“Kind of feel like how when I had my first child, it was something extra popped on on the inside of me. Like a light bulb flash. Kind of like on the spiritual level. For some reason, I knew why my baby was crying. I knew what certain cries meant. And it’s kind of how it is now with the way of me wanting to like protest and speak up.” “Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. He’s fired!” “Now student athletes may soon be taking a knee or linking arms during the national anthem.” “And here y’all are up there [expletive] protesting and taking a damn knee because of you feel inequality. Here in Shreveport, freaking killing every damn night, sometimes three a night, all by your [expletive] people.” “It’s just not my baby crying. It’s my neighborhood crying. It’s my race crying.” “The Confederate monument must be removed. It is a symbol of hatred, not history.” “You know, everybody has their own opinion about as far as racism, as for what is right, what’s wrong. And I feel like that as Americans, something as minute as this shouldn’t even come on our desk, let alone come to a vote.” “That statue does not offend anyone. It’s a statue. It’s a monument. It’s not something that has slavery written on it like people seem to think.” “Nobody wants to just really accept that it is a thing called white privilege. This monument we agree is historic, but we don’t feel like the courthouse is the place for it to be. It just doesn’t show equality in anything.” “Rex Dukes.” “How you guys doing today? You think by removing the monument, this will bring in unity. It is not going to bring in unity whatsoever. This will further divide this country to a point to where you could end up in another civil war. Do any of y’all really want to fight a war in this day and age? I’ve seen what can happen when a high-powered bullet hits somebody’s head. You don’t want it to happen here. Thank you.” “The war has never stopped. It slowed down. It changed the names. It changed the people. But it has always been a war. Our local TV station alerted us that our boys may protest during their game. I was so excited about my baby. I was like, well, maybe he’ll be able to have his voice now. You doing football practice today? He could take a knee. Antonio, he’s been on the other side of the police. He basically got mistaken for a grown man running from a crime scene. They had their guns drawn. He was 13 years old.” “I thought about taking the knee. Me and my momma talked about it. Me and my coach talked about it, too.” “In some cases, the students could face a punishment after doing so.” “All right, Nate. Thank you. Green Oaks will, by the way, take on Plain Dealing High School Friday night. And they’ll do so in Bossier Parish. We’ll keep you posted.” Crossing over that river, I had a feeling of fear. I was anxious. We knew we were out there in the middle of nowhere, where we know that they are dead struck on making us stand up for the national anthem.” “Y’all listen up. This game today is more than a bunch of trouble that these adults brought to us. This is a football game. This is our homecoming. This is about you and about Green Oaks. Y’all children playing a game, not about all this other crap that they brought into our town. Now, we’ve got to regain our focus on the task at hand and play in this football game.” “Please remain standing for the national anthem, played by the Plain Dealing band.” [music] “You’ve got people that care. You’ve got people that don’t care. And you’ve got people that aren’t allowed to care. And right now, we’re dealing with people that aren’t allowed to care. When my son told me he wasn’t allowed to kneel, I cried like a baby. [unclear] I felt like me and my son were being silenced by his own coach. I felt like you’re my own race and you’re helping them silence us.” “The racial tension, wow, I’ve never in a million years thought that I would be going through this with a football team. Some things that were said on Twitter and Facebook. We were called the n-word, we were called monkeys, we called just some of everything. It was unfair. Racism still exists, and it showed this week.” “I just want you to understand, I wasn’t mad at you. I was mad at your coach. I was mad because I felt like me and your daddy should have been in the decision. But I’m glad he made the decision that he made, because at that time, when I was at home crying telling you that I wanted you to take a knee during the national anthem, he was already receiving threats about y’all. And I didn’t know that until I spoke with him.” “I just found out too.” “When did you find out, last night?” “No, in the morning.” “That morning when you got to school?” “When I got to school and I gave him your phone number. I just found out that people called us monkeys and stuff like that.” “Is that everything?” “Yes, Ma’am. I’m fine. Thank you. I knew it was still going on, but I never thought that you would have to go through it. I was hoping that he wouldn’t tell y’all. I didn’t know. I didn’t know that he gave y’all direct word of what y’all was being called.” “I’m not worried about it. I just want to go to school and just play football, make good grades and be successful in life.” “That’s all I want you to do, Tony. That’s all I’m asking you to do. I just don’t want you to be sidetracked. Me and Daddy, we’re going to take the knee for you. That’s how we’re going to do it.” “I believe this is LaPeachra Dotie Bell.” “I think it was God’s way of showing like, you think you’ve been silenced with this knee thing. Watch me protect you and give you an even larger platform to speak on. When you’ve got a monument that’s so biased and so racist, it’s basically letting our youth know in so many ways, this is how I feel, that nobody really cares. Everybody breaking everything down to a race issue, but people don’t understand, it’s about humanity. It’s what’s right. And my daddy always just told me, you know, you stand for something or you’ll fall for anything. And as of right now, I choose to stand to get this monument removed, because hopefully it’s a it’s a breaking point to show my children and the youth that I’m here speaking for from my neighborhood, that somebody cares. A lot of people are saying, put it in a museum. But I say, crumble it up, and make keepsakes out of it, and hand it out to all the people that still want it to be around.” “Please vote on the motion to —” “To remove.” “— to remove. That was the original motion to remove.” “In the name of Jesus.” “Passes 7 to 5.” [applause] “It was powerful. It was powerful.” “Yes ma’am, because it’s all I’ve got to know.” “And it doesn’t take big words.” “That’s what I’m saying.” “You come back here. We’ll vote for you.” “I already know that it’s going to create a divide. But what I’m trying to get people to understand is I’m a black woman, and I’m a Southern woman, and I’m about as Southern as they come.” When the K.K.K. came about, the American flag — go back and look in your history, look at the pictures, thousands and thousands of Klansmen marched in Washington, D.C. holding the American flag. Not a single flag.” “Let’s have civil dialogue without getting mad at each other.” “Y’all have y’all’s beliefs. I have mine.” “No, our belief is that —” “Like I said, over 300 of my people, of my ancestors, fought in the Confederate war. A hundred something fought on the Union side. So we had both sides fighting.” “Slavery is wrong.” “So if that was the case — Listen.” “Slavery is wrong no matter who does it.” “That hat that you have on, it should hurt you just as well as it hurts me.” So until you be able to understand why it hurts us, we’ll never be able to come to an agreement.” “No, we’re good. It’s nice meeting you, sir. It’s nice to have you here.” “So, basically, he got his word in and we can’t say what we have to say. Ma’am, you don’t understand. Even when that monument leaves, we’re still going to have to go through this. My baby, he knows things are going wrong in the world. He knows that.” “At this time, we would ask that everyone would please stand. If you would please stand. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.” “By the monument being removed, it just gives us a value on our lives. It’s a first step for us, but it’s still a lot more steps that have got to be took.” “One nation, under God, indivisible, with life, liberty, and justice for all.”