Malcolm Jenkins Silently Uplifts NFL Players’ Anti-Racist Activism

By Sameer Rao Jun 07, 2018

Sports reporters arrived at a media availability session for the Philadelphia Eagles yesterday (June 6) with questions about President Donald Trump canceling the Super Bowl-winning team’s visit to the White House. Safety Malcolm Jenkins chose not to play into the hype around Trump’s framing of anti-racist national anthem protests as anti-American. Jenkins, one of the NFL’s most outspoken voices on criminal justice reform, instead maintained silence and used a series of signs to highlight the real reasons why players protest.

Starting with an all-caps critique of people who misinterpret players’ actions—“YOU AREN’T LISTENING”—the signs touch on mass incarceration, the school to prison pipeline and police violence. Individual cards also mention the philanthropy of Colin Kaepernick (with whom Jenkins has publicly sparred) and the sentencing reform advocacy of players including Ben Watson and Devin McCourty.

Jenkins later tweeted images of most of those signs:

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rntThe signs are in line with a statement he posted on June 5: 

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