RF

Because he’s right. We know there’s no accountability for police when they murder African Americans at unprecedented rates. Just as the United States has been killing people around the world since 9/11 with impunity, the US state is also killing its own citizens (disproportionately black) with impunity here at home.

Last year 1,200 people were killed by police — zero of which resulted in convictions for murder or even manslaughter.

Personally, I have a difficult time standing for the nation anthem. I entered the military fully expecting to be fighting for the cause of freedom and democracy, and trusting that I would be making the world safer after 9/11.

But once in Afghanistan in January 2003, I quickly learned my job was to draw the Taliban back into the fight. The Taliban surrendered only a few months after the initial US invasion. This is to say nothing about the bait-and-switch invasion of Iraq.

Between 1980 and 2001, there were around three hundred suicide bombings around the world with only 10 percent directed at the United States or US interests. Since 2001 there’s been more than 2,500 suicide bombs with more than 90 percent directed at the United States and US interests.

So it’s not just my personal experience, the numbers alone show that the world is far more dangerous after fifteen years of endless American-led war. Since 9/11 we’ve also killed a million people, the vast majority civilians. We are killing brown people with impunity overseas, just like we are killing people of color with impunity here at home.

Then after returning from Afghanistan I saw how the security state had grown at home. I saw that the United States has the largest prison population in the history of the world, with African Americans (there are a lot of people of color in the military) being disproportionately incarcerated. Public schools are being gutted in every city. The media and politicians barely mention our endless trillion-dollar wars and drone operations.

One could add many more items to this list of reasons not to stand for the national anthem. Kaepernick chose one, which is incredibly important and on a lot of minds right now.

He is choosing not to lie to himself, the world, or all the people who thought they died to ensure we lived in a free country, by claiming this is the land of the free when it is not. This is the opposite of an insult to those who died thinking they were fighting for liberty.