Former Minnesota Vikings NFL player Chris Kluwe joins a small group of protestors outside the Pelican Hill Country Club where US Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to attend a luncheon fundraiser, in Newport Beach, California, October 9, 2017. The fundraiser comes a day after Pence walked out of an NFL game in Indianapolis in protest of some NFL players taking a knee during the national anthem in a continued gesture against what they consider social injustices.
Former NFL player Chris Kluwe was arrested at a city council meeting on Wednesday after speaking out against a proposal to put a plaque referencing Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan in a local library.
The Huntington Beach City Council in California approved this week the installation of the plaque, which will feature the names of current council members and other city leaders alongside the words: “Magical. Alluring. Galvanizing. Adventurous" — which spells out MAGA.
Kluwe, a 43-year-old author and former kicker for the Minnesota Vikings who has lived in Huntington Beach for 15 years, spoke against the proposal at Wednesday's meeting, stating that Trump's MAGA is "explicitly a Nazi movement."
"MAGA stands for trying to erase trans people from existence," Kluwe said. "MAGA stands for re-segregation and racism. MAGA stands for censorship and book bans. MAGA stands for firing air traffic controllers while planes are crashing. MAGA stands for firing the people overseeing our nuclear arsenal. MAGA stands for firing military veterans and those serving them at the VA, including canceling research on veteran suicide. MAGA stands for cutting funds to education, including for disabled children."
"MAGA is profoundly corrupt, unmistakeably anti-democracy, and is explicitly a Nazi movement," he continued. "You may have replaced a swastika with a red hat, but that is what it is."
Kluwe then said that he would “engage in the time-honored American tradition of peaceful civil disobedience” before approaching the dais. He put his hands behind his back as he was stopped by several officers, who carried him out of the chambers.
The athlete spent eight seasons with the Vikings before he was released by the team in 2013. Kluwe claimed in an essay at the time that he was cut because he was a vocal supporter of LGBTQ+ rights and had filmed multiple ads for Minnesotans for Equality against a ballot measure seeking to ban marriage equality in the state. The Vikings have denied the allegations.
Kluwe later said on social media that he was charged with disrupting an assembly and released from custody four hours later. He encouraged others, specifically Democratic legislators, to "get arrested preventing DOGE goons from entering public buildings, get arrested going into public buildings to find out what DOGE goons are doing, get arrested on the floor during confirmation votes to protest the rubber stamping of unqualified candidates."
"Hold press conferences with federal employees who have been fired speaking, go on national shows and give their time to federal employees who have been fired so they can speak, lead daily protests outside the White House and associated buildings, stop pretending you can collaborate with fascists," Kluwe wrote. "Start assembling a general strike with the public, be very public about potentially shutting down what’s left of the federal government by refusing to pass the debt ceiling, publicly call their Republican colleagues craven shitweasels."
"I’m just one guy doing what I can, they’ve got teams and resources and connections and it’s time they start treating this like a fight for survival because that’s what it is," he said.
