Colin Kaepernick's original protest, taking a knee during the national anthem during football games when he was quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers has spread across the country. Yet this year, as Donald Trump has inserted himself into the fight, many felt that Kaepernick's original meaning—his protest against state violence against black people—was being lost. Victoria Davis and Victor Dempsey lost their brother, Delrawn Small, to an NYPD officer's bullet last year and they are part of a coalition fighting for reforms to the NYPD's process of stopping and searching people. And to them, taking a knee--as they did recently outside of the New York City Council demanding passage of the Right to Know Act--has a very particular meaning that they are fighting not to lose.
Alberto Morales
From left to right: Iris Baez, mother of Anthony Baez killed by New York police in 1994; Hawa Bah, mother of Mohamed Bah, killed by New York police in 2012; Victor Dempsey, brother of Delrawn Small, killed by New York police in 2016. All spoke at a “Right to Know Act” rally in New York City, October 11.
Outtakes:
Victoria: The thing is that people were forgetting. It started to become a hashtag with some racist rhetoric. For the past few weeks, people have been forgetting the reason that Colin Kaepernick had originally taken the knee. He wasn’t against the national anthem, the flag, or any of those things. He was taking a knee in solidarity with the victims and the families of police and state murders. For the murdered. For families like us who have loved ones who were killed by a police officer who was hired to serve and protect.
Victor: We wanted to align ourselves with that and stand up with him and take the knee with him to show that we see what he is doing, we appreciate what he is doing and we are fighting, as well. We are not just sitting here. We are fighting. And we are going to do whatever we can in our power to help make a change, because it has to stop.
Victoria: And we don’t want anyone to forget why it was done in the first place. I think that sometimes people take hashtags and they do it for different reasons, it becomes almost like a fad, a hashtag. Taking the knee and putting faces to these victims and putting faces to the hurt, like I always say, we – meaning the families – cannot take a knee and then everything is right in our lives and we are just able to move on and move forward. We take the knee and that is taking a stand.
Justice Committee
“Right to Know” Act rally, New York City, October 11, 2017.
We still have to go back to our lives without Delrawn and Delrawn was a huge part of our lives. Things have been terrible since he has been gone. We just want people to remember exactly why the take the knee action was taken in the first place and not to stray away from that. I think too often people forget because things move so fast in life. If they feel strongly about taking the knee, then please feel strongly about supporting the families in any way that you can. It can be kind words. It can be coming to a vigil, a rally, or even just… I have seen people hashtag #taketheknee and they will write something and someone else will write something and I will counter something negative, it’s like changing the narrative. Because once we change the narrative and the way we see these police killings, then we will see it as not just a hashtag, but we will see that these are humans, these are people. Delrawn was a human. He was a kind person. He was a reliable person. He meant everything to us.
Interviews for Resistance is a syndicated series of interviews with organizers, agitators and troublemakers.