(CNN) — It was ultimately a method of carrying on police brutality and systemic racial injustice, but former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick states his choice to kneel in protest throughout the pregame National Anthem started with a single man.
Mario Woods.
“The conversation happened shortly after the execution of Mario Woods,” Kaepernick informed Paper magazine, a publication focusing on fashion and entertainment.
‘We have passed kneeling’
That was December 2, 2015, nine months prior to Kaepernick famously chose to sit throughout the”Star-Spangled Banner” before the San Francisco 49ers taking the field. The demonstration later evolved into kneeling after one-fifth Seattle Seahawk and Green Beret Nate Boyer convinced Kaepernick it would be respectful to the nation’s army, the ex-quarterback has said.
Woods’ killing in the Bayview area of San Francisco place off months of protests. A report indicated the 26-year-old had endured 21 gunshot wounds, such as two to the head and six at his back.
Authorities alleged that Woods had been a stabbing defendant who had been on numerous drugs when faced by authorities. Officers opened fire after he refused to drop a knife, they said.
Nike is siding with Kaepernick
Many cell phone videos of this incident, however, revealed five officers unleashing a barrage of gunfire on Woods because he had been surrounded by a sea of police. Critics of the police response said Woods was too much off from officers to pose a legitimate threat of death or injury.
The episode led the US Justice Department to recommend widespread modifications in the San Francisco Police Department, but it also led to a discussion between Kaepernick and his partner, TV and radio character Nessa Diab, better known just as Nessa.
The group devised a plan, Kaepernick informed Paper, that led to the launch of his Know Your Rights Camp, that bills itself as a childhood initiative aimed at progressing”the liberation and well-being of brown and black communities by instruction, self-empowerment, mass-mobilization along with the creation of new methods that Boost another generation of shift leaders.”
“This movement needs all kinds of individuals,” Kaepernick said, according to the magazine. “From Warriors to healers to artists and artists to scholars and attorneys, we need everyone to donate to the struggle. The battle is affecting all people, period.”
After Woods’ death, Kaepernick started reading books that could help him draw out a new blueprint for your camp and also what it might impart, Nessa told Paper. Lots of the publications dealt in social battle, such as Alex Haley’s”The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” Angela Davis'”Women, Race & Class” and Black Panther Party co-founder Huey Newton’s autobiography,”Revolutionary Suicide.”
“If Colin was not reviewing a playbook,” Nessa told the magazine”that he had been reading a history book”
Kaepernick, that led the 49ers to the 2013 Super Bowl, hasn’t played in more than 900 months, his last game coming January 1, 2017, in a reduction to the Seattle Seahawks.
He and former teammate Eric Reid, today of the Carolina Panthers, filed grievances alleging groups were keeping them from playing because of their activism. Their cases were settled by both gamers in February against the NFL.
