Why Colin Kaepernik took a knee

It’s Black history month and Trent Hamilton reminded me of the real reason Colin Kaepernick knelt during the National Anthem.

In Fall, 2008, Nate Boyer was in Baghdad as a member of Army special forces when he helped take down a house where insurgents had holed up. Shots were fired. People died. A day in war for a heroic soldier from Pleasanton, California.

In his early 20s, he wandered from community college in San Diego to homeless in LA living in his Honda Civic hatchback showering at the YMCA and scavenging restaurant leftovers.

Searching for meaning, he read Che Guevera’s “Motorcycle Diaries,” saw the suffering on Darfur, Sudan and went, hooking up as a United Nations volunteer after spending every penny he had on travel. He was 23.

He volunteered and saw life with new perspective as he recovered from a bout with Malaria realizing how lucky he was to be born white American and middle class.

Returning home, he resolved to become a Green Beret. He succeeded on his 2nd try.

Returning home from Iraq, he tried to walk on to play football for the Texas Longhorns. He didn’t have a position and was too old. As he got redeployed, the team lost its longsnapper.

He took a few coaching tips and left for active duty, practicing longsnapping and returning to earn a scholarship in 2012. He returned to war in Afghanistan and, after graduation resolved to try and be a 34-year old NFL rookie.

The Seahawks give him a chance in preseason

I heard about Nate from a Marine who I met hiking in the Adirondacks. He said his name was Tom Collins.

I was cooking dinner on my camp stove when he wandered in, a scraggly-haired faded hippie with bad teeth “Mind if I join you?” He was a bit scary looking, but what’s a guy to say? A leanto sleeps 6.

He wore cheap clothes. Tennis shoes with bread bags in them, a blaze orange insulated cap from Walmart.

He carried a strange looking backpack.

“How come you don’t have boots,” I asked

“I don’t see the point,” he said. “My feet stay dry and I’m comfortable.” He spoke with the clipped affect of a northern New Yorker. He drank from a Smartwater bottle. “Had to have someone buy it for me. Couldn’t pass the test.” He ate Bugles from a gallon bag and cooked food from Aldi.

Small talk turned to life. “I’m retired,” he said. “I raised 6 kids off the grid near Adams as a contractors helper after serving 17 years in the Marine corps ”

I have no filter and don’t care if I offend anyone so I asked. “What do you think of Trump?”

“I can’t stand him. When you took 5 deferrals and then said those things about John McCain, you lost my support forever.”

“So how about Colin Kaepernick?”

“I served so a man like him can raise an issue like that.”

"People need to know about Nate Boyer more than Kaepernick

Let me explain."

I was all ears.

In August of 2016, Boyer wrote an open letter to Colin Kaepernick after the then-49ers quarterback started to gain national attention for sitting during the national anthem. Boyer and Kapernick met and discussed the issue, and it was Boyer who suggested to Kaepernick that he should kneel during the anthem as a respectful form of protest.

Boyer has frequently voiced his support for Kaepernick's right to protest, but as the issue of protests has been spun by commentators, and even that son of a bitch Donald Trump, Kaepernick's actions have often been misconstrued. He was not denigrating the flag but taking a knee as a sign of respect because a combat veteran asked him to.