ATLANTA — Do not mistake the lack of protests this NFL season with a lack of action.
On Wednesday, the Players Coalition announced $2 million worth of grants to six organizations dedicated to addressing inequities in education and economic opportunity, juvenile justice reform and biased policing. The grants, and the attention the Coalition brings to the groups that got them, expand on players’ efforts to end the cash bail system and eliminate inequities in voting rights.
“Seeing the momentum that’s been generated, it just shows there’s a power and unity in working together,” New Orleans Saints linebacker Demario Davis told USA TODAY Sports earlier this week. “There’s so much work to be done. There’s still so much to do in improving police and community relations. There’s so much to be done in decreasing the educational disparities and the economic disparities. And there’s still so much work to be done in the criminal justice space.
“But there’s hope. Hope for change,” Davis added. “If we can work together, we can create the change and create the nation we all dream of.”
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Some of the funding for the grants comes from the NFL, and that does not sit well with everyone. NFL owners continue to blackball Colin Kaepernick, and some see the league's partnership with the Players Coalition as merely a means of ending the protests that had angered some fans and owners, as well as the president.
But the players were never protesting for the sake of protesting. They were protesting to bring about change, change this country desperately needs.
Regardless of what the NFL’s motivation was, the league brings the country’s biggest spotlight to the work the players are doing. Time and again in the last year, the players have seen and heard that community advocates and activists have been begging to be heard for years with no luck. The players or the league gets involved and, lo and behold, there is movement.
In the last year alone, Florida and Louisiana restored voting rights to convicted felons. Massachusetts adopted a justice reform package. Louisiana no longer allows non-unanimous jury verdicts in felony cases, one of only two states where such a law had remained.
But troublesome as all of these issues are, they stem from systemic disparities in the educational and economic systems. Which is why the Coalition awarded the grants to the groups it did.
One of the recipients, Year Up, helps young adults move from minimum-wage jobs to meaningful careers that pay better and provide benefits. Another, Communities in Schools, pairs at-risk and impoverished students with resources that will help them stay in schools.
“Kids in our communities, they have more specific needs than a kid in suburbia. There are a lot more barriers preventing him from being successful in the classroom,” Davis said. “He’s trying to survive every day. He’s trying to eat every day. The pressure to get in gangs is ever-present.
“The chance of this kid dropping out is higher, the chance this kid is not going to college is higher. You’re looking at that kid being more likely to go to prison than college.”
The other recipients:
— the National Juvenile Defender Center, which works to ensure all kids have quality legal representation and are educated about the system
— The Justice Collaborative, which works to hold public officials accountable on justice reform
— Center for Policing Equity, a think tank on race and policing
— Advancement Project National Office, which tries to influence the conversation and public opinion on race, democracy and justice.
“If we don’t have a better situation for these kids and education, it doesn’t matter how many breakthroughs we have in the criminal justice side,” Davis said. “We have to clean the cycle.”
And not simply because African-Americans deserve better. We all do.
Nothing in our country happens in a vacuum. Violence that plagues black and brown communities eventually spills over elsewhere. Schools that fail impoverished and at-risk kids feed the prison system. Stereotypes perpetuate distrust.
"It’s not like criminals are taken into a corner and are not affecting somebody," Davis said. "No, they’re going to affect everybody.”
The Players Coalition will continue to work for unbiased policing and to hold the justice system accountable. But if you want lasting change, you have to tackle problems at their roots, which means education and economic disparity.
The protests were designed to call attention to the racism that continues to plague our country. The work now is designed to fix it.
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Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on Twitter @nrarmour.
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