Kneeling now NFL-approved, the Ravens search for new ways to take a stand
Three seasons later, Campbell, now with the Ravens, will have another decision to make Sunday when the anthem starts before Baltimore’s season opener against the Cleveland Browns. But this time, he will take the field in a different league, under different circumstances.
According to a Washington Post poll, 56 percent of Americans now say it is appropriate for athletes to kneel during the national anthem to protest racial injustice, up from 43 percent in 2018. Players no longer have the threat of losing their jobs if they kneel; in fact, Commissioner Roger Goodell now encourages peaceful protest.
Kneeling has also spread to other sports, with players in the NBA, the WNBA, MLB and even the English Premier League doing so. During the NFL season opener Thursday night, the Houston Texans stayed in the locker room altogether for the pregame anthems. The Miami Dolphins, rejecting what they call the NFL’s hollow gestures in displaying end zone slogans and performing the Black national anthem before games, have vowed to do the same Sunday.
So Campbell and some Ravens may take a knee again. But amid nationwide unrest, as athletes across sports seek out new and impactful forms of activism, Campbell, his teammates and players throughout the NFL are grappling with a question: After kneeling, what’s next?
“There are a lot of guys in our locker room who are passionate about trying to decide how we can do some kind of protest to keep the conversation [going] and to continue to make sure that the world knows how we feel,” said Campbell, a 12-year veteran. “I don’t know if that’s taking a knee. I don’t know what that is right now.”
Some athletes have wielded their power by taking a bold next step: withholding their labor. On Aug. 26, days after Jacob Blake, a Black man in Kenosha, Wis., was shot seven times in the back by a White police officer, the Milwaukee Bucks decided to sit out their playoff game, sparking an unprecedented work stoppage across sports. Both the NBA and WNBA shut down that day, while three MLB games were postponed.
Nine NFL teams canceled practice. But there’s little indication that walking out on games — putting financial pressure on the league and its owners and gaining more attention for their causes — is something players are seriously considering.
“If we all boycott Week 1, will that solve the problem? I don’t know because does it matter if we come back Week 2?” New England Patriots safety Devin McCourty told reporters. “I think everything should be on the table. I’m not saying that those aren’t the solutions. It’s just hard.”
When the Ravens showed up to their practice facility in Owings Mills, Md., on Aug. 27, they were ready to stage their own walkout. Campbell couldn’t sleep after watching the video of Blake being gunned down, he said, and he sensed that teammates felt the same.
The agitation grew throughout the day, linebacker Matthew Judon said, as hushed conversations spread through the locker room. Other teammates joined in, debating whether the team should practice. Several veterans took their concerns upstairs, where Coach John Harbaugh, preparing for the day’s work, offered an out to anyone who didn’t want to practice.
In the end, players decided as a team to take the turf. But after the workout, Harbaugh canceled film sessions and position meetings. Instead, the entire team gathered, socially distanced, inside the field house.
Ravens President Dick Cass showed up in a mask. Chad Steele, the team’s Senior VP of Communications, opened his laptop to take notes. Harbaugh offered a microphone for anyone who wanted to talk. Both players and coaches, Black and White, took turns sharing their experiences and asking questions.
“There was so much emotion built up,” Judon said about the post-practice session, which lasted more than three hours. “We had those tough talks that people shy away from.”
This wasn’t their first conversation on race. In June, the Ravens held a Zoom meeting after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody. Offensive lineman Bradley Bozeman, who is White, learned a lot then, he said, but sitting next to his teammates for this talk opened his eyes even more. One Black teammate shared how he doesn’t want his children playing hide-and-seek in his predominantly White neighborhood at night, a reality Bozeman had never considered.
“To be in that room — it’s just different whenever you can see the emotion coming out,” Bozeman said. “Me being a White male, I never really firsthand experienced racial inequality from that side of it. … The stories those guys told and the things they worry about with their kids, it really bothers me.”
When Judon mentioned the importance of showing respect and compliance with police, a member of the security team, a Black man and former Baltimore City cop, stood up and advised anyone who has a problem with police to call the internal affairs unit. He offered the phone number, which he had committed to memory.
Afterward, some players headed home, emotionally drained, while about 30 players and coaches moved into the team meeting room, to work through the framework of what would become the team statement.
“This was the most player-ran thing I’ve ever been a part of before,” said Campbell, who spoke up often during the breakout session. “We just didn’t want to have a generic statement. We wanted to actually say something. … We wanted to actually speak truth.”
The group came up with seven bullet points. Its first priority: the arrest of the officers who killed Breonna Taylor, the 26-year-old Louisville woman who died from a splay of bullets from police executing a no-knock warrant March 13. Through the Ravens’ team lawyer, the franchise already had designs on advocating for the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2020, which addresses police accountability. Kicker Justin Tucker, already well versed in the legislation, pulled the bill up on his phone and pushed for the Ravens to support it. The team agreed to demand that Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) bring it to the Senate floor.
The Ravens’ PR staff crafted the players’ thoughts into powerful sentences, adding a line about “the ramifications of slavery,” words seldom, if ever, found beneath an NFL logo. Later that night, the team released its statement, which was quickly and widely praised as a forceful call to action.
“I’m sure there are people in the organization who wish we hadn’t said this, we hadn’t said that, but it is a consensus statement,” Cass said. “The players really wanted to focus more on societal change, and that’s why the statement really pushed, ‘Let’s talk about exactly what we want.’ ”
Still, with the breadth and specificity of their statement, the Ravens stood out.
“I think we’re definitely front line,” Bozeman said. “We’re doing things more toward true action, not just checking a box. Not saying every other team is checking a box, but this team is driven.”
It wasn’t the first time the Ravens have spoken out. In 2018, the team lobbied the White House to commute the sentences of four Marylanders who were incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses, including in conversations and email exchanges with the president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. (Three of the inmates have been released, but because of the novel coronavirus and illness, not the Ravens’ efforts, Cass said.)
But that the Ravens have moved into the forefront underscores a dramatic shift underway across the country, throughout the league and at this franchise.
Three years ago, the Ravens considered signing free agent quarterback Colin Kaepernick as a backup. Before a training camp practice in July 2017, the team held a fan forum along with Goodell. When asked if signing Kaepernick would hurt the brand, team owner Steve Bisciotti replied, “We’ve very sensitive to it.” He went on further to express how public “opinion matters to us,” which led to the perception that the Ravens were polling fans before making the decision.
Phone calls and emails flooded the team office, with extreme opinions on both sides, though few knew how to pronounce or spell Kaepernick’s name, Cass recalled. Ultimately, the team signed Robert Griffin III. Cass said the team made a “misstep” by broaching the topic at the fan forum. Executives, he insisted, do not base their football decisions on fan support.
The Ravens heard from fans again after the release of their recent statement. It generated more than 8 million impressions on Twitter, where the response seemed mostly positive, Cass said. But he also noticed the dissent on Facebook, where conservative political content thrives. While 62 percent of Americans support athlete activism in general, according to the recent Post poll, only 43 percent of Republicans do.
But Cass insisted that the Ravens aren’t backing down.
“We’re going to get a lot of negative comments, we know that. That goes with the territory,” Cass said. “But this is an issue, as an organization, we want to be on the right side of history. That’s really important. If you’re just speaking from a business point and to take a very narrow view of it, being on the right side of this issue is much better for us in the long run than being on the wrong side of this issue or trying to straddle the fence. You can’t do that right now.”
With the season underway, the Ravens have mostly shifted their focus to football, but they’re not done, they said. The team has inserted a “Vote!” tab at the top of its website that takes users to a countdown to Election Day with additional ballot information. In crafting their statement, players were adamant that they encourage people to vote.
Yet they admit they don’t necessarily know what happens next. They don’t know if another viral video will lead to yet another summit in their Owings Mills field house or how further unrest will impact the league and the country. But they’ve learned that protest can evolve — beyond kneeling, beyond the anthem, beyond whatever else the league signs off on.
“Kneeling was very powerful, and it was very impactful, and it got the message going. But now it’s time for the action of it,” Bozeman said. “Not just saying something, not just putting out a tweet. It’s about actually getting into legislation and getting and making sure things actually do change and voice our opinions as loud as we can.”
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