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Reader Comments: Time to Stop Honoring Traitors Who Fought for Slavery - Take Down ALL Symbols of Hate - Sign the petition; Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on Colin Kaepernick; Growing Up White in America - Unlearning the Myth of American Innocence; DSA's Convention - initial reader responses - what do you think?; Will Democrats Support Single-Payer in future elections; The Forgotten World of Communist Bookstores; lots of resources; and more....

The NBA legend, who once faced withering criticism after he converted to Islam and changed his name, argues that NFL players need to step up in solidarity and defend an outspoken black quarterback fighting for social justice and a job.

The truth is ugly as sin. The NFL is denying Colin Kaepernick employment not because he isn’t “good enough” but because he is being shut out for the crime of using his platform to protest the killing of black kids by police. NFL owners don’t make pariahs out of players who beat women or face accusations of murder. Kaepernick’s pariah status is about sending a shot across the bow at every political athlete—particularly black athletes—that they better toe the line.

In the weeks since Colin Kaepernick, a San Francisco 49ers quarterback, took a knee during the national anthem — the protest against racial injustice he launched has pushed that conversation onto a quintessential American stage: the high school football field.

The opposition to Colin Kaepernick's protest - from the police unions to Beltway pundits to an online army of bigots-wants to ensure that this protest against police violence stays as segregated as possible. If high-profile white NFL or Major League Baseball players start to kneel in solidarity with the idea that Black Lives Matter, then the law-and-order crowd loses racism as the most effective tool in their kit to keep this movement quarantined.

If Kaepernick had donated $1 million without the anthem protest, or if he’d stuck to venting on social media, then prominent columnists and TV yakkers wouldn’t be calling him an idiot. Nobody would be saying anything at all, because nobody would care. Kaepernick’s gesture worked because it was divisive.

Reader Comments (Lots): Solidarity with Standing Rock Sioux Tribe against Dakota Access Pipeline - And Then the Dogs Came; America's Own Genocide; Slavery and the National Anthem; Sit with Colin Kaepernick; Woody Guthrie's Assault on 'Old Man Trump'; Donald Trump and White Voters; How Fugitive Slaves Kept Their Freedom - Deep in the Swamps; Black Lives Matter; Fred Hellerman; Gene Wilder; Solidarity with Yemen; Announcements; and more...

Jackie Robinson, writing in 1972: I cannot stand and sing the anthem. I cannot salute the flag. I know that I am a black man in a white world. Jim Brown, the Cleveland Browns Hall of Fame running backin 2016 said he stands '100 percent' behind Colin Kaepernick. Further, Kaepernick 'made all the sense in the world' in explaining his position. This is part of a long tradition of athletes, especially African American athletes combining sport and protest. (* ESPN)