Eagles Safety Malcolm Jenkins Won't Raise Fist During National Anthem Anymore
Philadelphia Eagles safety Malcolm Jenkins says that he will no longer raise his fist during the national anthem as his way of protesting social injustice in the United States, according to Jeff McLane of The Philadelphia Inquirer.
Jenkins says that he has been encouraged by the league's efforts to combat social injustice. The NFL has reportedly pledged to contribute around $100 million to charities and causes that are important to African-American communities. There are several players that have voiced their disagreement with the proposal and have withdrawn from the Players Coalition.
"I don't anticipate demonstration this week simply because I felt like when I started demonstrating, my whole motivation was to draw awareness to disenfranchised people, communities of color, injustices around the country, our criminal justice system," Jenkins said, according to Zach Berman of Philly.com. "And obviously through this year and talking with the league and what they've kind of proposed, I feel like he has presented a bigger and better platform to continue to raise that awareness and continue to fluctuate positive change. Not only with the money that they've put up, because I think that's probably the least important part of the deal, but with the resources and platform that they proposed to build. We've seen what they've done with breast cancer awareness, Salute to Service, those things. So to allocate resources to a campaign in that manner that's bigger, I think is significant and it hadn't been done before. So I look forward to playing a part in using that to continue to draw awareness to real people, real stories in our communities. To raise up these grassroots organizations that need support to do the work. To continue drawing awareness around solutions that people can take a part of to actually make the change that we're going to see."
Jenkins started raising his fist during the national anthem last season.
