US Soccer Is Getting Ready To Crack Down On Megan Rapinoe’s Kneeling Protests
Photo by Philipp Schmidli/GettyDonald Trump will be the 45th President of the United States and there’s nothing we can do about it. Already the electorate is moving to normalize authoritarian demagoguery while the media tries to portray this as the natural order of things. (Just to be clear: none of this is normal.) The whole country seems eager to move on with their lives, even as Trump is already making it clear that things are going to be very different from here on out.
Earlier today I wrote about how soccer— the sport and the fans— might move forward in this Age of Trump. I offered that soccer can be a vehicle for resistance, but that there will be work to do to make that possible and to reinforce the values of a strong community and a tolerant society within football. We have to have the courage to stand up for what’s right and make space for people to make their voices heard.
US Soccer president Sunil Gulati, on the other hand, doesn’t see it that way. Just days after an autocratic strongman was elected to the highest office in the land, Gulati singled out Megan Rapinoe and her national anthem protests and said that the First Amendment doesn’t offer her any protection.