Arian Foster #29, Kenny Stills #10 and Michael Thomas #31 of the Miami Dolphins making a political statement, just like everyone who remained standing or complained about any of the above was making a political statement. Photo by Maddie Meyer/Getty Images.

Most of the Steelers sat out the national anthem on Sunday, after President Trump expressed an opinion on what players should do during the anthem. Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said, “We’re not going to play politics.” That is, however, impossible.




Everything is political, and it always has been. Politics is what the government does, and what opinions people have about what the government should do. Politics dictates what you can do and say, and what options you have in living your life. As they say, the personal is political.


Your ability to afford health insurance and to access care (or not) is political, in the sense that it was shaped by the actions or inactions of a government. The fact that hepatitis A is raging in the streets of San Diego is political. The fact that police kill unarmed black men at an alarming rate—and, indeed, the entire way that police and prisons and the criminal justice system operate—is political. Being able to marry the person you love is political. Fearing that they will be deported is political. Thanks to weakened safety regulations and climate-change denial, even hurricanes these days are political.



The fact that we go to war, and hang flags, and sing anthems and honor soldiers is political.

One Steelers player, Alejandro Villanueva, went on the field and stood for the anthem anyway. He is a veteran who has reportedly said that honoring service members by standing for the flag is more important than protesting against racial injustice. That is a very political statement.


Where do we get this idea that it’s possible to avoid making political statements? Well, if the police don’t spend much time in your mostly white suburb, protests of police violence are a spectator sport you can choose not to watch. If you can’t get pregnant, access to birth control and abortion is something you can ignore. If you don’t know any undocumented people, DACA seems like a political football with no relevance to your life. The only way to pretend that something is “not political” is to not have a stake in it.