“Listen” being the operative word, as he emphasized in a poignant open letter to the San Francisco 49ers quarterback on Tuesday.
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“I joined the Army upon returning to the USA because I believed people like that were worth fighting for”, Boyer continues in the letter.
I joined the Army upon returning to the US because I believed people like that were worth fighting for. What you are doing takes a lot of courage, and I’d be lying if I said I knew what it was like to walk around in your shoes.
In it, Boyer admitted his initial reaction to Kaepernick’s protest was anger but that he would try to understand what the quarterback is doing. He said he won’t support a country that oppresses people of color. “It’s your inalienable right”, he wrote to Kaepernick for the veteran periodical Army Times. I initially just thought it was a publicity thing and … If they weren’t getting paid to do so, would the National Football League peddle in the pomp and pageantry they do? “That’s not right. That’s not right by anyone’s standards”.
Freeman pointed out that Kaepernick had not broken any rules, and that several players who had committed actual crimes were still playing in the NFL.
Kaepernick has refused to stand during the national anthem during the Niners’ three preseason games this summer, telling NFL Media’s Steve Wyche that his decision is based on perceived societal wrongdoings against African-Americans and minorities in the U.S.
However, The Intercept reported on August 31 about the hashtag #VeteransForKaepernick that has been trending on social media among active-duty and retired military personnel. After his release, he enrolled at Texas and made the football team as a walk-on long snapper.
Colin Kaepernick says he plans to continue his protest during Thursday night’s game.
In an open letter to Kaepernick published by the Army Times, Boyer, 35, writes that he knows “racism exists in our country”, and tells of having seen genocide in Darfur.
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I didn’t enlist to fight for what we already have here; I did it because I wanted to fight for what those people didn’t have there: “Freedom”. “He’s a traitor.” A different front office employee told Freeman that he would seriously consider resigning from his position if the owner of his team asked him to sign Kaepernick, while another chimed in with a strong opinion on Kaepernick’s decision not to stand for the national anthem. “I think having these conversations helps everybody have a better understanding of where everybody is coming from”.
