COLIN KAEPERENICK. TRUMP ISN'T CUTTING OFF HEADS - YET.

He's been vilified by millions and locked out of the NFL - all because he took a knee to protest police brutality. But Colin Kaepernick's determined stand puts him in rare company in sports history: Muhammad Ali, Jackie Robinson- athletes who risked everything to make a difference.

 

In 2013, Colin Kaepernick was on the cover of this magazine because he was one of the best football players in the world. In 2017, Colin Kaepernick is on GQ's cover once again - but this time it is because he isn't playing football. And it's not because he's hurt, or because he's broken any rules, or because he's not good enough. Approximately 90 men are currently employed as quarterbacks in the NFL, as either starters or reserves, and Colin Kaepernick is better - indisputably, undeniably, flat-out better - than at least 70 of them. He is still, to this day, one of the most gifted quarterbacks on earth. And yet he has been locked out of the game he loves - blackballed - because of one simple gesture: He knelt during the playing of our national anthem. And he did it for a clear reason, one that has been lost in the yearlong storm that followed. He did it to protest systemic oppression and, more specifically, as he said repeatedly at the time, police brutality toward black people.

 

When we began discussing this GQ cover (see source *) with Colin earlier this fall, he told us the reason he wanted to participate is that he wants to reclaim the narrative of his protest, which has been hijacked by a president eager to make this moment about himself. But Colin also made it clear to us that he intended to remain silent. As his public identity has begun to shift from football star to embattled activist, he has grown wise to the power of his silence. It has helped his story go around the world. It has even provoked the ire and ill temper of Donald Trump. Why talk now, when your detractors will only twist your words and use them against you? Why speak now, when silence has done so much?

 

At the same time, Colin is all too aware that silence creates a vacuum, and that if it doesn't get filled somehow, someone else will fill it for him. In our many conversations with Colin about this project, we discussed the history of athletes and civil rights, and the indelible moments it called to mind, and we decided that we'd use photography - the power of imagery and iconography -to do the talking.

  

By the end of the 1960s, Muhammad Ali's stand against the Vietnam War—he'd marched in Harlem with the Nation of Islam after he was drafted and refused to serve - resulted in him being locked out of his sport for three years, at the peak of his talent, much as Colin is now. He continued to train throughout that period, waiting for his chance to return to boxing. He was known for jogging in the streets, and kids would chase him - the People's Champ, boosted in his darkest days by the joy of his truest fans. That's why we decided to photograph Colin in public, in Harlem, among the men, women, and children he is fighting for. To connect him to a crusade that stretches back decades. And because Colin has spent a year as a man without a team, we worked with him to assemble a new one: ten of his closest confidants - artists, activists, academics, and one legend of the civil rights movement - who shared with GQ what Colin's protest means to them, and what we all should do next.

* https://www.gq.com/story/colin-kaepernick-will-not-be-silenced.

WE, THE REAL PEOPLE EVERYWHERE, KNOW THE TRUTH. COLIN KAEPERNICK IS A MAN OF COURAGE STANDING UP FOR THE TRUTH BY KNEELING DOWN. 

TYRANTS RAGE WHEN GOOD PEOPLE PROTEST WITHOUT VIOLENCE. 

REMEMBER WHAT "LOYAL WHITE CHRISTIAN" AMERICANS WITH BATONS AND BOOTS AND KNIVES AND GUNS AND CROSSES DID TO DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR. AND THE MANY CIVIL RIGHTS PROTESTERS NOT SO LONG AGO. 

HOW MANY HEROES HAVE BEEN BUTCHERED ON THEIR KNEES WHILE ISLAMIST MURDERERS CUT OFF THEIR HEADS? 

TRUMP HASN'T CUT OFF HEADS -YET ....

(WE WILL SPEAK OF BOMBING HOSPITALS IN YEMEN ELSEWHERE.)