The players took the knee before kick-off against Tottenham on Saturday.
On the Thursday before the game, Chiedozie Ogbene and Marvelous Nakamba visited Stopsley Community Primary School to speak to pupils who had been taking part in a workshop put on by the Luton Town Community Trust on the subject of racism. If you’ve not seen the video yet, we highly recommend it.
It is also Black History Month. Our Community Trust will deliver several community activities and celebrations to mark it.
Towards the end of October, the Community Trust will then bring together over 60 participants from their Premier League Kicks sessions to the North of Luton in Marsh Farm, to take part in a No Room for Racism community football tournament – an event which will be hosted in collaboration with Luton Youth Partnership Service and the TREE project as we foster awareness and solidarity.
These are all brilliant initiatives that we are proud to support and will continue to do so in the fight against discrimination.
Yet.
Despite all this magnificent work to highlight the diversity we have in our town and in our changing room... it’s still happening.
Racist abuse is still happening.
It is still happening in 2023.
Ironically it is happening on a weekend designated to highlight the campaign.
On Monday, we reported and assisted with yet another vile, cowardly act of online abuse from an account underneath an Instagram post after Saturday’s game directed towards our striker Elijah Adebayo.
Just as it was dealt with the numerous times it has already happened to several of our players in the past 12 months, the post has been reported by us to Instagram’s parent company, Meta, and the Premier League. Bedfordshire Police have also been made aware of the comments.
We have spoken to Elijah to offer him our support.
But do you know what the sad thing is? He said it’s happened so many times now that he can’t be bothered to report or respond to discrimination anymore. He’s tired of it.
We are now treating this as abuse against the Club.
We have had enough of saying enough is enough.
So we will continue to fight against this heinous, obnoxious, narrow-minded and bigoted behaviour.
We will, of course, always stand up for anyone at Luton Town who suffers at the hands of such backward and utterly deplorable attitudes.
We will continue to do our bit. For everyone.
If you see any form of racist abuse, report it to us. Our email is myvoice@lutontown.co.uk
You can also report anything you see to the Premier League HERE and also via the Kick It Out app, which can be downloaded from the App Store or Google Play.