Three Seahawks Greats and a New Chapter of Athlete Activism

A Q&A with Cliff Avril, Doug Baldwin and Michael Bennett, on their renewed efforts to give back and support grassroots nonprofits in Seattle.

Cliff Avril didn’t fully realize the impact until after he retired, officially, in 2019. He didn’t see how deeply one era of Seahawks football bonded the team with its city, how the Legion of Boom and a Super Bowl title made his efforts outside of football not only possible but optimal. How the combination of all that made his voice impactful and important.

Avril arrived in Seattle in 2013, after five seasons in Detroit. Michael Bennett, the Seahawks’ resident locker room philosopher, became his best friend. As Colin Kaepernick knelt and the fight against social injustice exploded, Avril, Bennett and their close friend, Pro Bowl wideout Doug Baldwin, all redoubled their off-field efforts. Police officers needed more training. Children needed more resources. Most, in an increasingly divided world, needed joy.

By 2017, the trio agreed on the difference between a mob and a movement: follow through. Their community involvement did not end when their playing careers did. Instead, they have some news. Big news, they believe. No, none of them plan to return to Lumen Field, at least not in uniform. But they did form a philanthropic organization, Champions of Change, and they all will display what remains of their athleticism in the city where they starred. In late June, the trio will hold a series of fundraising events designed to raise money for local, grassroots nonprofits—the kind of organizations they partnered with while playing for the Seahawks.

The plan: a “game changer” auction, a day of service and a celebrity basketball game, which will take place at Climate Pledge on June 26. It will feature Seattle sports legends and mark the first of what they hope is an annual event.

In a conversation with Sports Illustrated, the retired Seahawks ruminate on why they must continue with their efforts, why follow through matters and how the landscape of athlete activism has changed since Kaepernick first knelt. Their conversation was less of an announcement and more of the kind of debate they used to have inside their locker room. Bennett cited philosophers, authors and activists. Baldwin connected then to now. Avril marveled at their impact. What follows is their why.

Sports Illustrated: I was talking to Dr. Harry Edwards recently, and he was describing how athlete activism tends to unfold in cycles. He said we’re nearing the end of the cycle you three were so deeply involved in. Agree?

Doug Baldwin: We’re from an era where there was the proliferation of social media and advancements in technology and also just the expansiveness of being able to see what’s happening in real time around the world. When you have instances like George Floyd’s death, you see that in real time. The collective mindset of society is: Where do we go from here? What is the follow through after the rhetoric and the conversation have died down a little bit? But that doesn’t mean the problems don’t still exist.

Michael Bennett: There is a sense that the revolution has been hijacked. The idea of protest has been hijacked by capitalism, because everything has turned into capitalism. That’s where athletes are having a hard time, because the NFL gets involved, and now (it’s) speaking for us. But at the same time, there’s a lot of critiques in their own house. Everything the NFL does is facing outward. But they should be facing inward. Look at what happened to Brian Flores, what’s happening to other Black coaches in the league.

Baldwin: We’re moving out of the reactionary phase and now it’s like, O.K., what are we doing? How can we make sure these things don’t happen again?

Bennett: I agree with Dr. Edwards. There’s not enough people studying the history, what happened before. We end up on the same stairs, rather than building a new staircase. The past, the present and the future are all connected at one time. It’s just like space. Sometimes, space creates memories. And within those memories, we can see what’s happened in the past. When I think about slavery, or Jim Crow, those experiences seem so far away from me. But at the same time, those systems are so close.

SI: You mentioned Flores and the lack of Black coaches in the NFL. How does that finally change? Will it ever?

Bennett: The player has to speak up for the coach, because, in the future, the player wants to become the coach. They need to demand change, just like they did for police brutality. That’s the kind of work that needs to be done.

Cliff Avril: Even the Flores situation, it’s about understanding what you’re trying to do. In all reality, in America, you need capital to make real change. Now the thing is, making sure you’re getting the right partners to make those changes. The Flores situation, it’s not surprising. People who are in the league know.

Bennett: For every luxury, somebody is suffering. We have to figure out how we can create the greatest luxury—freedom from an incarcerated mind. That’s the point where I get confused, where the water is real cloudy, because we, as athletes, just become part of the symbolism. I see so many athletes who turned protests into business. It’s weird.

SI: Did your ties to the Seattle community help? The work you’ve done here?

Bennett: We think about Seattle for all of us. It’s where we became men. We got married here, bought houses here, had kids here. The city became part of our lives, and it made sense for us to express our gratitude.

Avril: We don’t take for granted those packed stadiums, or the fans who stood outside in the rain waiting for our flight to land. This is our second home.

Bennett: It’s a maturation of who we are. There’s a connection for us on a human level. The bond we built is not on a physical or mental state. It’s on a spiritual level we all shared. Seattle helped us find our purpose.

SI: How did you decide to work together?

Baldwin: We asked ourselves, Why don’t we combine forces to galvanize the community in the way we know best? We’re champions. We know how to bring teams together. We know how to strive for a bigger goal.

Bennett: It was something we were talking about as we got older in the league.

Baldwin: Over the past two years, we’ve been forced to kind of isolate from each other. We haven’t spent time together as a community. Add in all the issues we’ve seen play out on TV. With the divisive nature of our political landscape, it’s vital for us to get together, to see each other. For us to recognize we’re all human.

Bennett: When Cliff and I went to Haiti, it opened my eyes to thinking about things from a global aspect. There’s such an intersectional connection between property and education. In the words of the great Gil Scott-Heron, when it comes to people, money wins out every time. We realized that the communities we went into lacked foundation, lacked opportunity; there’s a sense of scarcity, access to nutrition, ability for growth. We know what it’s like at the bottom. We know what it’s like at the top. There’s such a war on color. We need to empower soldiers of change.

Avril: We’re passionate about this, because we come from the same community. We’re not disconnected from the issues. We’re trying to help because we’ve been there, and we empathize with them.

SI: The organizations you’re supporting all seem to fall under the general umbrella of your aims. The Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic promotes improved pediatric care and family advocacy. DADS wants to eradicate the epidemic of absent fathers in America. Women United Seattle provides systematic support for kinship caregivers and the children they care for. Humble Design Seattle transforms empty houses into welcoming homes to combat homelessness. And Dignity for Divas (which, by the way, sounds like it could also be a support group for star receivers) restores self-worth for women who have lost their homes. All grassroots. All local. All specific. Intentional, I imagine?

Bennett: Our platform is driving us as a group, but we want the attention to focus on these organizations and the work they’re doing.

Baldwin: It also symbolizes why we were so great on the field. We genuinely liked one another. We genuinely cared for one another. How we played, we showed up, and not just to games but to everything. Children’s birthday parties. Celebrations. Times of need.

Avril: We’re not doing this for any notoriety.

Bennett: I’m basically social media non-existent. My wife’s like, Every time I post something, people think you dead. There’s all sorts of ways to talk about this stuff. We do it spiritually, and maybe that’s our own battle with not being too corporate, to avoid trendiness. But sometimes you have to be a bit trendy to have a bigger voice. The work that we’re doing shouldn’t be dormant. It should look enormous, in the words of Jay Z. Just to be clear, I’m quoting Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Jay Z on here.

SI: Can any of you actually play basketball?

Bennett: I’m the best athlete. But everybody else is probably better at basketball. I don’t really play basketball anymore.

Baldwin: Basketball is a great analogy for the work we are collaborating on in our community. We are attacking issues from angles that may not be in our comfort zone and that’s O.K. As a team, we all have a different skill set we bring to the table. But they are complimentary, because we have the same intentions. [jokingly… perhaps] And Mike is terrible at basketball.

SI: Should Kaepernick receive some credit here? Not for this weekend that’s upcoming, but for the work, the impact and the follow through.

Baldwin: The era with Kaepernick, it put a spotlight on organizations like these that are doing great work on the ground. Corporations are feeling pressure to do something about the issues that we see on our TV screens. If we can galvanize the community to put more pressure on those organizations, to supply resources and change systems, that’s a substantial impact. But there’s another component of that that’s important. We’re working with organizations who are supporting human beings who need money and resources. Helping them expand their work is what this is about. The spotlight created the momentum. We’re in the conversation. We’re in the rooms where typically there’s not a lot of people that look like us having those conversations.

Bennett: I think about something W.E.B. Du Bois said. Education is about teaching life. There’s a need for radical reform. There’s a social construct that has been placed upon us. And we focus on victimization a lot in America for the Black experience. To me, it’s about the resiliency of Blackness and the resilience of my culture, my people. We’re looking at Booker T. Washington and the reconstruction of America.

Baldwin: Gonna quote anybody else, Mike?

Bennett: [laughs] At this moment, we should be focused on the light. How we can expand our tunnel, so more light can be on our flowers. So more light can be on the world that we see is ours. We can activate. Gotta start somewhere, right?