Last Sunday, I cheered on the Seahawks as they defeated the Rams to advance to the Super Bowl. But it felt strange watching football right after ICE officers killed Alex Pretti and Renee Good, and the Trump administration tried to stop Minnesota police from even investigating. The administration has been attacking democracy in every other way they can, including ripping plaques about Black history from national monuments. But football and conscience can be united—if the Seahawks, Patriots and other NFL players join the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) in stepping up and speaking out.

The Seahawks don’t duck hard football conversations. I’m thinking of Nick Emmanwori talking to Riq Woolen after Woolen’s taunting penalty risked costing the Seahawks the game, and Julian Love then putting an arm around Woolen’s shoulder, saying “I love you, and you’re going to win the game for us.” Emmanwori talked of “a true brotherhood, where we can talk to anybody in any type of way or any type of message.”

So how about talking to the nation when all eyes will be on the Super Bowl, by stating that it’s not OK for unaccountable government agents to shoot people at their whim? How about inviting the Patriots and the NFL Players Association to do the same? Players could link arms, bow their heads, and join together in a moment of silence for Pretti and Good. They could hold a pre-game press conference or speak out leading up to the game. They could wear armbands or ribbons, add messages to their practice jerseys, or otherwise display phrases like Choose Justice or Defend Democracy. They could act with dignity while acknowledging the crisis.

They don’t even have to invent their own statement, just embrace that of the NBPA: “Players can no longer remain silent. Now more than ever, we must defend the right to freedom of speech and stand in solidarity with the people in Minnesota protesting and risking their lives to demand justice…. We refuse to let the flames of division threaten the civil liberties that are meant to protect us all.”

Since our own Brandi Carlile is singing America the Beautiful before the initial kickoff, she can also raise these issues, by mentioning the song’s original context: Its writer, Katherine Lee Bates, opposed America’s imperial bullying, so included lines like God mend thine every flaw, Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law!

Social change is never linear, but statements by athletes have mattered time and again. Jackie Robinson helped pave the ground for the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. Tennis great Arthur Ashe pressured South Africa to end apartheid. Our newly elected Seattle City Attorney Erika Evans is inspired by her grandfather, Lee Evans, who protested racial injustice as a gold medalist at the 1968 Olympics. During the Legion of Boom days, Seahawks like Richard Sherman, Doug Baldwin and Michael Bennett courageously called for Americans to confront police killings.

Would speaking out be a risk? Maybe, because the NFL prizes money over justice, and the owners did their best to blackball Colin Kaepernick as a warning. But as Nelson Mandela has said, courage is “not the absence of fear but the triumph over it,” and the more people who speak out, the harder it is to come after them. In Alex Pretti’s words, spoken at memorial for a veteran he cared for as a nurse, we have to “remember that freedom isn’t free. We have to work at it, nurture it, protect it and even sacrifice for it.”

In this period of national crisis, our actions now will shape whether we still have a real democracy in the years to come, or a hollowed-out shell. I hope the Seahawks I cheer for will rise to the occasion.

This article also ran in the Seattle Times.

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