Three cheers for Colin Kaepernick
Four years to the day after Colin Kaepernick first sat out the National Anthem on the 49ers bench, the NBA began a series of playoff boycotts, which spread to other sports including for a day or two Major League Baseball and tennis star Naomi Osaka. Kaepernick and the other athletes, or Civil Rights workers 60 years ago, were all protesting the same issue, the oppression of African-Americans, which gone on in this country in one form or another since the beginning of slavery. And it is not proof of a broken system; it is the proof of the opposite: this is how the system was built to work.
But people keep trying and Colin Kaepernick, who played his first football in the youth leagues of Turlock CA, is one of them, a leader of moral conscience. We salute him. -- blj
It was August 2016 when Kaepernick first made headlines upon refusing to stand for the anthem during a preseason contest, telling NFL Media after the game that he was not going to “stand up and show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.”
“To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way,” he continued. “There are bodies in the street and people getting away with murder.” – Turlock Journal, June 30, 2020
You know the slogan: If you see something, say something. That is what all of them from sports did this week. It was a week, incidentally, when Roger Goodell was asked what he would have done differently in the autumn of 2016. Here is part of what he said:
“The first thing I’d say is I wish we had listened earlier, Kaep, to what you were kneeling about and what you were trying to bring attention to.”
It’s different with Goodell. You want to tell him this: Don’t say something, do something. Use the power of your office to get a young man who is still just 32 and who once had a ball in the air at the Superdome in New Orleans to win the Super Bowl for the 49ers another job in professional football. It is a shame, and a permanent stain on Goodell’s league, that Kaepernick may never work in the NFL again. And why? Because of the same convictions that Roger Goodell himself now celebrates. – Mike Lupika, New York Daily News, August 29, 2020
6-30-20
Turlock Journal
Kaepernick’s years in Turlock will be told in Nexflix series
https://www.turlockjournal.com/news/local/...
It’s been nearly four years since Turlock native Colin Kaepernick’s decision to kneel during the national anthem shocked the nation — an act the former 49ers quarterback stated was in protest of oppression and injustice against people of color in America. Now, current events have thrust the Pitman High School grad and his peaceful demonstration back into the spotlight and soon onto Netflix’s list of shows.
It was August 2016 when Kaepernick first made headlines upon refusing to stand for the anthem during a preseason contest, telling NFL Media after the game that he was not going to “stand up and show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.”
“To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way,” he continued. “There are bodies in the street and people getting away with murder.”
Kaepernick’s protest continued for the duration of the season and became a point of contention among many Americans, as supporters of the protest clashed with those who viewed it as disrespectful to the military. Following the 2016 season, the 49ers told Kaepernick that they planned to release him and he opted out of his contract on March 3, 2017. He became a free agent six days later and hasn’t played in an NFL game since, which has led to years of accusations of “blackballing,” denials and litigation between the league and Kaepernick.
Following the death of George Floyd in May and subsequent nationwide protests calling for police reform, many have adopted a new outlook on Kaepernick’s protest as riots and looting dominated news coverage — even the NFL. Commissioner Roger Goodell said in a June 5 video statement that the league was “wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier” on racial injustice issues, and though he didn’t mention Kaepernick by name, he stated two weeks later that he encourages a team to sign the quarterback.
While there have been reports of several organizations expressing interest in Kaepernick, he has yet to sign a contract with a team. That hasn’t kept him from staying busy, however; aside from working with his nonprofit Know Your Rights Camp, Netflix announced on Monday that Kaepernick will be the subject of a six-part series produced by acclaimed director Ava DuVernay titled “Colin in Black and White.”
The show will explore Kaepernick’s years at PHS and attempt to show the experiences and insights that led to his activism, according to Netflix. Kaepernick will serve as an executive producer for the series, which was written by Michael Starrbury, and appear as a narrator. DuVernay and Starrbury previously worked together on the Emmy-winning Netflix miniseries “When They See us” about the Central Park Five case.
"Too often we see race and Black stories portrayed through a white lens," Kaepernick said in a release. "We seek to give new perspective to the differing realities that Black people face. We explore the racial conflicts I faced as an adopted Black man in a white community, during my high school years. It's an honor to bring these stories to life in collaboration with Ava for the world to see."
Kaepernick attended PHS from 2002-2006, where he was a star athlete in both football and baseball. Upon making it to the NFL and eventually starting for the 49ers in Super Bowl XLVII, he was celebrated by Turlock residents in every corner of the city: schools placed signs of support along their fences and Kaepernick was even given the key to the city in 2014. His jersey was hung in restaurants, bakeries sold cookies shaped like his jersey and Main Street Footers honored him with his own menu item called the “Kap Dog.”
Since then, the cookies have been removed from the shelves, Kaepernick’s hot dog was taken off the menu and little remains around town of Turlock’s one-time golden boy. Still, supporters remain and others have changed their minds about his protest in light of recent events. That support is evident through a Change.org petition calling for a Kaepernick mural in Turlock that has amassed 1,500 signatures on Tuesday and it was created Monday.
“Now it is time to show Kaepernick the respect and love that should have never ceased,” the petition states. “We hope to make our city more beautiful as we highlight Kaepernick’s undying courage in the fight against racial inequality…Please don’t let Turlock continue to turn their back on Kaepernick. Let’s show our hometown hero the respect he deserves.”
8-29-20
New York Day News
The sons and daughters of Colin Kaepernick are changing sports forever
By Mike Lupica http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/ny-colin-kaepernick-player-activism-lu...
It was four years ago this week that Colin Kaepernick, still a professional football player for the San Francisco 49ers at the time, not yet 29 years old, knelt during the playing of the national anthem before a 49ers-Chargers preseason game. The game before that he had sat on his team’s bench during the playing of the anthem, explaining his actions by saying that America “oppresses people of color.”
We did not know it at the time, didn’t really know until this week, that Colin Kaepernick, now an unemployed quarterback, was beginning a process that would ultimate change the landscape in sports forever.
The thrilling activism about social justice you saw this week, as professional athletes were united against the oppression about which Kaepernick once spoke, united in the tragic American season of George Floyd and Jacob Blake, really began with Kaepernick. His actions hardly united the country in 2016; rather he was an agent for hardening its divisions as if in cement, starting with the president of the United States who, when more players knelt during the first Sunday of regular-season play that year, called those kneeling players “SOBs.”
Colin Kaepernick (7) kneels during the national anthem during the 2016 season and gets run out of the league. Now Kaepernick's peaceful protest movement is leading to real change. (Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP)
The outcry against Kaepernick and the other players kneeling was as predictable as the tide. They were called unpatriotic, and accused of dishonoring the military and the flag, even though what Kaepernick was talking about at the time was simply how Black lives matter, long before Black Lives Matter became an historic movement. Now, in this season of George Floyd and Jacob Blake, and the demonstrations and unrest that have followed, it has become routine for athletes to take a knee before games, just without being called enemies of the people.
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So what Kaepernick started has now taken us to the most remarkable week we have ever had in sports in this country. Instead of taking a knee, we saw professional basketball players and coaches in both the NBA and WNBA protest Jacob Blake being shot seven times in the back by a Kenosha, Wis., policeman (when did the officer think he had controlled the situation with Blake. After the fourth shot? The sixth?) by refusing to play games on Wednesday night. We saw Major League Baseball players do the same. And soccer players. Naomi Osaka, a young woman of color who once won this country’s national championship in tennis, refused to play a tennis match at the tournament being played next door to the tennis stadium named after the great Arthur Ashe, whom I wish were still around to see all of this, and realize his own activism had not been in vain.
The Bucks refused to play on Wednesday leading to an extraordinary week in American sports history. (Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images North America/TNS)
Athletes did not just kneel this time. They stood up, as a group. They spoke eloquently to the Black experience in this country. We saw Clayton Kershaw, a white pitcher, one of the greatest of his time, stand next to his manager Dave Roberts, who is of African-American and Japanese descent, and Black teammates Mookie Betts and Kenley Jansen, and explain why the Dodgers, as a team decided to join Betts in his decision not to play baseball that night.
We saw Dom Smith cry as he discussed race in America, more the hot third rail now than it ever has been. We saw the Mets and Marlins briefly appear on the field at Citi Field and then leave together, only leaving a “Black Lives Matter” T-shirt behind. None of these people will lose their careers because of this, the way Kaepernick has. But four years after Kaepernick’s first knee, reasonable people of all colors did the only sensible thing and cheered them this time around, mostly for being Americans.
You know the slogan: If you see something, say something. That is what all of them from sports did this week. It was a week, incidentally, when Roger Goodell was asked what he would have done differently in the autumn of 2016. Here is part of what he said:
“The first thing I’d say is I wish we had listened earlier, Kaep, to what you were kneeling about and what you were trying to bring attention to.”
It’s different with Goodell. You want to tell him this: Don’t say something, do something. Use the power of your office to get a young man who is still just 32 and who once had a ball in the air at the Superdome in New Orleans to win the Super Bowl for the 49ers another job in professional football. It is a shame, and a permanent stain on Goodell’s league, that Kaepernick may never work in the NFL again. And why? Because of the same convictions that Roger Goodell himself now celebrates.