When he was an N.F.L. punter with the Minnesota Vikings, Chris Kluwe was known for speaking out. He hasn’t stopped in retirement.
Mr. Kluwe was arrested in Huntington Beach, Calif., on Tuesday night and charged with disrupting a City Council meeting.
He was objecting to plans for a plaque celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Huntington Beach Central Library, which included the words “Magical,” “Alluring,” “Galvanizing” and “Adventurous” — the first letters of which spell “MAGA,” President Trump’s slogan meaning “Make America Great Again.”
The proposed plaque continued with a more explicit reference: “Through hope and change our nation has built back better to the golden era of Making America Great Again!” — also alluding to the “hope and change” and “build back better” slogans popularized by former Presidents Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr.
Mr. Kluwe, who said he had lived in Huntington Beach for 15 years, was one of several citizens who rose to speak at the public hearing. “Everyone is in favor of a plaque to celebrate the library, but the vast, vast majority are against including a MAGA acrostic,” he said, standing at a lectern with a microphone. “Unfortunately, it’s clear that this council does not listen.”
“MAGA is explicitly a Nazi movement,” he said, drawing applause. “You may have replaced a swastika with a red hat, but that is what it is.”
Saying he would now engage in the “time-honored American tradition of peaceful civil disobedience,” he took a few steps toward the front of the room where council members were sitting, and police officers rushed in to detain him. A councilman announced a five-minute recess, and cameras cut away for several moments.
Mr. Kluwe, 43, did not immediately respond to a request for comment through his management or the agency that arranges his speaking appearances on Thursday. The City Council also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Mr. Kluwe told The Daily Pilot that he did not resist arrest and that he was released after four hours.
The Huntington Beach Police Department listed the charge as “disturbance, etc. at assembly, etc.”
The plaque was approved unanimously later in the meeting.
“This was done not with the intention of changing the council’s mind, because I don’t think those minds can be changed,” Mr. Kluwe told The Orange County Register. “It was done so that people who are watching and people who will watch understand that this is important enough to get arrested for. That it’s important to stand up and speak truth to power and to do so in a way that other people can emulate.”
Councilwoman Gracey Van Der Mark, the former mayor of Huntington Beach, told The Pilot, “He wanted his five minutes of fame, and that’s what he got.”
She added: “The city of Huntington Beach has always been conservative, and they tried to change that, and we’re just taking it back to the way it was. If I wanted to live in a liberal city with liberal values, I would have stayed in Los Angeles.”
Mr. Kluwe was known for being outspoken during his playing career from 2005 to 2012, and particularly for his vigorous support of gay marriage, which was not yet legal in the entire U.S.
Having turned down Harvard to attend U.C.L.A., Mr. Kluwe double majored in political science and history. He also was known for performing in a rock band and being an active video gamer even during his N.F.L. career. He wrote a science fiction novel, “Otaku,” that was set in the gaming world.
He has said that when he played for the Vikings, coaches discouraged him from speaking out, and that he believed the Vikings released him in 2012 because of his activism and not for football reasons, though the team pushed back on those claims.
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