Seahawks cancel practice. Pete Carroll demands whites finally listen to Black people
The players had already voted not to practice.
Now they are voting for change.
Pete Carroll walked in front of a video camera with a Seahawks-logoed background. He took off his mask.
He then looked into the camera and told a Zoom audience of media and fans: “I’m going to talk to you guys about something that’s on my heart.”
For more than 14 minutes, Seattle’s 68-year-old coach didn’t say one word about football or training camp or the upcoming opening game just two weeks and one day away—other than to mention he’s been coaching “since I was 13 years old coaching Pop Warner kids” in Marin County, California.
For 14 minutes, 26 seconds, he took no questions. He described the pain and fear Black people, including his Seahawks players, live in daily (as of June, 70 of the 90 players on the team were Black men). He described the most immediate action they are taking for change. They all chose to be 100% registered to vote for Election Day instead of practicing Saturday.
Likening it to the March on Washington headlined by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, Carroll called for “60 days to march, a commitment to vote” by every, single American eligible to on Nov. 3.
“Here’s one point: what can we do? Well, we’ve got 60 days,” Seattle coach Pete Carroll said of the time until Election Day.
“The March on Washington (in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s) was all about commitment. Well, why not take these 60 days and make a commitment to vote, and march together to get everybody in this country to vote?
“So that everybody has the voice, and everybody that needs to speak out gets heard. And we don’t let anybody squelch any aspect of the voting potential. Not one, frickin’ vote. And we need to start now. We need to start voting, start the process. Register. Get voted.
“All of our players will be officially registered today.”
Carroll shrugged.
“That’s a start,” he said.
“Sixty days to march, a commitment to vote. Can we get that done? We can. We can do that. At least that’s proactive, right now, because that’s the hardest part is, what do you do? How do you help?”
Carroll spoke specifically to white Americans. He demanded people listen to Black people.
Now.
“They are crying out,” Carroll said.
“Black people know the truth. They know exactly what is going on. It’s white people that don’t know.
“It’s not that they’re not telling us. They’ve been telling us the stories. We know what’s right and what’’s wrong. We just have not been open to listen to it. We’ve been unwilling to accept the real history, and been taught a false history of what happened in this country. We have been basing things on false premises. And it has not been about equality for all. ...
“This is a humanity issue that we are dealing with. This is a white-people’s issue to get over it and learn what’s going on and figure it out the issue to get over. And start loving. Everybody. ...
“Our players are screaming at us: ‘Can you feel me? Can you see me? Can you hear me?’ They just want to be respected. They just want to be accepted, just like all of our white families and children want to be. It’s no different, because we are all the same.
“There’s a lot of people that don’t see it that way. But there’s a lot of people that do. And I’m hoping that from this point forward maybe there’s a new door to open for us, and we can walk through it together with the thought of doing what’s right.
“What’s right is treating people equally.”
The believer and preacher of grit in sports marveled at the resiliency of Blacks in America. Now. For the last half century. For more than 400 years.
“Never before this year has it been so deep and so rich in the exchanges with our players and how they’ve taken this opportunity to teach us more and deeper about what the life of a Black man is like in America—black man and woman,” Carroll said. “And they’ve been compelled to speak out more than ever...which we need to hear.
“White people don’t know. They don’t know enough. And they need to be coached up. They need to be educated about what the heck is going on in this world.
“The Black people can’t scream any more. They can’t march any more. They can’t bare their souls any more to what they’ve lived with for hundreds of years. ...
“Can you imagine how long Black people have hung together with the faith and the hope that something’s going to change and it’s going to be better?” Carroll said. “Unbelievable endurance, unbelievable competitiveness, to just keep hanging. I’m so moved by all of that. I cannot imagine how they’ve been able to do it under these circumstances. They’ve been terrible. But they are still hangin’, and they are still hopin’.
“Racism’s going, out the door. It’s got to be gone. It’s got to be out the frickin’ door, and get rid of it. It’s got to GO. And we’ve go to figure out the way to get that done.”
It was one of the more extraordinary press conferences one will ever see in the NFL, whose teams are run by mostly white, billionaire owners.
Owners the players are now not telling but shouting at to act.
“They are crying out. Again,” Carroll said. “They are calling for us--white people--to figure it out. And to listen. And to fix all the obvious problems that we know. ...
“We’ve got to do the right thing. We’ve got to do the right thing by caring for people and loving people. Because they deserve it. Simple as that.”
All-Pro safety Jamal Adams went online after Carroll’s message to thank him and his new team, for listening.
Adams posted on Twitter: “Big thank you to Coach Pete, John Schneider & the entire Seahawks organization for really hearing us as Black athletes. This is a special place, like I’ve said before where everyone’s willing to learn and understand that wrong is wrong, and right is right.”
Schneider is the team’s general manager.
The Seahawks’—and professional athletes’—demands for action as part of the Black Lives Matter movement gained renewed momentum this week after a white police officer in Wisconsin shot Black man Jacob Blake seven times in the back in front of his family.
Friday, quarterback Russell Wilson told KIRO-AM radio if the Seahawks had a game this week they would not have played it, to further the Black Lives Matter movement into action.
Saturday morning, with little notice, the team changed its plan to have Chris Carson, Tre Flowers and Jarran Reed on remote Zoom press conferences. Carroll replaced them on the online call with the media. He was more than 90 minutes late starting it.
Following their daily, morning walk-through practice the players massed on the grass berm adjacent to the practice fields for a lengthy team meeting. It’s the berm on which a couple thousand fans would be crowded onto each training-camp day if not for the coronavirus pandemic closing all practices this month.
The players decided during that meeting to not practice Saturday afternoon. They are scheduled to have a scrimmage on Sunday, and the team says that remains on.
At the end of the team meeting, Carroll got in front of the remote camera and gave his extraordinary call to act. Meanwhile, 2 1/2 hours and longer into the meeting, a handful of Seahawks players—white and Black—were still talking in a circle on the practice field.
Back inside the team facility in front of the remote camera, Carroll said he believes “extraordinary things” will happen in our country.
He stopped. He sighed.
“I hope somebody’s listening, because we have to create the change, and we’ve got to be the change to get that done.”
The coach turned away from the microphone.
“I’m out,” he said.
And he walked off.
Friday, Wilson said on KIRO-AM radio: “I think the world is truly seeing the ugliness of society, at times.
“I think what’s truly disappointing is just know that we, as athletes, try to make a difference, and sometimes people don’t want to listen and don’t want to recognize that could have been us. That could be us. I think that’s a real reality.
“So I think for us, as a team, for the Seahawks, we are definitely discussing, what do we do next? How do we make a change? How do we cause movement and how do we make a difference? We are in the midst of all that right now.
“We don’t have weeks, and we don’t have months, we don’t have years to change it. We’ve got to all do it together—and we’ve got to do it now. We need change now. We need people to make a difference now.”
Later Friday, Seahawks safety Quandre Diggs said it was time for NFL team owners, most of them white billionaires, to act.
“I want the owners to get on board with us and understand our message,” Diggs said.
“I mean, I’m tired of them and I’m tired of teams kind of putting out PR statements.
“Let’s put some action in the words, you know what I mean? Let’s get it out in these neighborhoods. Let’s try to get these cops and people better training. If these guys are professionals, then they need to do professional work.
“I just don’t think that’s the thing.”
This story was originally published August 29, 2020 at 1:36 PM.
