San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick co-hosted a “I Know My Rights Workshop” over the weekend on Oct. 29 for hundreds of Oakland, San Francisco and Richmond youth. The purpose of the one day camp was to provide an abundance of resources, as well as knowledge of their rights:
What we are trying to accomplish is giving these kids resources in a lot of different areas. Mainly focusing on the history of policing, what their rights are currently. We have speakers coming in for that, as well as holistic health, financial literacy, education aspect, as well as ‘know yourself, know your community.’ All of these are building blocks that we want to give them, knowledge, give them education on, to make sure they have as many tools, as many advantages as we can give them in a day, to make sure that they have opportunities moving forward to be successful.
The “rights” that the youth were briefed on were printed on T-shirts that all in attendance were given:
Inspired by the Black Panthers’ “Ten-Point Program” ... Kaepernick offered the campers a list of 10 rights they should know:
- You have the right to be free.
- You have the right to be healthy.
- You have the right to be brilliant.
- You have the right to be safe.
- You have the right be loved.
- You have the right to be courageous.
- You have the right to be alive.
- You have the right to be trusted.
- You have the right to be educated.
- You have the right to know your rights.
Kaepernick hopes to bring the camp to other cities in the near future. Such work goes a lot further than refusing to stand at attention when the national anthem is played at 49er football games.
Kaepernick says there nothing about those anthem protests that he would change:
No, there’s not anything I would do differently because, once again, this is what I believe, and this is something I have great confidence in, great conviction in. There’s nothing that anybody is going to say that’s going to change how I feel about these issues. And there have been quite a few things that are misconstrued and different narratives that have been pushed. But ultimately that’s because of the system we function in. And the oppressive nature of the system is, it will always fight against people trying to correct those systems, and those systems of privilege, and balance the scales out.