Colin Kaepernick is featured in PAPER’s People Issue, where the NFL free agent discusses the importance of social justice, and details how he became involved.
“The discussion happened shortly after the execution of Mario Woods,” he said in the piece. Woods was killed by police in Dec. 2015 in San Francisco, after he was accused of stabbing someone in the shoulder. Kaep’s girlfriend, radio personality Nessa, said that he began to study the works of Malcolm X, Angela Davis and Huey P. Newton, and “devouring texts on the global struggle for Black freedom and self-determination.”
Kaep and Nessa also devised the Know Your Rights Camp (KYRC), a traveling youth-empowerment initiative that serves as a safe space for black youth, shortly before he began taking a knee during his tenure as a professional football player.
“KYRC is pillared around 10 fundamental human rights, in homage to the Black Panther Party’s Ten-Point Platform and Program,” the article reads. “According to Kaepernick, the principles represent the types of affirmations and protections that ought to be enjoyed by Black people globally: You have the right to be Free, Healthy, Brilliant, Safe, Loved, Courageous, Alive, Trusted, Educated and to Know Your Rights.”
Read the entire article and learn more about his initiative here.