Roger Waters has pleaded with Maroon 5 to ‘take a knee’ during their half-time performance at this weekend’s Super Bowl in Atlanta.
The former Pink Floyd man wants them, Travis Scott and Big Boi to make the gesture in support of quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who began kneeling during the national anthem in 2016 as a personal protest against racial injustice in the US.
Kaepernick’s actions sparked a wider protest movement throughout the sport in 2017, but the QB has not played since the 2016 season.
Waters has now shared a video from September 2017 of he and his band taking a knee following their show in Hartford, Connecticut, which they did in solidarity with Kaepernick.
In an accompanying statement, Water says: “It was the third Sunday of Colin Kaepernick’s lock out by the NFL. The message was clear, ‘Shut your mouth, boy!’
“Next Sunday will be the 36th Sunday he has been locked out of your national game. This is not a victory for the NFL, it is a defeat, you have denied football fans everywhere the pleasure and the honour of watching one of the greatest quarterbacks who ever played the game, and you have shown your true colours.
“You can sit in your boardrooms and huff and puff on your cigars in your glass boxes, but your action is a poke in the eye for everything that is decent in America.
I call upon you to do it because it’s the right thing to do and because somewhere inside you know it.
Roger Waters
“Colin Kaepernick is an American hero. If the USA is to have a future, it is the Colin Kaepernicks of this world who will lead you there, in fact, it is Colin Kaepernick who is leading you now.
“My colleagues Maroon 5, Travis Scott and Big Boi are performing during the half-time show at the Super Bowl this coming Sunday, I call upon them to ‘take a knee’ on stage in full sight.
“I call upon them to do it in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick, to do it for every child shot to death on these mean streets, to do it for every bereaved mother and father and brother and sister.”
Waters adds: “My mother used to say to me, ‘In any situation there is nearly always a right thing to do, just do it.’ So, there you go my brothers, you are faced with a choice. I’m not saying it will be easy, all the president’s men, all the huffers and puffers, will be royally pissed off, but, $#@%’em, I call upon you to do it because it’s the right thing to do and because somewhere inside you know it.”
Maroon 5, Travis Scott and Big Boi have all faced criticism for agreeing to perform at the Super Bowl in light of the protests. But Billboard previously reported that Scott only agreed to take part if the NFL would make a joint donation of $500,000 to Dream Corps – a charity for social justice.
