I choose to sit with Kaepernick.
Go ahead, tell me I'm ungrateful, tell me I'm disrespectful, I dare you.
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I don't care.
I won't be silent.
You use your accusations of disrespect in order to silence me. To deny the evil that our country has reigned upon the world.
People all over the world, including the U.S. are dying because of this silence.
I choose to care.
So screw you.
Now let me tell you what the flag means to me, and why I cannot salute it anymore.
Those stars represent Native American land, stolen from them piece by piece through genocide and systematic ethnic cleansing. The blue background shows traces of the Trail of Tears as they were forced from their land, and died by the thousands. I see how even today, they still fight tooth and nail for their land and water.
In the brilliant red I see the blood of African-Americans, ripped from their land with unimaginable violence; culture, religion, languages, knowledge, dignity stripped of them. I see how their blood built the wealth of this nation, and how they were and are systematically denied access to that very wealth. I see their unjust deaths at the hands of police.
I see the Iraqi refugees I met, and hear their story about life after American occupation during the Iraqi war. I mourn for their dead children, and the approximately 1 million Iraqi lives lost in the course of that war.
In the brilliant white, I see our soldiers, good, innocent men and women, sent on a mission in a foreign land. They take this position, some out of patriotism, some out of desperation, unable to afford college in a system designed to only give education to the elite. They live, they die: some are left in between. They are told they are protecting something important, their friends and family, when all they are protect is oil, American interest, as they carry out a mission of black death upon this foreign land.
I see years of colonialism, arrogance, oppression, genocide and slavery.
You tell me to be grateful for the freedoms I have.
I only have the freedom, the prosperity, and opportunity that I enjoy because other people were killed, enslaved, oppressed.
It may not have been my choice, it may not have been my fault, but I am free because of it.
I benefit from the enslavement, oppression, and genocide of millions, because of the American Flag and what has been done in its name.
I am not grateful for that.
I will never be grateful for that.
That is why I will sit with Kaepernick
