Once again members of the faithful are planning on taking to the sky to get their message across, with general manager Trent Baalke the as latest recipient of of their scorn.
Niners fan Graham Grealish has raised $2,277, well over the goal of $1,076, via a GoFundMe campaign started on Monday. The money will be used to fly a plane over Levi’s Stadium before San Francisco’s Nov. 6 matchup with the New Orleans Saints, with an attached banner calling for the firing of Baalke.
This is not Grealish’s first foray into airborne protest, as the Santa Clara native first made headlines in 2015, after raising money to fly a banner above Levi’s Stadium that read “Jed & 49ers should mutually part ways”, a play on the rhetoric used by York to describe the exit of Jim Harbaugh.
We spoke to Grealish and his lifelong friends Mark Scannell and Conor McGuire in 2015, and they explained that a public display of the fans feelings toward the organization would be far more effective than starting a petition.
“We wanted to do something the team couldn’t ignore and that the front office would see,” Grealish said. ““They asked to be held accountable, but haven’t given fans a chance to do that. So we just took initiative. We want to hold [York] accountable.”
Things have only continued to get worse for the organization and the fans since that first banner flew across Levi’s, with San Francisco finishing 5-11 last season before the termination of one-year coach Jim Tomsula, and this year’s 1-6 start that sees the team looking even more helpless than that group. Baalke has become public enemy number one (or possibly number 1A along with York) after electing not to make any splash signings in the offseason, instead electing to cobble a roster together of draft picks that have yet to pan out.
49ers fans donated double the necessary funds required to fly the banner over the stadium in less than 24 hours. After closing donations, Grealish announced the the additional money would be used to fly another banner later in the season.
