By Doug Baldwin, Anquan Boldin, Malcolm Jenkins and Benjamin Watson
The writers are former and current professional football players.
June 21, 2018
President Trump recently made an offer to National Football League players like us who are committed to protesting injustice. Instead of
protesting, he suggested, we should give him names of people we believe were “unfairly treated by the justice system.” If he agrees they were
treated unfairly, he said, he will pardon them.
To be sure, the president’s clemency power can be a valuable tool for redressing injustice. Just look at Alice Johnson, age 63, who was serving a life
sentence for a nonviolent drug conviction until her sentence was commuted by President Trump. He should be commended for using his clemency
power in that case.
But a handful of pardons will not address the sort of systemic injustice that N.F.L. players have been protesting. These are problems that our
government has created, many of which occur at the local level. If President Trump thinks he can end these injustices if we deliver him a few
names, he hasn’t been listening to us.
As Americans, it is our constitutional right to question injustices when they occur, and we see them daily: police brutality, unnecessary
incarceration, excessive criminal sentencing, residential segregation and educational inequality. The United States effectively uses prison to treat
addiction, and you could argue it is also our largest mental-health provider. Law enforcement has a responsibility to serve its communities, yet this
responsibility has too often not met basic standards of accountability.
These injustices are so widespread as to seem practically written into our nation’s DNA. We must challenge these norms, investigate the reasons
for their pervasiveness and fight with all we have to change them. That is what we, as football players, are trying to do with our activism.
President Trump could help. He could use his powers, including the clemency power, to make a real dent in the federal prison population. People
like Alice Johnson, for example, should not be given de facto life sentences for nonviolent drug crimes in the first place. The president could stop
that from happening by issuing a blanket pardon for people in that situation who have already served long sentences.
Of the roughly 185,000 people locked up in federal prisons, about 79,000 are there for drug offenses of some kind — and 13.5 percent of them have
sentences of 20 years or more. Imagine how many more Alice Johnsons the president could pardon if he treated the issue like the systemic
problem it is, rather than asking professional football players for a few cases.
There is also a systemic problem in federal prison involving the elderly, who by next year will make up 28 percent of the federal prison population.
Releasing these prisoners would pose little to no risk to society. And yet from 2013 to 2017, the Bureau of Prisons approved only 6 percent of
roughly 5,400 “compassionate release” applications. About half of those applications were for people who had been convicted of nonviolent fraud or
drug offenses. Of those denied release, 266 died in custody.
President Trump could order the release of any drug offender over the age of 60 whose conviction is not recent. That would be the morally right
thing to do.
Apart from using the pardon power, there are policies the president and the attorney general could implement to help. For instance, they could
eliminate life without parole for nonviolent offenses. Currently, more than half of those sentenced to die in federal prison are there for nonviolent
offenses, and 30 percent of people sentenced to life (or de facto life) are there for a nonviolent drug crimes. Compare that with the state level: Only
2 percent of those sentenced to life (or de facto life) are there for drug offenses.
These changes, if President Trump were to make them, would positively affect the lives of thousands of people and have a lasting beneficial effect
on many more people in the future. The president can implement these changes with his pardon power and other executive decisions. His ability to
change the lives of people for the better is immense. We hope he uses it, not just for the few, but for the many.
President Trump, please note: Our being professional athletes has nothing to do with our commitment to fighting injustice. We are citizens who
embrace the values of empathy, integrity and justice, and we will fight for what we believe is right. We weren’t elected to do this. We do it because
we love this country, our communities and the people in them. This is our America, our right.
We intend to continue to challenge and encourage all Americans to remember why we are here in this world. We are here to treat one another with
the kindness and respect every human being deserves. And we hope our elected officials will use their power to do the same.
