We believe it is wrong to sideline players for protesting the systemic injustice against blacks in this country. The best thing the NFL owners could do to return their player to standing during the national anthem is to visibly show the players (and public) that the owners are using their influence to counter Trump's cowardly and racist rhetoric. The damage that Trump's rhetoric (and the owners' complicit inaction) to the players' lives outweighs the benefits of having a good job in the NFL. The players are doing their best to do their job while living in a country with issues larger than their job. The owners should do their job of creating an environment (which includes issues outside their stadiums) that helps their players win games. If the owners refuse to do this, necessitating that some players feel compelled to kneel and be docked time and pay, then we the people of the USA will financially support those players while publically highlighting the injustice those owners perpetuate and in effect show that they have inadequate understandings of how to manage a winning team. We are taught that, and the President provides and example of, hate begets hate. The NFL owners and commissioner seem to have not learned this. Their solution to their perceived problem of their players acts of silent protest against oppression is to apply oppression. Clueless owners are poor managers and cannot ultimately create and support winning teams. Please, you know the players' cause is just and is greater that an issue of simple respect. Support their cause in ways that visibly show you understand that it is difficult for the players to highlight a just cause at the cost of igniting a smaller battle. The players are willing to lose a battle if they believe they must fight to win a war. What is the war the owners are fighting?

We are in a period of sustained egregious behavior from our country's top leader who is carrying out policies that are an assault on our humanity's future. Never is the time to support silencing varying viewpoints in our country, and particularly in the case of an intelligent African American female reporter.

So why is it that we portray statues in major cities of pro-confederates (those that support slavery) throughout our nation? This needs to be reconsidered, greatly. Those who oppose getting rid of the pro-confederate monuments suggest that it erases a part of their ancerstry and it means a lot to them because it's a part of their heritage and their history. However the confederate flag and its monuments symbolize one thing: the belief that owning a black person is right and that they are the subordinate race. Slavery is a harsh and unusual punishment that humans dictated over others and it is wrong. It's not something we should continue to glorify via monuments or flags. We can still teach people our history without making it seem like our cultural views about slavery and freedom seem one sided. Culturally, why do we even have these monuments here? They're not promoting what we want our nation to be which is together AND united. Hate crime has been on the rise since these monuments have landed and if we can get rid of them that would mean a lot to the lives of millions of people that oppose confederate monuments.

NO one should ever be treated the way people are treated when sent to Plymouth on a section . They are NOT inmates that are people who need help with substance abuse . Guards have no right to treat them any less . We need to help them instead of knocking them down further and major changes need to happen before more kids die. We must demand change, and Plymouth needs to be investigated .

I was born in Puerto Rico, home to 3.4 million American citizens. My parents are still on the island in Bayamon, a town near the capitol city of San Juan. As a New York state senator from the Bronx, many of my constituents are Puerto Rican--so what's happening is personal for me. And I need it to be personal for you, as well. Hurricanes Irma and Maria have laid waste to my home. Nearly half of the country has no access to clean water. The majority of Puerto Rico still has no electricity. No access to medical care. No way to communicate. But thus far the responses from Congress and FEMA have not come close to addressing the tragic destruction and human suffering on the island. Numerous credible sources report that basic relief functions are in shameful chaos. And as time passes, this is only going to get worse. Here’s what’s needed right now from Congress: 1. Demand FEMA adequately address this tragedy by devoting the immediate people-power and resources that Puerto Ricans need and deserve. 2. Cancel Puerto Rico’s $73 billion predatory debt. 3. Pass a significant relief and recovery package, that includes a permanent end to the Jones Act, so that Puerto Rico has the resources both for this acute crisis and for the longer rebuilding process. Puerto Rico must rebuild, but the same vultures who caused this crisis are going to try and make money off of Puerto Rico’s rebuilding and we cannot let that happen. Look, I have been able to speak to my parents twice and they are OK so far. They had enough food and water for a week—but time is running out. And I’m lucky that I’ve been able to reach them. Constituents are coming into my office who can’t reach their families. One man can’t reach his mother, doesn’t know if she has access to medicine, and is worried about her survival. We’re doing what we can in our office to support our constituents—but we need Congress and FEMA to do more. MUCH more. And do it now.

As a naturalized citizen, I'm horrified that the Department of Homeland Security could even muster the thought of proposing such a far-reaching piece of crap (legislation, sorry). To include millions under DHS watch is simply unthinkable and negates the personal liberties Americans value and hold dear. This simply can. not. stand.

Because all grandparents should have rights to their grandbabies.

It's electric. All over the country, NFL players are taking a knee and linking arms. They're kneeling in opposition to police brutality. They're linking arms because Black Lives Matter. They're joining together in defiance of Donald Trump, who attacks People of Color but says white supremacists are “very fine people.” Trump has tried to turn the players and teams against each other, but his divisive, racist rhetoric isn't working. It's only strengthening their bonds, and unifying people against the politics of hate. Professional athletes courageously confronted Trump's bullying and bigotry yesterday, despite the fact that he has called on their employers to fire them, and even suggested a boycott of their league. Now, as a veteran, I'm joining them, along with thousands of veterans and military families. The NFL needs to know that Americans--all of us--support patriots like Colin Kaepernick, and all the other athletes who are peacefully protesting for racial justice. This isn’t about the flag, which I have personally taken an oath to defend. It’s about our basic values, like believing in the right to speak out, demand equality, and fight for justice. We need to live our values today--like these NFL teams are--by taking a knee and linking arms. When I was 19, I stood up and raised my right hand to enlist in the US Army, because I believe in our basic values of equality, justice, and free speech. The right to kneel and express oneself is exactly what I swore an oath to protect. And all of us at Common Defense--the organization of veterans and military families I co-founded--will continue our fight to uphold that. Will you join me and send a message to the NFL that we're with them?

Police are out of control in St. Louis, and the Mayor has done nothing to stop them. Over the weekend of protests following the not-guilty verdict absolving Jason Stockley of accountability in the killing of Anthony Lamar Smith, police have taunted protesters saying chants like "Whose streets? Our streets?" and even trampled over an old woman and pepper-sprayed the people who tried to help her. It's history repeating itself again and again since the dawn of the Civil Rights Movement. When Black people gather to demand an end to state violence, the state doubles down on the violence people were there to protest in the first place. Using tear gas and riot gear, the police in St. Louis have arrested over 80 people since Friday and exerted full force in an attempt to show us who has the power. Mayor Lyda Krewson still has not condemned the rampant excessive force police are using to suppress the peaceful protesters she claims to support. After the verdict came down, Krewson was quick to express her disappointment and also made a statement in support of peaceful protesters. But now, it's time for Krewson to take action to protect protesters. That's why we're calling on her to widely condemn any use of excessive force against protesters and call a commission to investigate the actions of police during this time. And she won't have a choice if enough of us join together in making the demand.

Donald Trump's Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, has thrown the fate of Harriet Tubman's place on the U.S. $20 bill into question. Born enslaved and renowned for her tireless work to abolish slavery and win women the right to vote, Tubman was chosen during the Obama administration, to replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill. For his part, Jackson is largely remembered as the impetus behind the forced removal of Native Americans from their lands east of the Mississippi River, sending them on a march west now known as the Trail of Tears. Lew understood that the fate of Tubman on the $20 rested with his successor. When asked if he worried about whether his decision would be overturned, he's reported to have replied, "I don’t think somebody’s going to probably want to do that--to take the image of Harriet Tubman off of our money? To take the image of the suffragists off?” But then, Lew couldn't have imagined the toxic duo of Trump and Mnuchin. Symbols, like a powerful Black woman on our nation's $20 bill, matter. Especially today in the wake of so much Trump-fueled racist horror. That's why it's important that Mnuchin experience a quick and barbed rebuke from Americans across our nation--taxpayers who both pay for an use our nation's currency. And the message couldn't be clearer: Tubman stays.

We do not need dissent between the people of this country and our American values are not represented by white supremacy groups or Nazis. This country was built on the strengths of a diversified nation.

There is no room for hate in our country. And while freedom of speech is important, there is no reason that GoDaddy, the world's top hosting site, should be promoting white power nationalists whose platform is based on religious and ethnic intolerance.