Kaepernick, from kneeling protest to autopsies for police victims – Corriere.it

His knee to the ground during the US anthem in 2016 embarrassed the NFL and subsequently infuriated Donald Trump, later becoming the symbol of the Black Lives Matter protests from May 2020 onwards, following the murder of George Floyd: the former quarterback Colin Kaepernick today he is 35 years old and since March 2017 he hasn’t had a contract in the NFL. In the night between Sunday and Monday, the American football league will experience its Super Bowl number 57 while Kaepernick — who ten years ago played Super Bowl number 47 with his San Francisco 49ers, defeated 34-31 by the Baltimore Ravens — remains away from the world NFL and is now dedicated full time to the activities of his association Know your rights camp, which takes care of the victims of abuse by the US police. He does it from a media point of view, with a docu-series on police violence, and in recent months he has also done it concretely, deciding to finance independent autopsies for families who cannot afford them.

Hunting for the truth

Autopsies are used to find an alternative truth to the official one, in the event of death in prison or for police violence, and the cases followed by Know your rights camp are starting to be many. Such as the story of Gilbert Gonzalo Gilwho died at the age of 67 in his cell at the Vista Detention Facility, officially from the consequences of Covid and traces of methamphetamine before daughter Jennifer Schmidt noticed a huge red mark on the father’s forehead, in the mortuary. Without too much faith in a match, Jennifer wrote to Kaepernick’s organization and the answer after a few hours arrived from Nicole Martin, director of the legal program of Know Your Rights Camp and first employee hired by the former NFL star: a short time later, the body by Gilbert Gonzalo Gil arrived on the bed of the doctors of the organization (including Roger Mitchell, professor of pathology at Howard University) and the forensic examination was clear, as the bruises on the body and the blue tips of the hands and feet showed asphyxiation . So, a homicide. In the United States a private autopsy costs between 10,000 and 15,000 dollars and today the organization of Kaepernick and his partner Ben Meiselas (who was his lawyer) has carried out 42, in fifteen different American states. With clear procedures: the pathologists of the organization, to avoid prejudices, are not allowed access to the original results of the coroner. In some cases the two autopsies differed like day and night, on another occasion the family of a victim was told by law enforcement that they had performed a regular autopsy but the body of the deceased had no surgical cuts.

Kaepernick’s new life

Colin Kaepernick’s new life was told by Alex Prewitt on Sports Illustrated: In 2022 in the US there were 1,176 homicides linked to police intervention. The former 49ers is working on some of these cases, who prefers not to have direct contact with the families of the victims but who follows all the cases directly: As long as there are police killings, our work is so much needed, Kaepernick said. Just Jennifer Schmidt told Sports Illustrated that she got mad at the NFL star when she saw the kneeling: How can you not be proud of being an American…I wondered…but now I understand and I’ve changed my mind. Had it not been for the autopsy initiative, my father would have officially died of Covid and drugs.

The document-series

Kaepernick’s initiative, by his own admission, was born from what the former 49ers player discovered in Bakersfield, California, in the making of the docuseries Killing County. It was directly produced by Kaepernick Media for the American streaming platform Hulu, owned by Disney, in collaboration with Abc News Studio: the three-part series talks about Bakersfield, the county seat of Kern County in California and the birthplace of the speaker of the House — elected with great difficulty, after fifteen Voting — Kevin McCarthy. In the narration of Andr Holland (actor who took part in moonlight, Oscar for best film in 2017), the case of a fatal shooting in the parking lot of a hotel in which Jorge Ramirez lost his life is treated: according to the family he was working as a police informant, but in that operation he was killed and the family went in search of the truth. A story told in Killing County full of twists, cover-ups and alleged corruption, in which much of Bakersfield is mobilized against the local police: in the city the rate of murders, crimes and executions of law enforcement is the highest in America. And after the release of the docuseries on February 3, which contains several archive images that illustrate the brutal reality of the city, the resignation from the council of the county sheriff, Donny Youngblood, is flocking.

The lawsuit against the NFL and the apologies

Since March 2017, after the termination of the contract with the 49ers, Kaepernick has no longer had space in the NFL: a couple of franchises tested him, no one signed him amid fears of having a too cumbersome player in the locker room and the controversies that during the presidency Trump became increasingly fiery. Kaepernick sued the NFL (together with Eric Reid, the other player who started the kneeling protest with him) accusing the owners of having marginalized him for his opinions and the lawsuit ended with a private agreement on whose figure – for someone the NFL paid 10 million dollars, for others even 60 — the mystery is in force. What is certain is that the subsequent ones too tryoutalways surrounded by controversy, did not lead to an NFL contract and the league under constant pressure (including that of NBA star LeBron James) if only to the point of apologizing: As the National Football League we admit we were wrong in not listening to the protests of our players and we encourage everyone to speak and protest freely, commissioner Roger Goodell admitted in June 2020, although not directly quoting Kaepernick.

Since then, the fields and helmets of the NFL are invaded by messages that promote the fight against racism: End Racism, Stop Hate, It Takes All of Us, Black Lives Matter, Inspire Change and Say Their Stories are the writings that players can choose to wear on the helmet or are in the end zone, as will also happen in the Super Bowl on Sunday night. There is still a long way to go, but it seems like an era has passed since that knee to the ground shocked the NFL and made Colin Kaepernick a former playerturning him into an extraordinary activist.