There is a movement taking America by storm in today’s political climate, am talking about the Black Lives Matter Movement.

The BLM intends to fight social issues that have long been in the background of American culture, like police brutality and the disproportional treatment of minorities.

This phenomenon has escalated and has led to massive protests around the country after the Incident in Minneapolis in 2020 that saw a white police officer kneel on the neck of an unarmed black man for about 8 minutes until he stopped breathing and died.

However, the movement is a few years old, and it wasn’t until the NFL San Francisco Quarterback Colin Kaepernick.

First by seating and then kneeling during the national anthem that the debate switched to respect of the American Flag and President Donald Trump quickly fanned the flames with his criticism of the player and the sports league.  

This quickly spread to other sports and created a divisive schism as people were quick to take sides and because we are Americans, whose opinions are often voiced loudly and for everyone to hear.

 Such an event took place on September 11, 2019, when a group of USAF cadets were being sworn into service at Providence Park stadium in Portland, Oregon.
This would not have been quite a story except it happened during half time festivities of a pro women’s soccer match between the Portland Thorns and the North Carolina Courage.

With thousands of fans in attendance and those people quickly started booing loudly when the enlistees were asked to pledge allegiance to the United States and the President of the United States who also happens to be the commander in chief of the Armed forces.
The crowd, which by its reaction, was not a fan of that part of the ceremony and was incensed because it was forced to observe and be involved in it started to boo loudly for everyone to hear. And according to many of them on social media afterward, they were there to watch a soccer match and not a military ceremony. However, to be fair, they did cheer for the cadets when the ceremony was over.

A few months prior, the Major League soccer which runs the women pro league had issued a fans code conduct which among other things prohibited the use of certain items which included the Iron Front symbol which shows three arrows pointing down and is a symbol used by white supremacist and Nazi affiliated groups and the Betsy Ross flag which has also been associated with these same hate groups.

Fans believed that it was hypocritical for the league to have them sit through a military ceremony while political signage was banned during regular matches.

Moreover many there were not big fans of the President for one reason or the other, to be honest, Mr. Trump is not a big fan of sports fans, since he has the knack of playing divisive politics especially when it comes popular events as was the case with the NFL after the Kaepernick saga.
America is a great country where we enjoy unprecedented freedoms, and one of those is the freedom of self-expression. Sometimes one thing may not have anything to do with the other, and this crowd was obviously not happy with these soldiers taking the Oath of Enlistment, which on any other day would be a common occurrence.