Shaun King Why I ll Never Stand Again for the Star Spangle Banner

The fact that it was Colin Kaepernick and the San Francisco 49ers just made the situation worse.

Nate Boyer felt a connectedness with the quarterback. He fifty-fifty had an autographed football that Kaepernick had signed and written, of all things, "God Anoint Our Troops." And the 49ers? That was Boyer's favorite team.

So when he heard that Kaepernick sabbatum during "The Star-Spangled Banner" before an NFL exhibition game in 2016, it struck close to habitation.

"Initially, I was pretty disappointed," recalled Boyer, who was in Lubbock, Texas, working a fundraiser for veterans when he learned of the gesture.

Boyer had seen expiry and destruction in Africa, had multiple war deployments as a Green Beret and fifty-fifty had a period of homelessness. He had a perspective nearly sports, and understood more almost the NFL than the boilerplate fan, having spent a few weeks in grooming military camp with the Seattle Seahawks as a long snapper.

He wasn't mad, only he was entirely fix to dismiss Kaepernick equally just some other coddled and churlish star, interim up when his starting job was in jeopardy.

"I kind of just wrote him off initially, to be honest," said Boyer, 37, of Los Angeles. "I was around a agglomeration of veterans. One of the dudes I was with was a paraplegic from military service"

Never could Boyer take dreamed that his life and Kaepernick's would soon intersect, and that he would play a small merely critical backside-the-scenes role in the most controversial sports protest in a generation. Kaepernick'due south act led to some blazon of protest on virtually every NFL team, divided fans, became a central talking bespeak for President Trump, and recently inspired a major advertisement campaign past Nike, coinciding with the 30th anniversary of the company'south "Simply Exercise It" slogan.

A year before Kaepernick's protest, Boyer had a flake of fleeting fame. He had served in the military machine, so croaky the Academy of Texas football roster as a 29-twelvemonth-quondam freshman after pedagogy himself how to be a long snapper — hiking the ball back for punts and kicks — by watching YouTube videos. Earlier joining the team, he'd never played organized football. Soon, he was leading the Longhorns onto the field conveying the American flag.

Every bit if that weren't unlikely plenty, he made information technology to NFL army camp with the Seahawks equally a 34-year-old rookie and wound upward logging iii plays in an exhibition game, even making a tackle, earlier he was released. His was a feel-good story, the kind that comes and goes effectually the league every summer. People got to know who he was, fifty-fifty though he had footling chance of always making a roster.

Seeing as he had a foot in both worlds, pro football and the military, several publications approached Boyer to write an editorial virtually Kaepernick. He declined, reasoning he wasn't going to change whatever minds. It wasn't until the Army Times came to him a second time that Boyer agreed, as long as he could write information technology as an open letter.

"I haven't really written much at all," said Boyer, who acknowledged he wasn't a very skilful pupil growing upwardly in El Cerrito, Calif., just due north of Berkeley. "Simply I definitely write from a actually honest place. I don't try to detect the perfect words for everything. I just say what's on my mind and my heart and let information technology menstruation."

Related: Former Green Beret Nate Boyer Emerges As A Voice Of Reason In National Anthem Controversy »

In his letter, addressing Kaepernick directly, Boyer wrote about volunteering in the Darfur region of the Sudan, something he did later giving up on his dreams of being a firefighter and putting his interim aspirations on hold.

"Unfortunately, I as well know that racism nonetheless exists in our country, every bit it does in every other country on this planet," Boyer wrote, "and I hate that I know that."

He discussed why he turned to the military after the Sudan, embracing the motto of the Army Special Forces: De oppresso liber, Latin for "to free the oppressed."

"I'k not judging you for standing upwards for what you believe in," Boyer wrote. "It'south your inalienable right. What you are doing takes a lot of courage, and I'd be lying if I said I knew what information technology was like to walk effectually in your shoes. I've never had to deal with prejudice because of the color of my skin, and for me to say I can relate to what yous've gone through is every bit ignorant equally someone who's never been in a gainsay zone telling me they understand what it'southward like to get to war."

He closed by promising to keep listening, with an open up mind, about the protests.

"I wait forrad to the day you're once again inspired to stand during our national anthem," he wrote. "I'll be standing right there next to you. Go along on trying … De Oppresso Liber."

The letter of the alphabet went viral, and Boyer fielded dozens of radio and Tv interview requests. He was at NFL Network in Culver City when he received a phone telephone call from Kaepernick's publicist maxim the thespian wanted to encounter him before the 49ers played in San Diego the next night.

Colin Kaepernick and Nate Boyer in San Diego.Photograph via Facebook|Shaun King

Boyer agreed, and the following twenty-four hours the quarterback sent an Uber that took him on a iii-60 minutes ride through heavy traffic to the squad'due south hotel. Kaepernick was waiting in the foyer, as was teammate Eric Reid, who would join the protest.

"We talked most where nosotros were both coming from," Boyer said. "I understood the message behind it at that point. … Simply it'due south difficult for a lot of people to get by the gesture considering of when information technology's happening. It's during the anthem, and that's a sacred fourth dimension for a lot of people."

He explained to Kaepernick that veterans might feel "you don't have their perspective and their agreement, just like they don't have yours."

Boyer asked the quarterback what his goals were, what the change he sought might await similar.

"He couldn't really articulate it at that bespeak, but information technology was very early on on in the process," Boyer recalled. "I said, 'Well, if you're not going to stand, first of all, I recall sitting on the bench isolated from your team is not very inspiring. Information technology looks like you're sitting it out or you don't intendance."

While making it clear he would not stand up, Kaepernick asked Boyer if at that place was another way he could protest. Kneel rather than sit down, he was told, that way you can be alongside your teammates.

That next game, Kaepernick knelt during the anthem, and Boyer, manus over his heart, stood alongside him on the sideline in street dress.

"I was showing that I back up his right to do that, I support the message behind what he's demonstrating for," Boyer said. "Only I'm too continuing with pride considering I feel differently in a lot of means too. But at that place's nada incorrect with feeling differently and assertive different things. We can withal work together to make this place better."

Boyer found he could relate to Kaepernick, because he had spent plenty of his ain fourth dimension on a route less traveled. Instead of heading for college after high school as his sister and brother did, he spent a yr working on a angling boat in San Diego. When he decided to endeavour acting, he moved to Los Angeles and lived out of his 1993 Honda Borough hatchback.

"I'k virtually 5-eleven," he said, "merely information technology was definitely tight quarters, for sure."

He kept a sleeping bag in his car, and sometimes would find a park in Beverly Hills to spend the night, somewhere that looked safe.

"I guarantee that my parents were plenty worried about me," said Boyer, whose mother earned a doctorate degree from the University of California, Berkeley in civil/environmental engineering, and whose father is the longtime runway veterinarian at Gilt Gate Fields.

Boyer said he has taken upshot with some of Kaepernick's decisions, among them wearing socks with cartoon pigs dressed as police officers, and a T-shirt featuring belatedly Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

The quarterback opted out of his contract with the 49ers after the 2016 season and has not signed with another team. He is suing the league, alleging he has been blackballed because of his protests.

"I don't agree with the fact that he said he wouldn't vote because he doesn't want to vote for an oppressive system like ours," said Boyer, who said he hasn't talked to Kaepernick in more than than a year. "I thought that was incorrect. There'south a lot of people of all colors who shed a lot of blood, and in that location were people in the civil rights movement who did a lot to secure those rights."

Boyer, who shares a Studio City apartment with two friends, is involved with multiple charitable causes, among them MVP: Merging Vets and Players and, along with Philadelphia Eagles defensive end Chris Long, Waterboys, aimed at providing make clean well water to E African communities. Boyer is too working in the film manufacture, with a special accent on telling the stories of veterans.

Two years after the protests began, he is frustrated because he feels their bulletin and intent have been misinterpreted or intentionally hijacked.

From liberals: " 'Hey, don't you lot know it was a Greenish Beret who told Colin to protest in the first place, told him to take a knee?' " Boyer lamented: "And I'one thousand like, 'I didn't tell him to do anything. I definitely didn't tell him to protest. What I did was encounter with him, make suggestions on different ways to do it afterward he was already protesting. And worked with him to kind of come to a middle ground."

And from conservatives: "(They) put all veterans in this box and say, 'You lot're offending every veteran.' That's as well ridiculous. Or, 'He's protesting the anthem.' He's not protesting the national anthem. It has become an anthem fence, only that'south not what the protestation is most. It'due south about racial inequality, police force brutality."

Whether people hold or disagree, Boyer wishes the message hadn't been intercepted.

"It's not fair to Colin, it's not fair to me, and information technology's not fair to the cause," he said. "And it'south not good for our state."

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©2018 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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