There is Strength in Unity; It Takes Everybody Wanting Everybody In
A year ago, it would not have been possible. The opening game of the delayed Major League Baseball season between the Washington Nationals and the New York Yankees started with all the players from both teams kneeling, for 60 seconds of silence, holding a 200-yard black banner that stretched around home plate from one outfield to the other.
The power was in the visual. Every player and every coach from both teams kneeling. We have become almost used to one or several players kneeling during the playing of the national anthem in a demonstration against racial injustice. The kneeling has been controversial and vigorously debated.
Then last week we saw every member of both teams kneeling. It didn’t just happen. Players wanted to make it happen.
Aaron Judge, one of the outfielders for the Yankees, was quoted in the New York Times, “We got a lot of guys in this clubhouse with different beliefs, different feelings, different walks of life and they’re from different countries. We wanted to respect all of that. As a team, we made a united decision to kneel right before the anthem. We wanted something to include everybody.”
‘“It starts with us and starts with the team.’ The players, he said, have been increasingly talking with each other about their separate experiences. ‘I don’t have all the answers now, but I like where we are going with this.”’
“The idea of taking a knee for 60 seconds of silence was agreed upon by the Yankees in a team meeting the night before Thursday’s season opener and then shared with the Nationals. For the national anthem, both sides stood again.”
“After Thursday’s game, Yankees outfielder Giancarlo Stanton said his teammates appreciated that the moment of unity was player-driven.”
The unified action included players who would have otherwise knelt during the anthem and those who would not have taken a knee at all. That diversity was back on display prior to the second game of the season.
There is an example here for our political parties. Unity and diversity are not exclusive.
We can keep our beliefs and find an action that accommodates the beliefs of others. Not everything need rise to the level of non-negotiable principle.
The temptation, however, is to make everything a matter of principle and withdraw from those who think differently.
A member of the governing board of the Republican Party of Texas recently left the board because it was full of “a lot of establishment do-nothings,” and suggested, “Why don’t we just disband the whole thing and start from scratch?”
A young progressive activist expressed a similar attitude toward the Democratic Party, telling the Times, “To win us back, the Democratic Party needs to actually listen to us and serve us. Or else they need to die and we will create a new party ourselves.”
If everybody in a new party has to think the same, there won’t be enough to make a difference. Success as a party depends on everybody wanting everybody included and being able to say with conviction, “We have a lot [of people in this party] with different beliefs, different feelings, different walks of life. We want to respect all that. As a team we made a united decision.”
Douglas Kane is the author of "Our Politics: Reflections on Political Life" published in 2019 by Southern Illinois University Press
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