Colin Kaepernick, quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, recently struck conversation all over America.On Aug. 26, Kaepernick refused to stand up during the National Anthem and again on Sept. 1, when he took a knee instead.

     Since then there have been #ProtectColinKaepernick hashtags all over Twitter. My first thought while reading about this was, “Yessssssss Kaepernick,” but the more I thought about it the more I was able to formulate my thoughts more coherently.

     Being a woman of color and of the LGBTQ community, I have witnessed first-hand how this country is chipping away our population like old paint, how the people in this country put more importance on Kim Kardashian and North West than on all the girls who went missing in the Bronx the last couple of months.

     All Kaepernick did was exercise his First Amendment right to free speech. We do always say that actions speak louder than words right?

     Something that struck me was what Kaepernick said to the NFL media. He stated, “To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way.”

     I remember when Kim Kardashian exposed Taylor Swift on Snapchat, something bigger came about from the fact that Selena Gomez was trying to defend Swift. There was a huge uproar when Gomez tweeted, “There are more important things to talk about… why can’t people use their voice for something that f****** matters?”

     There were tweets left and right attacking her about the fact that both she and Swift did not mention one word about the Black Lives Matter movement or the Orlando shooting which had recently happened at the time. Although Gomez’s fans came to the rescue, stating that Gomez briefly touched upon the topics at her concerts, I feel as though she could have been using her platform more effectively.

     Kaepernick, on the other hand, is very aware of what he was getting himself into and that is what I respect the most about him. He knows that although he is jeopardizing his career, he has morals that he has to stand up for. Sometimes it seems as though celebrities are afraid to speak up because of what the media will do to their reputation.

     I have friends in Harlem who are organizing a protest to bring awareness to all those girls who went and are still missing; to protest the life of Maylin Reynoso whose life went unreported until we decided it was time to rise up as women and claim the respect we deserve.

Quite frankly, we need more people to use the platforms available to shed light on the horrors of this country, but we also need the people of this generation to get mad and to not be afraid to take action no matter how small, because if people are actually paying attention, they will get mad too.