Chris Kluwe fired as freshman football coach at Edison in fallout from MAGA protest

Days after Chris Kluwe was handcuffed and carried out of a Huntington Beach City Council meeting for engaging in what he called an act of “peaceful civil disobedience” he was fired from his high school teaching position.

The former NFL punter and 15-year resident of Huntington Beach said he was dismissed this week from the Edison High football program, for which he served as a freshman football coach for the Chargers.

Kluwe said he was called into a meeting with school officials on Thursday, was offered an opportunity to resign, and when he chose not, he was subsequently shown the door.

“The school fired me yesterday,” Kluwe said in a phone interview on Friday. “The [athletic director] and the vice principal of supervision brought me in and said that they were getting too much attention, and they had to let me go.

“Obviously, I was bummed about it because I feel like the community is losing a resource. I don’t think they’re going to find another ex-NFL player to coach freshman football.”

Huntington Beach Union High School District Athletic Director James Perry said he could not comment on a “human resources situation” when reached on Friday regarding Kluwe’s dismissal. Rich Boyce, the athletic director at Edison, also declined to comment.

At the Huntington Beach City Council meeting on Feb. 18, Kluwe made pointed remarks to the panel, arguing that the public was going unheard.

Library policies have been at the center of this debate, as the governing body went ahead with a 21-person, council-appointed book review board that, when formed, will have the ability to determine which books children can find on the shelves.

A plaque commemorating the 50th anniversary of the library to be placed at its Central Branch drew sharp backlash from members of the public for a design that included a MAGA acrostic — formed by the first letter of the words “Magical,” “Alluring,” “Galvanizing” and “Adventurous.”

Kluwe used the balance of his time at the meeting to put MAGA culture in the crosshairs, concluding that it is “profoundly corrupt, unmistakably anti-democracy” and characterizing it as “explicitly a Nazi movement.”

“You may have replaced a swastika with a red hat — that is what it is,” he told the council.

Kluwe then announced his intent to peacefully protest, stepped around the podium and walked toward the dais with his hands behind his back. Police officers advanced on him immediately, brought him to the ground and handcuffed him, then carried him out of the chambers.

During his playing career, Kluwe made national headlines for advocating for same-sex marriage. Within his hometown, Kluwe sees a landscape in which individuals are attempting to “make their own political profile larger.”

“What we’re seeing from this administration is that they don’t care about the American people,” Kluwe said. “They care about what benefits them personally, and Huntington Beach is a microcosm of that. This city council does not care about community feedback. … They keep messing with the library, even when we’ve made it very clear that we don’t want them messing with the library, and they keep doing things that benefit themselves, like the endless lawsuits that they keep suing the state over to build housing — which are completely unwinnable in court — and the community is like, ‘Why are you wasting our money?’ …

“That’s what MAGA does. They don’t care about community. They may say they care about America and fly an American flag, but their actions indicate that they’re against everything that the American Dream is supposed to stand for, which is that anyone who comes into this country should have a chance to succeed.”