Von Miller wants the NFL to make changes when it comes to the racial and social injustices going on in the country. The Denver Broncos linebacker wrote a first-person article for TIME.com and reacted to the death of George Floyd. He also thanked NFL commissioner Roger Goodell for responding to Black Lives Matter video made by the NFL players. However, Miller knows more needs to be done.
“While it’s great that the NFL made an official statement in support of Black Lives Matter and the right to peaceful protest, it will ultimately be up to the team owners to put league policy into action and walk the walk,” Miller wrote. He continued by naming the people who have been killed recently because of their race. He wrote: “I am George Floyd. I am Ahmaud Arbery. I am Tamir Rice. I am Eric Garner. I am Philando Castile. I am Alton Sterling. I am Oscar Grant. I am Trayvon Martin. I am Emmett Till.”
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When it comes to Floyd’s death, Miller said he has cried at least “once a day.” The All-Pro linebacker went on to say I have felt this pain in varying degrees for as far back as I can remember — at least since the first time I was called a n— in elementary school. The pain sears me every day, now.” Miller is angry about the issues going on in the country, but he’s not surprised either. “This has been building up for years, decades, generations. We can either confront it for what it is and make it an inflection point in the arc of our nation’s history, or we can become complicit in the perpetuation of our disease because we refuse to admit we are ill. This time may be different. I pray that it is different.”
Miller has been with the Broncos since being drafted by the team in the first round in 2011. In 2017, he decided to kneel during the national anthem to protest police brutality and he wrote he “received hate mail and lost endorsements.” This past weekend, Miller and a few of his Broncos teammates joined a peaceful protest in Denver. “The time is always right to do what’s right,” Miller said at the protest. “Once we have awareness, we’ve got to use our moral compass to make decisions on what’s right. Black, white, it doesn’t matter. It’s 2020.”
