In my speech, I talked about the inspiring life and death of Navy SEAL and Marine Travis Manion, and how he led others in his belief of ‘if not me then who’, being a leader for the people around you. For my essay, I decided to compare him to someone else who made huge sacrifices for their beliefs: Colin Kaepernick. While his sacrifices did not include his own life, his ideology of being a leader for the people around him is the same.
Kaepernick began kneeling for the pledge in 2016 to symbolically protest the mistreatment of black people by police and the US government. His idea was that he did not want to stand for a flag that didn’t truly represent him, and it surely got the message across. However, his acts did not stop here. Earlier this year, Kaepernick was featured in a Nike advertisement about overcoming adversity and silencing those who oppose you, alluding to his actions in the NFL but also representing athletes who train for success. This crossover advertisement was very polarizing as a lot of people praised Nike for their work in representing the black community, as a lot of black athletes are signed to Nike. However, many people began to boycott the company because of its inclusion of Kaepernick. I liked this artifact a lot not only because of how polarizing the topic is, but also because of its recency and connections to major companies (NFL, Nike). Seeing companies get involved with public issues is always very interesting to me because of how much power their opinion and choices hold in the community; if Nike is behind Kaepernicks protest for equal treatment, then who can stop him?
In the same way I would like to connect this to Travis Manion in my essay, since even after he died an organization (Travis Manion Foundation) was created in order to further his message. The power that companies and groups have in the world is remarkable, and if more brands could put themselves behind social issues then it would bring much more power to the people he need it most to get their voices heard.