By DeNeen L. Brown The Washington Post
U.S. Olympic gold medalist Tommie Smith, center, and his teammate John Carlos, who won bronze in the 200-meter race, raise their fists during the U.S. national anthem at the 1968 Summer Games in Mexico City. Australian silver medalist Peter Norman is at left. (AP Photo)
They didn’t #TakeTheKnee. Instead they raised a fist.
On Sunday, President Trump’s demand that NFL owners fire players who kneel during the national anthem set off protests by NFL players, coaches and even owners. They linked arms, knelt or remained in the locker room as “The Star Spangled Banner” rang out in stadiums across the country and in London, where the Baltimore Ravens played the Jacksonville Jaguars.
The show of unity and defiance reminded some of another silent protest that continues to reverberate almost 50 years later.
U.S. Olympians Tommie Smith and John Carlos — who’d won gold and bronze respectively in the 200-meter sprint — raising black-gloved fists during the medal ceremony at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City became one of the most iconic sports images of the 20th century.
The protest had been something the two athletes carefully planned. As Smith and Carlos walked to the podium, they took off their shoes to protest poverty. They wore beads and a scarf to protest lynchings. And when the national anthem was played, they lowered their heads in defiance and raised their fists in a Black Power salute that rocked the world.
[Before Trump vs. the NFL, there was Jackie Robinson vs. JFK]
Before the anthem started to play, Carlos recalled later that he thought about the symbols that had been chosen for that moment on the world stage. They knew it would become “a moment of truth.” And that by protesting they might lose everything.
“I looked at my feet in my high socks and thought about all the black poverty I’d seen from Harlem to East Texas. I fingered my beads and thought about the pictures I’d seen of the ‘strange fruit’ swinging from the poplar trees of the South,” Carlos wrote in his 2011 book written with Dave Zirin, “The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment That Changed the World.”
He had decided to unzip his Olympic jacket, in defiance of Olympic etiquette, but in support of “all the working-class people — black and white — in Harlem who had to struggle and work with their hands all day.”
He had deliberately covered up the “USA” on his uniform with a black T-shirt to “reflect the shame I felt that my country was traveling at a snail’s pace toward something that should be obvious to all people of good will. Then the anthem started and we raised our fists into the air.”
They had one pair of gloves between them. Smith put a black glove on his right fist; Carlos covered his left fist. Smith raised his right fist; Carlos his left.
“As the anthem began and the crowd saw us raise our fists, the stadium became eerily quiet,” Carlos wrote. “For a few seconds, you honestly could have heard a frog piss on cotton. There’s something awful about hearing fifty thousand people go silent, like being in the eye of a hurricane.”
As the national anthem played the crowd began to boo them. Then some people in the crowd began to scream the national anthem.
“It was like they were saying, ‘Oh, you anti-American sons of bitches. We’re going to shove the s–t down your throat!’ ” Carlos wrote. “They screamed it to the point where it seemed less a national anthem than a barbaric call to arms.”
The punishment for defying Olympic rules was swift. Smith and Carlos were ordered to leave the Olympic Stadium.
But the image of Smith and Carlos raising fists and Australian sprinter Peter Norman — who took silver in the race — would become seared in history as an incendiary act of protest by athletes.
[John Carlos, who raised a gloved fist in 1968, wants to know what today’s athletes stand for]
They’d taken a stand at a moment when the country was also embroiled in protests over the Vietnam War and the aftermath of the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. The nation had seen on television Chicago police beating demonstrations at the Democratic National Convention.
A statue of Tommie Smith, center, and John Carlos, right, was installed at the Smithsonian Institution’s new National Museum of African American History and Culture last year. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)
When they returned to the United States, Carlos and Smith were suspended from the U.S. track team, and they received death threats.
After their track careers, both Smith and Carlos played in the NFL, but their time on the field was short-lived. Smith played three seasons with the Cincinnati Bengals, according to the Track and Field Hall of Fame. Carlos played one year with the Philadelphia Eagles and one year in the Canadian Football League.
Smith, who worked at Santa Monica College as a sociology professor and head cross-country and track and field coach, said in an HBO documentary that they were just trying to bring attention to injustice in the United States. “I don’t like the idea of people looking at it as negative,” Smith said. “There was nothing but a raised fist in the air and a bowed head, acknowledging the American flag — not symbolizing a hatred for it.”
Carlos, who worked as a guidance counselor at Palm Springs High School in California, told the Guardian newspaper: “I had a moral obligation to step up. Morality was a far greater force than the rules and regulations they had.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/09/24/they-didnt-takeaknee-the-black-power-protest-salute-that-shook-the-world-in-1968/?hpid=hp_rhp-top-table-main_retropolis-9pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.042c215be0d8
Του Αλκη Καλλιαντζίδη Οικονομολόγου 
(που ήταν μικρότερη από την 1η ) και η δεύτερη στις 23 Σεπτεμβρίου από το κόμμα του Mélenchon που πρέπει να ήταν ικανοποιητική, σύμφωνα με το ρεπορτάζ του δημοσιογράφου Hervé Gattegno της ηλεκτρονικής έκδοσης της εφημερίδας Le journal de dimanche 24-09-2017. Όμως το ερώτημα που θέτει ο δημοσιογράφος είναι αν μπορεί να αλλάξει κάτι ; «Ακόμα και οι χθεσινοί διαδηλωτές μιλούσαν ήδη για άλλους αγώνες, εναντίον των νέων μεταρρυθμίσεων που έχει ήδη εξαγγείλει η κυβέρνηση, π.χ για την επαγγελματική κατάρτιση, την ασφάλιση της ανεργίας και τη στέγαση». Θέματα που δεν έχουν σχέση πλέον με τα Διατάγματα στον κώδικα εργασίας τα οποία ο Μακρόν, έσπευσε να τα υπογράψει την παραμονή της διαδήλωσης της «Ανυπότακτης Γαλλίας». Και επειδή ο Μακρόν έχει τεράστια πλειοψηφία στην Εθνοσυνέλευση, δεν υπάρχει καμία αγωνία για την επικύρωση των Διαταγμάτων τα οποία ήδη δημοσιεύθηκαν στην εφημερίδα της κυβερνήσεως.
«Οι επαναλαμβανόμενες εκκλήσεις για διαδηλώσεις, η άρνηση συμμαχίας με οποιονδήποτε από την αριστερά … Οι μέθοδοι και η ρητορική του Jean-Luc Mélenchon θυμίζουν εκείνες του Λένιν, σύμφωνα με την ανάλυση του Jean-Christophe Buisson». Για αυτόν, «η ανάληψη της εξουσίας από τους Μπολσεβίκους στοιχειώνει και εμπνέει τον ηγέτη των Ανυπότακτων», σύμφωνα με τη σχετική συζήτηση που είχε μαζί του στις 22-09-2017 ο δημοσιογράφος Vincent Tremolet de Villers της ηλεκτρονικής έκδοσης της εφημερίδας Le Figaro. Ο Jean Christophe Buisson είναι συγγραφέας και αναπληρωτής διευθυντής του περιοδικού Figaro. Το τελευταίο του βιβλίο, «1917, το έτος που άλλαξε τον 
κόσμο», δημοσιεύθηκε από τις εκδόσεις Perrin. Μπορούμε να θεωρήσουμε ότι το κίνημα που οδήγησε ο Λένιν εκείνο το έτος θα μπορούσε να εμπνεύσει τον Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Υπάρχουν αντιστοιχίες;
1917 πρέπει να δώσει τη θέση της στο πεζοδρόμιο, που εκδηλώνεται καθημερινά με διαδηλώσεις τις οποίες ενθαρρύνουν οι μπολσεβίκοι ενάντια στην πείνα, τον πόλεμο, τις κοινωνικές ανισότητες, κ.λπ. Σύμφωνα με τον Λένιν, υπήρξε ένα είδος δήμευσης της επανάστασης που δεν τήρησε τις κοινωνικές της υποσχέσεις. Ένα «Κοινωνικό Πραξικόπημα» (για coup d’Etat social μιλάει και ο Mélenchon) , κατά κάποιο τρόπο …Πέρα όμως από τη ρητορεία που μοιάζει μεταξύ τους, οι καταστάσεις ωστόσο στην Ρωσία του 1917 και στη Γαλλία του 2017 δεν έχουν καμία σχέση. Έτσι είναι.
ονομάζεται Αλέξανδρος Kerensky. Δεν είναι ούτε 40 ετών, προέρχεται από την κοινωνία των πολιτών (είναι δικηγόρος), γοητεύει τα πλήθη με τα νιάτα του, την ομορφιά του, το χάρισμα του, τη ρητορική του δεινότητα, τον ρομαντισμό του. Αφού διορίστηκε αρχηγός της προσωρινής κυβέρνησης στις αρχές του καλοκαιριού του 17, επιχειρεί την μεταρρύθμιση της χώρας, αρνούμενος όμως τον σοσιαλιστικό εξτρεμισμό.
Spiegel
By 
German Chancellor Angela Merkel (C), the leader of the German Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and top candidate for the general election, gets explanations by a milk farmer, during an election campaign tour to a Thanksgiving funfair in Lauenburg part of Putbus in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Germany, 23 September 2017. Angela Merkel is on election campaign tour for the general elections which are scheduled to be held on 24 September 2017. EPA, CARSTEN KOALL SEPTEMBER 24, 2017
Γράφει ο Δημήτρης Ι. Μανακανάτας
The senator powerfully linked domestic and foreign policy in the context of massive global inequality.
