, also protested. He was sent a letter that contained a violent threat, and others that were full of racial slurs. One person came to the team facility and burned one of his jerseys. As he told the website Complex, which detailed everything that happened to Marshall, he also lost two endorsements.