GQ Names Colin Kaepernick Citizen of the Year

Publication Gentlemen’s Quarterly (GQ) named vegan football player Colin Kaepernick its “Citizen of the Year.” GQ’s December 2017 print issue contains a feature about the athlete entitled “Colin Kaepernick Will Not Be Silenced” that details his highly publicized efforts to unravel systemic oppression. Kaepernick, now famously, took a knee—instead of standing—during the national anthem before NFL games last year as a silent protest against police brutality targeted at unarmed black men. Kaepernick’s action sparked a widespread movement throughout the NFL this year that has received criticism from some who consider his actions unpatriotic. “The irony now is that the NFL is trying to make him voiceless because he made himself a voice for the voiceless,” writer Ameer Hasan Loggins said in the feature, “which is one of the reasons I’ll die on that sword to defend what he has done. Because he did it for the people.” Now an icon in the social justice movement, Kaepernick—who eschewed animal products from his diet last year—is also a powerful voice for animals exploited for food.