Carmelo Anthony Urges Athletes to Speak On Social Issues

In the wake of the horrible shooting tragedies that have recently occurred, Carmelo Anthony became one of the most prominent voices calling for change. Anthony took to Instagram to discuss the need for change across all platform.

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First off let me start off by saying " All Praise Due To The Most High." Secondly, I'm all about rallying, protesting, fighting for OUR people. Look I'll even lead the charge, By Any Means Necessary. We have to be smart about what we are doing though. We need to steer our anger in the right direction. The system is Broken. Point blank period. It has been this way forever. Martin Luther King marched. Malcolm X rebelled. Muhammad Ali literally fought for US. Our anger should be towards the system. If the system doesn't change we will continue to turn on the TVs and see the same thing. We have to put the pressure on the people in charge in order to get this thing we call JUSTICE right. A march doesn't work. We tried that. I've tried that. A couple social media post/tweet doesn't work. We've all tried that. That didn't work. Shooting 11 cops and killing 5 WILL NOT work. While I don't have a solution, and I'm pretty sure a lot of people don't have a solution, we need to come together more than anything at this time. We need each other. These politicians have to step up and fight for change. I'm calling for all my fellow ATHLETES to step up and take charge. Go to your local officials, leaders, congressman, assemblymen/assemblywoman and demand change. There's NO more sitting back and being afraid of tackling and addressing political issues anymore. Those days are long gone. We have to step up and take charge. We can't worry about what endorsements we gonna lose or whose going to look at us crazy. I need your voices to be heard. We can demand change. We just have to be willing to. THE TIME IS NOW. IM all in. Take Charge. Take Action. DEMAND CHANGE. Peace7 #StayMe7o

A post shared by Carmelo Anthony (@carmeloanthony) on Jul 8, 2016 at 8:02am PDT

Anthony has since expanded on that first social media post, writing an Op-Ed piece for The Guardian. Anthony’s main point: athletes like himself have the platform to make change possible. They have a following that listens to their every word and discusses its merits and importance. If these athletes are willing to use that platform to call for change, as many have started doing, then the potential for change to occur is there.

Carmelo notably spoke about the Olympics. He will be one of the elder statesmen of Team USA in Rio. As he wrote in the piece, Anthony plans on speaking to the team at some point to encourage them to come together and be advocates for change and peace.

the whole piece is worth reading, but the most important section follows:

So what next? I don’t have the answer. Nobody does. But what we can do is start bring a continuous awareness and keep this conversation going. We can’t keep riding on this merry-go-round where tragedy happens, it’s all over TV and social media, everybody talks about it, then in three and four days it’s over with.

In three weeks I’ll travel to Rio with the United States’ Olympic team to perform on a global stage. I haven’t spoken with my team-mates yet about the opportunity before us and how we can take advantage of it, because at the end of the day I want it to be genuine. If you don’t feel like you want to make a statement or make a stand, then don’t do it. You shouldn’t feel forced to do it. You have to want to do that. For me, I do feel like this is a platform where we should – we as athletes, we as Americans – use it for something. Whether we make a statement out there or send a message, we can show the world that we’re united. Whatever way we want to do it, this is a chance to do something meaningful before an audience of billions. I don’t know what that something is yet, but we still have time to figure it out.