A kneeling Colin Kaepernick graces the cover of the October 3 TIME Magazine.
The accompanying article (sadly, subscription required) looks at how the San Francisco 49ers quarterback’s protest over the National Anthem has spread throughout professional sports. This cover comes at a moment in the country. Despite the fact that Kaepernick is currently the most disliked player in the NFL–and has received death threats–what he’s doing is a powerful example of how to use peaceful protest to shine a spotlight on an issue that just seems to not want to go away. More to the point, the statistics on extrajudicial killings of black people by police only underscore how relevant and timely his protest is: Since he began his protest, 15 black people have been killed by police. And it’s only been about a month since he started.
It boggles the mind that there are some people who find Kaepernick exercising his First Amendment rights (in a non-disruptive manner) more offensive than the violence that is regularly visited on unarmed black people. I mean, it really doesn’t because, well, White Supremacy. They’ll either come around. Or they won’t.
Either way, a change is gonna come.
