On the same day that he was named Citizen of the Year by GQ, Colin Kaepernick still made sure to bring attention, and pledge support, to another victim of injustice, a fellow vilified public figure: Meek Mill.
The activist (and still-unemployed quarterback) took to Instagram to condemn America’s mass incarceration crisis and its discriminative criminal justice system, writing:
“This criminal (in)justice system, ripe with racial discrimination, stigmatizes, profiles, and targets young Black men for arrest at a young age, having its roots in their hyper-policed neighborhoods that they are raised in, and sadly extending into what should be a safe space—the classroom, via the school to prison pipeline.”
He then so bluntly weighed in on Meek’s prison sentence, which was being protested by hundreds of supporters in Philadelphia: “Meek Mill is a victim of this systemic oppression.”
To conclude, Kaepernick called for action, offering the stark contrast between Meek’s sentence and that of Brock Turner, the “Stanford Swimmer” who was indicted in 2015 after sexually assaulting an unconscious woman.
Kaepernick wrote, “Yes, there needs to be action surrounding sentencing reform, but there needs to also be action taken around abolishing the racialized norms of injustice that can lead to Meek Mill serving 2-4 years in prison for non-violent parole violations, and Brock Turner only serving 3 months in prison for three felony counts of sexual assault.”