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The tactical decision of professional athletes to use the American flag as the vehicle to draw attention to police brutality has been an uncomfortable yet unquestioned success. The players have gotten the attention of a public largely unused to political demands from athletes; of owners who now resort to collusion and intimidation to counter the rising power of players and the perceived threat to their business model; and of a president who brands his disregard for the first stop in the Bill of Rights with a hashtag, #StandForOurAnthem.
So the world is paying attention, which is the first goal of protest. The second goal, however, is to articulate the injustice to the public, and it is here that the players' captive audience is watching them lose not just badly but Cleveland Browns badly.
The field-position battle of language is where America's most contentious social struggles have been fought. It is the battle between "white nationalism" and "alt-right"; "global warming" and "climate change"; "pro-life" and "anti-choice." For almost 50 years, the famous John Carlos-Tommie Smith raised fist at the 1968 Olympics has been called a "black power salute" when it actually meant "power to the people." When trying to win a sympathetic ear from the public for a political position (or to demonize the opponent), language is the battle.
In this most recent struggle, the NFL players have the moral position. The American injustice of law enforcement resorting to using full, often fatal force in too many encounters with black citizens is a scourge worth fighting, but the players have allowed themselves to be positioned as traitors. They've allowed the White House and the owners, such as Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, to pit them against the military, even though it was a Green Beret (Nate Boyer, a former long-snapper for the Seahawks) who suggested kneeling as the most respectful way to protest. They've allowed their movement to be framed as a protest against patriotism; when you're pitted against your own country, no matter how correct you might be, you cannot win. They've allowed the media and the public to define their injustice protest as an anthem protest, which is both inaccurate (protesting the anthem suggests the anthem is the problem) and fatally toxic.
It is not merely a semantic joust. Who in America has a negative reaction to protesting the anthem? Most everyone. Who has a problem with protesting injustice? Most no one. But without a clear message, the perception that the players are standing against the primary symbol of the country will repel the undecided and make even the more committed pause. See Oriole Adam Jones and Seahawk Richard Sherman.
Arguing that the flag isn't the target will fail; when the public hears "anthem protest," it shuts down, and Philando Castile, Eric Garner and Tamir Rice are denied justice a second time because the listening stops. Players, from Colin Kaepernick to Bruce Maxwell, are in fact engaged in an injustice protest. It doesn't pit them against their country; in fact, dissent confirms them as American. They are in the right, and yet they are losing ground every day.
The players, it must be remembered, are moonlighting -- athletes by day, activists by night. Organizing requires years of experience. There is a way to do it -- cultivating allies in the military to counter the anti-patriotism narrative; constantly changing protest gestures, beyond kneeling, to make it more difficult to be negatively branded. But most immediately, they must control the words of the fight, lest they allow the terminology to be defined for them. Carlos routinely corrects interviewers who refer to his gesture as a black power salute.
While these athletes learn, the clock ticks. They have been unable to sufficiently reach a public whose reflex is denial of black grievance. They are outflanked by owners no more committed to ending police violence today than three years ago, when Garner died at the hands of the NYPD. They lack the connective tissue necessary to stay on target and remember why they kneel. If the players don't recognize that hearts and minds are won by the justness of the cause and the language of the message, their movement will surely die, not because they were wrong but because they surrendered the shaping of the dialogue and did not reiterate the purpose of their movement. To use the words Richard Williams would use on his daughters Venus and Serena all those years ago on the tennis courts of Compton, failing to plan is planning to fail.