On the road to Washington: Marching against white supremacy and thinking about NFL protests

IDYLWOOD, Va. — The drizzle doesn’t seem like it’s stopping. It’s 9 a.m. in Virginia and people are cheerful. They are excited to be marching through this muck. Does anyone notice the shouts? The cheers? The chants? Most people here are still sleeping.

Officers are looking on, chuckling. Who wants to march in this slosh? Don’t these people know it’s a workday? “God Save The Union!” one woman yells. Maybe one day, ma’am. But, if that happens, hopefully people are awake for it.

Dozens to hundreds, depending on the day, have been marching from Charlottesville to Washington’s Martin Luther King Jr. memorial, 118 miles, for 10 days. They hope to combat forms of white supremacy, inflamed by the presidency, which they see a resurgence of in this country.

Like many protests, today is about disruption. The point is to march through counties like this, reminding white voters and consumers the country is in turmoil, white supremacy is real, and the events in Charlottesville weren’t a one-off.

As the march leaves the day’s starting point, conversations about protest elsewhere are taking place.

"If we are going to confront white supremacy in one way we should support confronting it in all ways, on and off the football field, whenever the opportunity presents itself,” Jamal Johnson, the rally’s pace-keeper says.

Of course, Colin Kaepernick is a topic.

Organizers say this march is the perfect environment to discuss how white supremacy manifests in different spaces, including sports. If they have plans to fight white supremacy, it’s naive to think systems of athletics aren’t complicit in it and benefit from it. Equally, it’s ingenuous to ignore how sports are shaping these conversations.

Yes, this is about DACA and the Dreamers, taking down Confederate idolatry, combating 45 and the goons wearing his red hats, but it’s also about a movement bubbling for a year to make a typically conservative sports fanbase care about progressive issues.

People here wish athletes were marching. They want more to kneel. They beg for Kaepernick to have a job. Most importantly, their marching is the byproduct of the decade: the result of unjust policies and police brutality, the things sparking the current sports unrest. Backlash against national anthem protests, Kaepernick’s drop from star quarterback to football exile, and Michael Bennett’s harassment by police; all these only add fuel to their fire.

That’s what has Johnson fired up before everyone starts walking. He’s fresh off another march from Philly to DC for 21 days. The North Philadelphian has been road-trekking for a month. To him, both Kaepernick’s stand and their march are one and the same. Many here agree.

It seems like America might really be waking up, he says. If it takes something as horrific as Charlottesville, where white Americans marched and someone was killed in the name of a white ethno-state, then there’s more to be done. But he has to run this rally, so he can’t keep talking. Before he leaves he notes one last thing.

"All people of color need to come together to combat this no matter what your ideology is,” Johnson says. “No matter what the venue is. Football or here in Virginia. We are all being affected by this."

Walking down the narrow Lee Highway, a national auto trail originally named for Confederate general Robert E. Lee in 1919, you can anticipate the glances, stares, and quips that are coming.

Oil-cheeked scrap shop owners in Fairfax yell “Left Wing Nazis!” at marchers. Random white men by gas stations in Falls Church tell people “I’m not the supremacist here!” Men come with signs to counter-protest, demanding Confederate statues on their land remain untouched, and calling for Trump’s re-election. Some men are reported to be waiting for marchers with guns at a local restaurant.

Stephen Green finds it slightly amusing. You see him ruffle a smile from time to time as he walks in a clergyman’s attire. Green, along with many here, was among the original organizers of a rally for Kaepernick in New York in August. He takes a minute to peer behind him.

"Its good to see the growth, man. Look at this,” he says.

Green is another who sees a direct line connecting the events in Charlottesville to what athletes have been talking about for months in the league.

“This is a combustion of all of the American frustration that people are feeling,” Green says. “We’ve seen this all across the country. Time and time again. It’s incumbent on us to recognize this movement that is flourishing.”

As he and many organizers are prone to do, Green compares Kaepernick to Rosa Parks, which is perhaps a reach. But in his words there is a small truth.

Rosa Parks’ bus protest in 1955 made her the mother of a Civil Rights Movement that lasted past Martin Luther King Jr.’s death in 1968. It was an era filled with protest that led to legislation and the federal protection of the civil rights of people, allowing them to keep doing what America was born from: protest. The depiction is for an assumed second wave of the original Civil Rights Movement, making Kaepernick is this era’s Parks, so the logic goes.

Green believes in that system. He continues to say this is only the beginning. If players’ right to protest is going to be safeguarded by the league, it takes protests in multiple places where white supremacy lives, including America’s football fields and marches in Trump Country.

“From Trayvon Martin to Freddie Grey, to Colin Kaepernick and now Charlottesville, it’s all been bubbling up to this cataclysmic moment that we’re seeing right now in our nation’s history,” he says. “The same issues Kaepernick kneeled for. These are the same issues we are walking 118 miles for.”

Kyle O’Leary / Working Families

Getting closer to Washington, onlookers being to show signs of pride for the marchers.

Employees from a local 7-Eleven give out free water to marchers on the side of the road. The entire restaurant at Cafe Kindred on N. Washington St. stop their meals to voice their support. At one point in Falls Church, a line of cars honk and cheer for the marchers. People join in for a block or two at a time. Moms of color wave tiny American flags from row-homes while holding their kids.

These marchers are Mountaineers from West Virginia. They're Eagles fans from Philadelphia and Wahoos from Charlottesville. Some of them even watch the Patriots, though thanks to his shows of support for Trump, they aren’t too keen on Tom Brady.

Kristie Condie, a white realtor in Loudon County, Va., says she turned her messages off for the day. She tires of posting her feelings on Twitter and Facebook. After the election, her teenage daughter felt the aches of depression. Condie says she never experienced a moment like this as an adult.

The current administration has lit a fire under white, left-leaning, and moderate Americans. It has motivated them to join the era’s protest movement, which has largely been black and brown. Some days, the majority of people participating in the march are white.

Condie sees the importance of having white people on the picket lines. It’s vital for them to be here, protesting and supporting folks of color who have experienced oppression. Like many, she spoke about the faces of protest America is discovering. One of them being Kaepernick’s.

“Colin Kaepernick, God bless him. I love him,” she says. “For people to say that his voice doesn’t matter and it’s not an appropriate time to do that, that’s why people fought and died for our country. You should be able to do that at any time. Any location.”

Just as more white people have joined in marches and protests, there have been similar calls for white athletes to mirror their black counterparts.

Condie agrees. She thinks more white people should speak fiercely about racism, and that Charlottesville was a spark.

“To have [Charlottesville] happen gave national attention to white Americans who are otherwise quiet,” Condie says. “Black Americans have been fighting this for their entire existence in this country. So, it’s about damn time other people step up and help ‘em.”

As the group is approaching Washington, finally, they stop to rest. Nikki Graves Henderson, the director of historical projects at Tinner Hill Heritage Foundation, an organization built in 1997 to preserve the Civil Rights Era history of the surrounding Virginia townships, joins them.

She provides them with tickets to the Blacksonian in DC. Like Green, she stands in awe of the dozens, turning into hundreds, gathering here.

Henderson talks about the rise of athletes and entertainers, like Kaepernick, using their platforms to speak about change.

“It’s not something you talk about over dinner. It’s something you have to live, to practice, to stop and think about the things you do and say everyday,” she says.

Before walking through Arlington and into Washington, Stephanie Llanes, a movement lawyer for the Center for Constitutional Rights, finishes several interviews and looks through her phone. She’s informed that Bennett, a pro bowler on the Seahawks, has just revealed that cops threw him to the ground in Vegas after the Conor McGregor-Floyd Mayweather fight, accusing him of being a suspect in a shooting.

She speaks with fury. She says people like Kaepernick and Bennett have been “incredible assets” to their movement. She’s never seen athletes not only speak freely about ending police violence and racial injustice, but also throwing their livelihoods, money, and bodies on the line for the cause.

The attack of Bennett adds to the storm they hope to bring to Washington.

“It explicitly shows that we have a gatekeeper of white supremacy called police, people who have guns that supposedly represent the government of this country,” she said. “In one way it’s not surprising. But I’m glad [Bennett’s] speaking up. I’m glad he’s standing with Kaepernick ... [they] believe a different existence is possible.”

Kyle O’Leary / Working Families

The rain is unceasing as marchers approach the MLK Memorial. Smiles spread across their cheeks and they begin to remind DC why they’re here.

People shout about being black and beautiful. They explain how Dreamers are integral to America. They preach and cry for equality under the statue of a man who died doing the same.

A man with a red pin depicting Kaepernick kneeling attached to his denim jacket watches the marchers as they start to head toward the White House.

"Marches like these are critically important because they demonstrate that what happened in Charlottesville is not forgotten,” Charles Coleman Jr., a civil rights attorney in DC for the march, said.

“It's Charlottesvilles all across America. For this to continue we need this same cross section of people committed to ending white supremacy to show up and engage. This is in the vein that Kaepernick knelt for. He put out an affirmation for the right to exist for black people. That can't be lost even as we march like this."

As they start to march, Green reminds them of how far they’ve come.

“The Dream did not begin today,” he says into a microphone. “Y'all know this isn't the end right?"

The group nods. And they start their journey to the center of Washington, to confront the place housing a man they believe is at the middle of this hate. But they aren’t enraged. They’re happy. They’re together. They start to sing.

There are black hands touching white hands, white hands grabbing brown hands, in unison. For a moment as you hear the chorus, the beauty of the unity is inescapable. It’s delightful and it’s confusing. Because for a second, one might think this is what America is consistently capable of. As if their words aren’t reeking of demand.

“Solid as a rock,” Nelini Stamp, a lead organizer, sings.

The crowd responds, “Soliiiiddd as a rock.”

“Rooted as a tree.”

“Rooooted as a tree.”

“We are here.”

“WE ARE HERE!!”

“Standing strong.”

“STANDING STRONG!!”

“In our rightful place.”

“In ourrrrr rightful place!”