“It starts with Colin Kaepernick. The free-agent NFL quarterback came to the South Side of Chicago last Saturday to hold one of his KNOW YOUR RIGHTS CAMPS: full-day youth seminars that Kaepernick organizes, funds, and emcees. Already staged in New York City and the Bay Area, with more cities to come, these are not open events for sports fans, the press, or random people. Their aim is to speak directly to black, brown, and economically disadvantaged youth, invited through local community organizations, about history, nutrition, legal rights, and financial literacy.

“It might start with Colin Kaepernick, but it doesn’t end with him. There is a young multiracial network of roughly 50 Know Your Rights volunteers. They have flown in from all over country to handle logistics at the event’s site, the DuSable Museum of African American History in Hyde Park. These are people like Kerem from Orange County who said, ‘This message is about equal rights. Often people in underserved communities don’t understand that they have these rights and they need to claim them…. Colin has sacrificed a lot to get to this point. It shows he is passionate about this and we all feed from that.’ ”*

Camps attendees are given T-shirts that list the following on the back:

1. You have the right to be free

2. You have the right to be healthy

3. You have the right to be brilliant

4. You have the right to be safe

5. You have the right to be loved

6. You have the right to be courageous

7. You have the right to be alive

8. You have the right to be trusted

9. You have the right to be educated

10. You have the right to know your rights

For more info, see: knowyourrightscamp.com

ALSO SEE: Dave Zirin, “Colin Kaepernick’s Message to Chicago Youth: Know Your Rights,” The Nation, May 10, 2017:

thenation.com/article/colin-kaepernicks-message-to-chicago-youth-know-your-rights/

NFL free agent Colin Kaepernick
Photograph by Rick Scuteri
Image credit: Associated Press