Colin Kaepernick and the Dying Cause

Although awareness is slowly dwindling, Colin Kaepernick and the Black Lives Matter movement still remain important. People are still being unjustly shot and whether widely acknowledge or not, they still matter. Even if they’re not a shade of black or brown, we are still united as a cause.

The U.S. has continuously disrespected veterans. This is casually ignored. We disrespect veterans daily by allowing our veterans to unceasingly be homeless. One third of our homeless population has served our country at some point. 45% of homeless veterans suffer from mental illness, especially PTSD and roughly 70% suffer from drug/alcohol abuse.

We allow these people who risked their life for our country to be deported, even though they swore by our oath and risked blood and skin. We tell our transgender veterans that they don’t matter to us by not allowing them to continue their service.

We ignore the fact that 50% of veterans who need mental assistance go untreated. We feed them mind altering drugs such as Melfloquine that drive them to suicide and heinous acts all to save money. That has continued to be used until the past few years. The effects know among military medical officials, yet its use was continued to save the military money, but the price the veterans paid were costly.

In short, we don’t care about our veterans and saying that Kaepernick is disrespecting them is just another way to ignore the larger issue at hand and silence minorities.

Kaepernick has yet to actually disrespect our veterans like this country constantly does. He refuses to pledge to a piece of cloth. That red, white and blue cloth does not represent our veterans.

The larger issue at hand is that black people are 3 times more likely to be racially profiled than their white counterparts. Black people often face heavier prison sentences, harsher plea deals, and a larger bond than their white counterparts for committing the same crime. Black people are even less likely to have evidence in their car that proves the  alleged crime than their white counterparts.

The “war on drugs” started by Richard Nixon and continued by Ronald Reagan has repeatedly targeted black men. Thus tearing families apart and forcing some into extreme poverty. Our justice system continues to fail us. Philando Castile was shot dead in front of a child. Terrence Cutcher was stranded and still made out to be the predator. Our justice system refuses to incarcerate these rogue police who have power surges.

So, yes, I’m  still with Kaepernick and I still believe we should rally for this cause. This movement needs more than five seconds of fame just as the Flint Water Crisis.