MLS Postpones All Wednesday Games to Protest Police Shooting of Jacob Blake

Major League Soccer postponed five of its six games scheduled for Wednesday as a majority of the sports world has done the same in protest of the police shooting of Jacob Blake on Sunday in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Nashville and Orlando City kicked off earlier Wednesday and will finish their match as scheduled. However, the remaining five games on the schedule will not be played.  

The Milwaukee Bucks set off a domino effect across sports Wednesday with the entire NBA and WNBA schedules being wiped out and several games in Major League Baseball also being postponed due to player-led protests. 

While NBA players are meeting Wednesday night to discuss whether they want to continue playing their 2020 postseason, there have been no reports of MLS players considering walking out on the season. As the ripple came across sports, many chose to sit out as a sign of solidarity with their fellow athletes and in protest of the continued police brutality against Black people in the United States.

MLS made social-justice messaging a large part of its MLS Is Back tournament earlier this year, and several players have spoken out after the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and the shooting of Blake. 

Rusten Sheskey has been identified as the officer who shot Blake seven times in front of his children Sunday. Protests of the incident turned deadly late Tuesday when Kyle Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old white man with social-media activity in support of "Blue Lives Matter," allegedly killed two protesters and injured another.