Following the lead of 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, every member of a high school football team in San Francisco took a knee during the national anthem at their game last Saturday.
The San Francisco Chronicle reports that before the game, Mission High School team captain and starting quarterback Niamey Harris said he told the team, “This is for helping everybody else in the world to understand that black people and people of color are going though difficulties and they need help. It’s not going to take care of itself.”
Read More: Colin Kaepernick and a Brief History of Protest in Sports
But it wasn’t just the black high schoolers who took a knee. The whole team did. “I consider my teammates my brothers, and being that my brothers on the team are black and oppressed, then of course by all means I’m going to support them and take the knee,” Marvin Pusung-Zita, whose family is from the Philippines, told the Chronicle. The team plans to continue their protest during the season.
Kaepernick’s protest of not standing during the national anthem to highlight racial inequality touched off a wave of other protests among NFL players. His statement drew so much coverage that even President Obama has weighed in, saying about Kaepernick, “I don’t doubt his sincerity. I think he cares about some real, legitimate issues that need to be talked about.”
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