n Falcons coach Dan Quinn dream world, society as a whole would resemble the diversity of an NFL locker room.
The team’s social justice committee has been meeting since after Colin Kaepernick first starting kneeling to protest social injustices during the 2017 season. They’ve had meetings over the spring and summer and most recently in the wake of the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
Several NFL teams elected not to practice on Thursday. The Milwaukee Bucks elected not to take the court and led to league-wide postponement of the NBA playoff games on Wednesday.
The Arizona Cardinals, Chicago Bears, Denver Broncos, Green Bay Packers, Indianapolis Colts, New York Jets, Tennessee Titans and Washington Football Team all chose not to practice. The Detroit Lions did not practice on Tuesday in protest.
“Certainly, coming from my end of things, how as a white coach can I become a better ally?,” Quinn said. “Because the stories that you have heard bothered you so much to say, ‘Hey man, I support’ just wasn’t enough. So, learning about experiences that have taken place, hearing about those, those really bothered me deep down.
“I just wanted to get to this space to say, ‘Hey, just saying I support you just isn’t enough.’ That, to me, was saying, ‘What does that look like? What does an ally look like in this space?’ Because I wanted to have a bigger role.”
Defensive end Steven Means, one of the leaders on the team’s social justice committee, wants to see police reform and national standardized training.
“Not everybody grew up in a gang-infested, impoverished (and) poor neighborhood like I (did),” Means said. “So, I have to understand that and I have to say, you know what, at least this person is sitting here asking me why do you feel this certain type of way about something that happened to somebody who you don’t even know.”
Means said the death of a childhood friend at the hands of police helped to shape his view.
“I was at a point where I was hopeless,” Means said. “I was at a point where I didn’t think there would be change, like I said, because I’ve constantly seen it over and over.”
But the diversity of the protesters worldwide over the summer after the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota gave Means hope. Also, the video of Ahmaud Arbery who was shot in Brunswick and the police shooting of Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta has been discussed.
“Now you’ve got every race you can think of walking in arms with us,” Means said. “Everyone is outraged. Now is the time, if we ever had a time to keep driving home (the point) and not get to that point of hopelessness.”
The Falcons are not sure how they’ll respond to the latest shooting.
“We are trying to figure out the best ways to go forward to where we are not doing anything that’s redundant or doing things that are kind of like knee jerk reactions,” Means said. “We are trying to get real change and trying to figure out the best ways to step forward to create a forum for the team, but also make change outside of the team.”
The Falcons have met with nine different high school athletic directors in the area to try to round up young workers to man the polls during the upcoming election during the pandemic. They recognized that most of the older workers are elderly and may not come out for health concerns.
“We are trying to spark change for real and not just jump on the train,” Means said.
After the video of the Blake shooting was released, word got around the locker room pretty quickly.
“I think the hardest part, especially for me, coming for one of those type of environments, the hardest part is to battle your emotions through all of it,” Means said. “I grew up seeing things happen with my own eyes. You create a certain perspective where normality is what you perceive it to be. You get to the point where it’s not. It’s not normal.
“You kind of find a little bit of hope, to where it’s OK, it’s not normal. It’s being publicize now. We are creating a lot of awareness about it. A lot of people around the world (are) able to see it. Then you get to the point where we create that hype and that hope and then that hope is crushed because it continues to happen over and over.”
Means believes the social justice committee will lean into the league’s voting initiative to help them respond to the Blake shooting.
“Voting is the one thing that you can do to change the whole landscape to get the people out of there that need to go, to get new DA’s (District Attorneys), to get in new judges, to get in new people of power to get the legislative laws that are set in place to allow things like this to happen and continue to happen and allow people to continue to get off the hook for it happening.”
Beyond voting, Means isn’t sure what the social justice committee will decide.
“Nobody is an expert at it, because if it (were) some experts in this field, I don’t think it would be happening,” Means said. “The biggest thing for us is creating that space and continuing to go as hard as we can at the voting part of it because that’s what is going to create long-term change.”
The videos, from Floyd to Arbery to Brooks to Blake, are hard to watch.
“I see these type of videos and a certain type of traumas and PTSDs (post-traumatic stress disorder) kicked back in from my childhood,” Means said. “Even bringing up the space where we are able to get names on the back of the helmets for those people who we might know or who we might have heard about.”
Means has the name of one childhood friend approved by the NFL, Dennis Browning Jr. He seeking to get two other names approved that he can wear on the back of his helmet.
“I’m trying to get those names approved and cycle between those three,” Means said. “I’m definitely partaking (in the helmet program).”
Quinn, who took part in the “Buckhead4BlackLives” march in June, plans to keep the forum open for the team to take action.
“To me, we’re definitely in a movement,” Quinn said.
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