Teams across Major League Soccer joined in solidarity with professional sports leagues throughout the country on August 26, 2020, as players decided not to play in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement and protests against social injustice.
What started with the NBA's Milwaukee Bucks spread to every other league that was scheduled to play, including MLS, the WNBA, MLB and the NHL. On Thursday, the Colorado Rapids released an oral history compiled by digital media reporter Allie Dosmann that features a firsthand perspective from the club's players and staff on what went into the decision to not play that day's game against FC Dallas, and the subsequent impact it made on the team and players.
For the piece, Dosmann spoke to Rapids players Jonathan Lewis, Kellyn Acosta, Auston Trusty and Clint Irwin, as well as head coach Robin Fraser and team operations manager Alyne Moore.
"We started to collaborate amongst ourselves in the back of the bus," Lewis recalled. "A few of the guys, one of the heads of the Black Players Coalition, Kei Kamara, and I started talking about it. It was me, him, Kellyn, Lalas Abubakar. We were seeing the empowerment of the NBA players not going on the court, and we were saying, 'We should follow their lead.'”
Added Fraser: "That night, I will always remember because it felt very heavy. It felt significant and different than anything I had seen in 40 years in this country.
