Featured

Oakland High Schoolers Join Kaepernick in National Anthem Protest

Published

9 years ago

September 29, 2016

As dozens of athletes across the country are joining 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick in his national anthem protest, one group of young protestors has grabbed the nation’s attention.

Students at the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) have been particularly vocal about their opposition to a lack of police accountability and the unfair treatment of Black and Brown people at the hands of law enforcement.

In the past two weeks, football players at Castlemont High School and members of the OUSD honor band have held protests similar to Kaepernick’s during national anthems.

Castlemont High School gained national attention two weekends ago when its football players kneeled with their fists raised during the pre-game national anthem.

Then, last weekend, Kaepernick came to visit the players before an away game, offering them words of support and appreciation for their action.

“You are important. You make a difference. This matters and everything you do matters,” Kaepernick told the students in a locker room before the game.

Kaepernick later knelt down beside the Castlemont team as they held another national anthem protest, during which the players laid on the ground with their hands raised.

According to Castlemont’s athletic director, Traivon Soto, students and faculty held a number of discussions before their initial protest to talk about all sides of the issue.

“We talked about Kaepernick kneeling for the American flag and do you agree and disagree and why,” Soto told the Post.

“We teach life skills and talk about social issues at Castlemont because in a lot of ways students are deprived of resources,” he said. “We try to have discussion to make kids aware of what it’s like once they leave high school.”

Social justice issues are prevalent at the high school, which has ethnic studies as part of its curriculum, and the players have received a lot of positive support from their peers and administration.

Members of the OUSD honor band kneel during the national anthem at an Oakland A’s game. Photo courtesy of OUSD.

Last week, members of the OUSD honor band held a similar action by kneeling down on one knee near the end of their performance of the national anthem at an Oakland A’s baseball game.

As the song ended with the words “land of the free and home of the brave,” students took a knee, “as if to say, no we’re not all free but we’re brave and we’re going to do this,” said Zachary Pitt-Smith, music director at Edna Brewer Middle School, which participated in the protest.

Both protests have been widely praised by the greater Bay Area community, but they have also received backlash from those who claim that students are too young to understand issues of police brutality.

Pitt-Smith, however, says those claims are unfair to students whose experiences may be personally tied to issues of state violence.

“These kids are savvy and they live in somewhat violent communities and come from all walks of life,” he said.

“A lot of times they’re looked down upon in the general community as not informed or not old enough to vote. This (protest) gave the students a voice.”

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Up Next

Torres, Hutchinson and Trenado Run in Oakland District 5 School Board Race

Don't Miss

Oakland Cannabis Proposal to Fund Social Services Deadlocks in Council

Oakland Post

Click to comment

#NNPA BlackPress

Poll Shows Support for Policies That Help Families Afford Child Care

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — New national polling shows persistent voter concern about the affordability and availability of child care for working parents, alongside broad support across key demographic groups for federal child care policies that help families afford care.

Published

4 days ago

March 2, 2026

Oakland Post

By First Five Years Fund

New national polling shows persistent voter concern about the affordability and availability of child care for working parents, alongside broad support across key demographic groups for federal child care policies that help families afford care.

The national survey was conducted by UpOne Insight on behalf of the First Five Years Fund from January 13–18, 2026.

Key findings include:

• Parents need help: 80% of voters say the ability of working parents to find and afford child care is either in a state of crisis or a major problem.

• This is an affordability issue: 82% believe federal child care funding will help lower costs for working families — including 69% of Republicans, 84% of Independents, and 94% of Democrats.

• And there continues to be strong support (62%) for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), a federal program that makes it possible for hundreds of thousands of families to afford safe, quality care for their children while parents work or go to school, including a majority of Republicans, 63% of Independents and 72% of Democrats.

• Support for funding child care programs remains strong: 75% believe child care funding should be increased or kept at current levels — including 75% of Republicans, 85% of Independents, and 97% of Democrats.

• 74% say funding for child care is an important and good use of tax dollars, including a majority of Republicans, three-quarters of Independents, and nine in ten Democrats.

FFYF Executive Director Sarah Rittling said, “Voters across the country are sending a clear message: federal child care and early learning programs work. These investments help parents stay in the workforce, strengthen families, and support healthy child development. They have also long had strong bipartisan support in Congress. At a time when affordability is top of mind for families, continued federal funding is essential to ensure child care remains accessible and within reach.”

First Five Years Fund works to protect, prioritize, and build bipartisan support for quality child care and early learning programs at the federal level. Reliable, affordable, and high-quality early learning and child care can be transformative, not only enhancing a child’s prospects for a brighter future but also bolstering working parents and fostering economic stability nationwide.

We work with Congress and the Administration to identify federal solutions that work for families with young children, as well as states and communities. We work with policymakers to identify ways to increase access to affordable, high-quality child care and early learning programs for children. And we collaborate with advocacy groups to help align best practices with the best possible policies. http://www.ffyf.org

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

Activism

Oakland Post: Week of February 25 – March 3, 2026

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of – February 25 – March 3, 2026

Published

5 days ago

March 1, 2026

Oakland Post

To enlarge your view of this issue, use the slider, magnifying glass icon or full page icon in the lower right corner of the browser window.

Oakland Post

Posts by Oakland Post

#NNPA BlackPress

Trump’s MAGA Allies are Creating Executive Order Plan to Steal the 2026 Midterms

NNPA NEWSWIRE — The document that could lead to an executive order proposes using the claim that China interfered with the 2020 elections as grounds to “declare a national emergency.” The move would be an unprecedented step that would grant Trump new authority over the voting systems in the U.S.

Published

1 week ago

February 27, 2026

Oakland Post

By Lauren Victoria Burke, NNPA Newswire Correspondent

A group of MAGA pro-Trump activists, who say they are working in coordination with the White House, are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that would claim without evidence that China interfered with the 2020 presidential election. Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential to President Joe Biden by over 7 million votes. Since Trump lost to Biden in 2020, he has repeatedly claimed that the election was “stolen” without evidence. The report of a group of “Trump allies” preparing an executive order to give Trump power over elections was first reported by The Washington Post.

The lies around the right-wing campaign that pushed falsehoods that the 2020 election was stolen was trafficked through right-wing media, particularly Fox News. Fox News was then sued for defamation for the claims by Dominion Voting Systems. Fox lost the case and had to settle for the largest defamation amount on record of $787.5 million in April 2023.

The document that could lead to an executive order proposes using the claim that China interfered with the 2020 elections as grounds to “declare a national emergency.” The move would be an unprecedented step that would grant Trump new authority over the voting systems in the U.S.

The story in The Washington Post arrives as Trump increasingly signals that he may take actions that would alter the result of the 2026 midterms. The Republicans are widely expected to lose as their approval ratings plummet as a result of a failing economy under Trump. Over 50 members of Congress have announced they will retire this year and not return in 2027.

The Trump Department of Justice, which now has a large image of Trump on the side of it, “sued five new states Thursday [Feb. 26, 2026] demanding access to their unredacted voter rolls — escalating a campaign that has been rejected by multiple federal courts and faces resistance from Republican-led states as well,” according to Democracy Docket, a group that works to protect voting rights.

Trump claimed back in late 2020, the last year of his first term, that he had the authority to issue an executive order related to mail-in voting for the 2020 elections — which he would then lose. But the Constitution states that control of elections lies with the states. As the GOP works to place hurdles in front of voting, Democrats worked to make voting easier.

In March 2021, President Biden signed an executive order calling on federal agencies to expand voting access as part of the Biden Administration’s effort “to promote and defend the right to vote for all Americans who are legally entitled to participate in elections.”

Trump’s focus is clearly on altering the November 2026 midterm elections. Trump’s polling numbers and the elections and special elections that have taken place around the U.S. over the last year clearly indicate that Republicans are about to be hit by a blue wave of Democratic victories.

Lauren Victoria Burke is an independent investigative journalist and the founder of Black Virginia News. She is a political analyst who appears on #RolandMartinUnfiltered and hosts the show LAUREN LIVE on YouTube @LaurenVictoriaBurke. She can be contacted at LBurke007@gmail.com and on twitter at @LVBurke