Colin Kaepernick takes a knee for the national anthem during the NFL Championship Game.
This simple gesture, fiercely debated in the NFL, has resonated in protests. Some demonstrators, and in some cases the police, have paused to kneel, recalling both the manner of George Floyd's death and the gesture by quarterback Colin Kaepernick, which he used starting in 2016 as a call to end racial injustice and police brutality toward people of colour.
Across the US during these last hard, uncertain days, demonstrators have turned to the gesture on city streets. At a nighttime march in Minneapolis on Wednesday, a crowd of 400 knelt for nearly 5 somber minutes a knee to the neck. There, in front of a memorial, Mason dropped to a knee.
Even the football league has come around. On Friday, shortly after President Trump criticized a player for kneeling, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell apologized to his players for not listening to the concerns of African-American players earlier.