Brow Beat

Pharrell Williams, Eddie Vedder, and the Cast of Star Trek: Discovery Take a Stand (and a Knee) Against Racial Injustice

Eddie Vedder kneels during his set at the Pilgrimage Music & Cultural Festival in Franklin, Tennessee.

Mickey Bernal/Getty Images for Pilgrimage Music & Cultural Festival

 

 

Musicians and actors nationwide are standing in solidarity with their sporting counterparts by refusing to stand, with Pharrell Williams, Eddie Vedder, and the cast of Star Trek: Discovery all taking the symbolic knee against racial injustice on Sunday, following Stevie Wonder’s solidarity kneel at Global Citizen on Saturday.

The artists are kneeling in solidarity with the more than 100 NFL players who stood/knelt against police brutality this weekend, while the angry man in the White House tweeted for the “son of a bitch” players to be fired.

Williams, performing at a Charlottesville unity concert in his home state on Sunday, said that no one could stop him from taking the knee if he wanted to: “Can’t nobody tell me what to do. If I wanna get on my knees right now for the people in my city, for the people in my state. That’s what that flag is for.” Fellow performer Timberlake also knelt on the “Concert for Charlottesville” stage.

At the Pilgrimage Music & Cultural Festival in Tennessee, a fiery and frustrated Eddie Vedder joined their ranks, kneeling before the second song of his Sunday set. Vedder also addressed Trump’s other tweet topic de jour, repeating the words “30 minutes”—the amount of time, that is, that it would take a missile to get from North Korea to his home city of Seattle. “What the fuck? Are you kidding us? Can you please stop? Just stop,” he said, putting voice to what everyone is thinking.

And last night, Star Trek: Discovery star Sonequa Martin-Green shared a photo of herself on Instagram with the hashtag #takeaknee. She publicly took a knee alongside the show’s producer and members of the cast, just hours after the show’s premiere.