Bill Berkowitz for BuzzFlash: Colin Kaepernick’s Know Your Rights Camp Aims to Hold Police Accountable With Its Autopsy Initiative
February 26, 2022
By Bill Berkowitz
The NFL may have succeeded in canceling Colin Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49er quarterback who led the team to the 2013 Super Bowl, and who in 2016 took a knee to protest against racial injustice and police brutality, but that hasn’t stopped Kaepernick from being a leading voice for social justice. His Know Your Rights Camp organization recently launched a unique and much-needed initiative, the KYRC Autopsy Initiative (https://www.knowyourrightscamp.com/autopsyinitiative).
Despite erroneous claims by former NFL sideline reporter Michele Tafoya that Kaepernick doesn’t want to play in the NFL anymore, and Rudy Giuliani’s hysterical rant about Eminem honoring Kaepernick by kneeling during the Super Bowl halftime show, Kaepernick continues to be an unapologetic civil rights activist.
Over the years, grave questions have been raised about official autopsy reports after police killed black people. A September 20, 2021 New York Times report pointed out that “Police killings in America have been undercounted by more than half over the past four decades, according to a new study that raises pointed questions about racial bias among medical examiners and highlights the lack of reliable national record keeping on what has become a major public health and civil rights issue” (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/30/us/police-killings-undercounted-study.html).
The National Vital Statistics System, which collects death certificates, “identified a startling discrepancy: About 55 percent of fatal encounters with the police between 1980 and 2018 were listed as another cause of death,” The New York Times reported.
According to a KYRC email, “A first-of-its-kind program, our initiative offers free-of-charge secondary autopsies to family members of those whose lives have been taken as a result of a police-related death. We have gathered a panel of highly respected board-certified forensic pathologists who perform autopsies, disclose preliminary findings, and issue final reports to requesting families.”
Kaepernick said of the initiative: “We know that the prison industrial complex–which includes police and policing–strives to protect and serve its interests at all costs. The Autopsy Initiative is one important step toward ensuring that family members have access to accurate and forensically verifiable information about the cause of death of their loved one in their time of need.”
“I am passionate about the Initiative’s impact and look forward to being a resource to victims’ family members who have lost their loved ones due to a police-related death,” Autopsy Initiative program manager Nicole Martin said in a statement.
“I am extremely enthusiastic about this truly unique program,” pathology coordinator Dr. Cyril Wecht told The Associated Press. "The opportunity to have unbiased second autopsies performed by independent, experienced forensic pathologists in police-related deaths will provide victims' families with knowledge that the true facts of any such case have been thoroughly analyzed and prepared for appropriate utilization whenever deemed necessary.”
KYRC’s Autopsy Initiative is not the organization’s only project. In addition to its Know Your Rights Camps, founded in 2016 to address educational needs and self-empowerment of at-risk youth, Kaepernick recently released a free 85-page “Colin in Black and White” curriculum, called The Kaepernick Curriculum, If you think right-wing activists have been outraged about so-called Critical Race Theory in the public schools – which it is not -- wait till they get their eyes on “Colin in Black and White” curriculum.
The curriculum, “packed with political education resources and activities … guide[s] viewers through “Colin in Black and White,” Kaepernick’s 6-episode series on Netflix.
Over Super Bowl weekend, Kaepernick teamed up with Ben & Jerry’s “to challenge policing and prison budgets. Part of the campaign included billboards “all over the city that ask people to support investing in programs and services that address the root causes of harm and ‘crime,’ instead of continuing to pour vast sums of money into ineffective and violent forms of law enforcement,” the KYRC email noted
Meanwhile, despite some reporters – most recently Michelle Tafoya, the former sideline reporter for "NBC Sunday Night Football" -- maintaining that Kaepernick does not want to play football again, the San Francisco Chronicle’s Scott Ostler recently noted that Kaepernick “continues to work out on his own, football-type workouts, with the same dedication he had when he was employed.”
Tafoya was recently on SiriusXM's "The Megyn Kelly Show" in a segment called "The Truth About What Happened to Colin Kaepernick's NFL Career."
“You can’t have everything your way in this life," Tafoya said. "You work your way around and through the obstacles. If he really, really wanted ... the one thing he wanted, Megyn, in this life was to be a starting quarterback in the NFL, he’d be one right now, given that he had the talent. But he made some business decisions, and I think he knew what he was risking, and I think that there are legitimate complaints about race in the NFL and everywhere else in America, but that's not why Colin Kaepernick is not in the NFL.”
During his New York radio show, Giuliani said: “Let’s get right to Eminem taking a knee. Why doesn’t he go to another country? I mean, go take a knee someplace else,” Giuliani said on 77 WABC. “You know how many cops were defending him and protecting him at that game?” Giuliani added: “You got a guy who takes a knee because of Colin Kaepernick. Who’s – who’s whatever he is. Never thought he was that good a quarterback anyway. Remember he threw the touchdown to lose the Super Bowl for his team? Because he ran too damn much, That’s why.”
According to multiple reports, Spike Lee will direct a multi-part documentary on Kaepernick for ESPN, which will have extensive interviews with the former NFL quarterback. No title or release date has been announced. “Kaepernick, who has never given a full, first-person account of his journey, is collaborating closely with Lee who plans to use extensive new interviews and a vast never-before-seen archive to help Kaepernick tell his story from his perspective,” a press release reads, per Variety.
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