On Sunday October 27, nine days before the presidential election, San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy was being interviewed after a win against the Dallas Cowboys. As Purdy spoke to NBC sideline reporter Melissa Stark, All-Pro defensive end Nick Bosa crashed his way into the shot and, looking into the camera, pointed at his Make America Great Again hat.

Though Bosa’s interruption was surprising, it was hardly shocking. Bosahas long enjoyed peacocking around as an open Trump supporter in a world where players largely keep their political opinions to themselves.

But Bosa flaunting a polarizing political slogan on Sunday Night Football, the most watched television program in the United States, right before a presidential election, was simply a bridge too far even for the conservative, albeit controversy-verse, league office. Bosa was fined $11,255 for violating the league’s uniform and equipment rules, but given that he makes $34 million a year, the 49ers faithful probably won’t need to set up a GoFundMe.

As Bosa skulked around in a MAGA hat, his red-and-gold uniform brought to mind another athlete who played for the same franchise. In 2016, Colin Kaepernick, then the San Francisco quarterback, also used his NFL platform to speak out for a cause in which he believed. But he was not agitating for MAGA policy initiatives such as a violent mass deportation program or the right to shoot protesters or second-class citizenship for women. He was kneeling for an end to racial inequity and police violence.

Colin Kaepernick was part of a burgeoning movement in 2016. It was a movement tired of merely asking not to be shot. Instead, it popularized ideas such as “defunding the police” and confronting crime by giving more money to crisis intervention teams and mental health counselors. The movement Kaepernick gave symbol to imagined a world without prisons. And it scared the hell out of the Democratic Party.

Far from running toward this mass youth movement, the party sprinted in the other direction. That meant Kaepernick was left adrift, his legs cut out from under him, when he started protesting. He also was without political support. As Republicans put Kaepernick’s kneeling image in brazenly racist fearmongering ads, the Democrats either ignored him or snarked at the protest. Even the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg got in on the act, calling Kaepernick’s protests “dumb and disrespectful” and saying, “I would have the same answer if you asked me about flag-burning.” After the 2016 season, he was blackballed from the league. No $11,000 fines for Colin. Just the potential earnings loss of millions.

Current Issue

December 2024 Issue

Kaepernick’s lack of a political home reflected the growing reaction to the larger movement, as open doors started to slam shut for Black Lives Matter activists. Most bills to “defund the police” stalled, and Joe Biden undermined the movement by thundering “fund the police” in his first State of the Union address, in 2022.

This story of two football players and two fates brings to mind the words of French political figure Jean-Luc Mélanchon. The man that Reuters recently called “The towering firebrand of France’s hard-left” had his own take on our elections. Mélanchon, who counts his political enemies in bulk, said,

“The US couldn’t choose the Left: there wasn’t one. When there’s no more Left, there’s no limit on the Right. When there’s no fight over programme, the election becomes a casting exercise. Trump’s win is the unstoppable consequence of this situation.”

Melanchon is pointing out the glaring problem in our politics. People overwhelmingly feel like we are headed in the wrong direction. Unfortunately, we do not have two parties capable of offering transformational change. We have one—and it’s the Republican Party, shrugging off any principles for a shot at power. Any pieties about states’ rights, balanced budgets, and allegiance to the Constitution are now just road bumps on their giddy toboggan ride toward autocracy.

As the traditional GOP, with very few exceptions, sprints to the right, the Democrats, donning cement shoes, have awkwardly tried to follow while staying stuck in place. They were more comfortable courting that mythical creature known as the “Cheney Democrat” than putting up a political fight. Standard leftist ideas like Medicare for All, opposition to the criminal justice system, immigrant rights, and an arms embargo on Israel to enforce a ceasefire were given no voice. Instead, as Mélanchon said, the people were unable to choose a program in left political opposition to Trump’s because there simply wasn’t one. The Democratic Party is not built for such a battle. It’s like asking a rooster to bark.

As a result, there is no political home for the Colin Kaepernicks of this world. There is no political home for the abolitionist, the striking worker, the student radical, the national healthcare proponent, or the principled pacifist. They are stranded and losing hope. While Nick Bosa is probably getting fit for a tux in preparation for an inauguration ball, Kaepernick is off to the side, co-editing (excellent!) defenses of Black Studies, instead of being brought to the forefront of a political battle to win people away from Trumpism.

We are going to need to build institutions in this country—in politics, in media, in popular culture—that have the capacity to fight fascism. We are going to need to build institutions and movements that are able to welcome the Kaepernicks of this world to take on the Bosas. We are going to need to build—because right now, Nick Bosa is being unblocked, and he’s not calling for peace.