Vikings keep spotlight on social justice during practice at U.S. Bank Stadium

The Vikings worked out in Minneapolis on Friday for the first time since George Floyd was killed in police custody on May 25, taking the field at U.S. Bank Stadium a day after a two-hour, player-led meeting to discuss the shooting of Jacob Blake by a white police officer this week in Kenosha, Wis.

At the conclusion of the two-hour practice, the team congregated in front of reporters in the same end zone where it won its lone playoff game at U.S. Bank Stadium and delivered a series of speeches headlined by the strongest rebuke anyone in the organization has issued of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer charged with second-degree murder in Floyd's death, and the other three former officers charged in the case.

Running back Ameer Abdullah called for a fair jury and fair trial for Chauvin, saying the officer's name four times while decrying a system he said takes too many of its cues from athletes and celebrities.

"Now it's time for the bureaucratic system to hold up its end and supply a fair trial and fair juries — all the processes we've known that's failed us before," Abdullah said. "We're sick of the process and the system failing us. We're standing up right now as the Minnesota Vikings and saying we want a proper jury and proper [prosecution] of Derek Chauvin."

The Vikings left the field without taking questions from reporters and offered no specifics about what would constitute a fair prosecutorial process for Chauvin. Vikings ownership issued a statement shortly after players' remarks on Friday afternoon, calling for increased voter education and registration, the adoption of "impactful educational curriculum on racism and Black history" and legal and criminal justice reform.

The team has yet to outline how it will use a $5 million grant from ownership, to be disbursed at the direction of the Vikings' social justice committee to local and national causes.

Still, Friday's statements continued to show the Vikings' increased level of comfort with bold rhetoric around social justice after several years of largely behind-the-scenes action. The Wilfs have donated $250,000 to the team's social justice committee each of the past two seasons; Vikings players have developed partnerships in education, juvenile detention center outreach and employment opportunities for former prisoners, among others, while largely refraining from on-field gestures after they linked arms during the national anthem for most of the 2017 season.

Since linebacker Eric Kendricks challenged the NFL in early June to take more substantive action in matters of social justice, however, the Vikings have taken more steps toward public advocacy to go with their local involvement.

Kendricks and Anthony Barr appeared in the players' video that ultimately led Commissioner Roger Goodell to apologize on behalf of the league for not listening to Black players in June. Kendricks, Abdullah and safety Anthony Harris have spoken since Floyd's killing about the need for systemic change in the United States.

"As a social justice coalition, as a group, and as a team, as an organization, we're doing everything we can to build sustainable programs that will help the long-term effects of the lack of economic progress in low-income areas, the lack of mental health support in some of these areas," Abdullah said. "We're doing everything that we can, but now it's on the bureaucratic system to meet our intensity, to meet our level of what we're demanding because it only goes so far. It's a two-way street."

The team statement came at the end of the week when athletes across North American professional leagues forced the postponements of games in the aftermath of Blake's shooting.

In the NFL, several teams, including the Packers, Lions and Bears, canceled their Thursday practices. But the Vikings' team meeting that morning concluded with the team deciding to practice, believing canceling would have attracted attention for only a short time.

Their comments on Friday, and specifically Abdullah's remarks about Chauvin's trial, represented a bolder tone after a trying week.

"What I'd like to say first of all is how proud I am of these young men that have come together to talk about all the different things people are able to express — each different belief that they all have, and the players have come up with some ideas of what they want to incorporate," coach Mike Zimmer said Friday, before passing the microphone to Abdullah.