Colin Kaepernick Wins Amnesty International’s Highest Honor
Colin Kaepernick may not have a job on the football field, but much of the world is still cheering for him. Amnesty International, the global human rights organization, gave Kaepernick its highest honor — the 2018 Ambassador of Conscience Award — in Amsterdam on Saturday. Past winners of the award, which “celebrates individuals and groups who speak out for justice,” include former South Africa president Nelson Mandela, Malala Yousafzai, the education activist from Pakistan who survived an assassination attempt by the Taliban, and rock group U2. The organization recognized Kaepernick for his protest against police violence: his action, kneeling during the national anthem before NFL games, sparked a movement replicated across America and the world, starting a debate about free speech and patriotism that was inflamed by the President of the United States, one of Kaepernick’s most relentless critics. [continue reading...]
“It was James Baldwin who said, to be Black in America, “and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.” My question is, why aren’t all people? How can you stand for the national anthem of a nation that preaches and propagates, “freedom and justice for all,” that is so unjust to so many of the people living there? How can you not be in rage when you know that you are always at risk of death in the streets or enslavement in the prison system? How can you willingly be blind to the truth of systemic racialized injustice?”
“It’s ironic that the stand Colin and I took was not to stand at all, but it was to take a knee. Colin didn’t kneel in protest of a song or a symbolic piece of fabric, but he knelt to bring awareness to the human rights still being denied to people of color. He didn’t kneel because he is anti-America, but because he believes America should be held to the standard that it has written on paper; that we are all created equal. That word courage is exactly the word I would use to describe Colin. It was a courageous act to begin a protest on systemic oppression by himself. We all know that there is safety in numbers but Colin didn’t recruit numbers to protect himself; he peacefully and quietly set out on his own.”- Eric Reid (@e_reid35)
