Colin Kaepernick has made his call on the future of police officers. The former San Francisco 49ers quarterback launched a project called Abolition For the People: The Movement For A Future Without Policing & Prisons through Kaepernick Publishing and LEVEL, a Medium publication. The project will include a series of essays with Kaepernick writing the first one, which talks about how he wants the abolishment of police.
“The ever-present threat of premature death at the hands, knees, chokeholds, tasers, and guns of law enforcement has only further engrained its anti-Black foundation into the institutions of policing,” Kaepernick wrote. “In order to eradicate anti-Blackness, we must also abolish the police. The abolition of one without the other is impossible.” Kaepernick also had a segment in his essay called “F— reform” and took a look back at why he began kneeling during the national anthem in 2016.
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“There’s a lot of things that need to change,” he said. “One specifically is police brutality. There’s people being murdered unjustly and not being held accountable. Cops are getting paid leave for killing people. That’s not right. That’s not right by anyone’s standards.” In that section, Kaepernick wrote that “seeking reform would make me an active participant in reforming, reshaping, and rebranding institutional white supremacy, oppression, and death. This constant re-interrogation of my own analysis has been part of my political evolution.” He also wrote that he “missed the larger picture” when it comes to police reform.
“The focus on individual punishment will never alter the outcome of a system rooted in Black death,” Kaepernick added. “I wanted change. I wanted it to stop,” he also mentioned he “wanted the reform what I saw. Yet, the reforms often proposed — use-of-force policies, body cameras, more training, and police accountability — were the same recycled police reforms consistently proposed in the past.”
At the end of the essay, Kaepernick wrote what readers should expect from his project. “You will understand the ways that reform has further legitimized policing and prisons into society,” he explained. “You will learn about the ways that abolishing policing and prisons can create a society able to invest in the well-being of the people.” Kaepernick has been a social activist since 2016 and has been looking to get back into the NFL. He has been a free agent since he opted out of his contract with the 49ers in 2016.
