Football and Social Justice

Players and Owners Take the Next Step in Cooperating on Social Justice Initiatives

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By PETER KING    January 23, 2018      si.com

The NFL will announce today the latest step in its seven-year, $90 million commitment to players’ social-justice issues, forming a committee of five players and five owners to further advance what the league says is its effort to assist players in trying to make improvements in education, relations with police, and the criminal-justice system in the league’s communities.

 

The committee includes Kelvin Beachum and Josh McCown of the Jets, Washington cornerback Josh Norman and retired players Anquan Boldin and Aeneas Williams. On the owners side are Arizona’s Michael Bidwill, Atlanta’s Arthur Blank, Shad Khan of Jacksonville, Stephen Ross of Miami and Cleveland’s Jimmy Haslam. The owners were appointed by the NFL; the players were appointed by the Players Coalition, a social-justice group led by Boldin and Malcolm Jenkins of the Eagles, among others.

“I think it’s unprecedented what has happened,” Boldin said this week. “I don’t think it’s the NFL’s job to end racism in America, but the NFL has helped us expand our platform, and the NFL has backed us, and helped bring about change. … From the Players Coalition standpoint, we’ve been able to show how unjust our criminal-justice system is, and we’ve been able to work on that. We want change to come from this protest.”  Read more here.

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