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Chris Kluwe, former kicker for the Minnesota Vikings, tells The Advocate where the charges against him stand, and why he keeps speaking out.
Chris Kluwe tells The Advocate where the charges against him stand, and why he keeps speaking out.
Over a month after he was arrested for peacefully protesting at a city council meeting, Chris Kluwe hasn't been deterred from attending and speaking out.
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The author and former kicker for the Minnesota Vikings is again going viral for giving an impassioned speech at a city council meeting — this time in Aliso Viejo, to voice his opposition to a proposal that would prohibit flying the LGBTQ+ Pride flag at government buildings.
"It's the right thing to do," Kluwe tells The Advocate. "Speaking out isn't a crime yet. I mean, unless you happen to be a university student who's here on a green card. We still have a chance to save our country, and part of that work means showing up and speaking if you have a platform."
Kluwe attended the meeting after hearing about the resolution despite it being proposed in a town neighboring his home of Huntington Beach — about a 40-minute drive through southern California traffic. He said during his remarks that he wanted to urge the city to "not make the same mistakes that Huntington Beach made."
"This is not what America's about. We have a president that is proclaiming executive orders trying to erase trans people from existence, and you say that the American flag includes everyone," Kluwe said in his speech. "For over 100 years, the American flag stood for slavery, and we had a war to fix that. For 90 years after that, it stood for segregation, and people took to the streets to get rid of that."
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"I do not want the American flag to stand for hatred and discrimination, and flying the Pride flag shows people that we understand that," he continued. "That we understand these communities are oppressed, that they need to be shown that this is a safe place for them, that this is a city where they will not be dragged behind someone's truck until they are dead, where they will not be jumped and murdered simply for who they are."
Kluwe then walked away from the podium waving a small Pride flag as the audience applauded. The ban, brought forth by conservative councilmember Mike Munzing, ultimately failed to pass shortly after midnight when Munzing ripped up his printed copy of the proposal and motioned to withdraw the resolution. His withdrawal was approved 5-0.
Kluwe was arrested at a Huntington Beach City Council meeting in February after peacefully protesting the installation of a plaque referencing Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan in a local library. He was charged with a misdemeanor for disrupting a public assembly, and the plaque ultimately went up — but not without national scrutiny hitting the city.
Kluwe's arraignment date has been set for April 16. He has hired a criminal defense attorney, but says he hasn't "heard anything from the city, so I have no idea if they're going to continue to press charges or not."
"The smartest thing the city could do would be to drop them just to make the circus stop," Kluwe says. "I don't really see any win for them in continuing to drag this out, because that's just going to bring more public attention to Huntington Beach. It's not going to be good public attention, and it's gonna be really obvious why they're doing it."
Kluwe, who has been critical of Republicans' "fascism" as well as Democrats' inaction, says that it's "a very welcome sign" to see the recent push back against the Trump Administration, particularly from elected officials. As a "peaceful, law abiding citizen," Kluwe says "I don't really want to be doing these things — I want you to do your job."
"We need people like Cory Booker essentially filibustering for over 24 hours, only next time we need it to happen on actual appointments," he says. "We need people like Adam Schiff saying he's going to put a hold on the U.S. or D.C. District Attorney because the guy's just an out of control lunatic. We need our Congress to do their jobs, which is to reign in a runaway executive."
Kluwe will be speaking at the 50501 Movement's People's Veto Day event in Los Angeles on Saturday. He says the message he intends to send is simple.
"We have to figure out, are we going to be America or are we going to be something else?" Kluwe asks.
