To play the devils advocate here for a second i would be pretty pissed if I was a shareholder of Nike because in the words of Jordan republicans buy sneakers too. And seriously Fuck Colin Kaepernick guy decides he wants to be a martyr the second he got a new contract and he started to play like shit. The message might be right but the messenger isn't.

tl;dr

Jesus ZMN, that was the most texan response I've ever read. Again nobody is protesting the country, the flag, veterans, or any other branch of military/law enforcement. It was a peaceful protest to bring attention to the fact that black youths are being imprisoned and murdered by police officers at an alarming rate, furthermore those imprisoning and murdering are not being held accountable for their actions. He lead his team to the NFC champ game and a superbowl in back to back years, I don't know how that's considered mediocre, no he wasn't aaron rodgers or Tom Brady, but he was a winner and he certainly was in the top 15 qbs in the league. He was also way better than most of the starters in the past few seasons that could have signed him. He currently has a collusion suit against the NFL and it's owners for not wanting to sign him for peaceful protest, which is the same as not hiring someone because they're christian, or not christian. Which is illegal in every other job in the US. Now, I don't believe Collin was the best choice to head this movement but he became a figurehead that people could attach himself to. He doesn't do the most that he could in his position but he does donate and raise millions of dollars for charities/foundations relating to the cause. Throwing away apparel because you don't like their spokesman is utterly ridiculous. Donate the shoes/tshirts to homeless veterans that people seem to care so much about but do nothing about at all. To be so close minded that you don't support a company for putting a person on their add who was holding a peaceful protest shows how narrow-minded this country really can be.

I don't think you should have any problem with people protesting and questioning law enforcement zmn that's going against the grain of what this country was supposedly founded on if we could only really get a movement that has the first amendment as deified as the 2nd this country would be better off. What I don't like about these protests is that the message is about perceived racism from the police. It's a 2 way street and yes while you are going to find some Podunk cop here and there who is just flat out racist most of these issues arise from inner cities. The problem with that narrative is they are policing a community where day in a day out you are seeing the same shit over and over and it's hard to go well they are all aren't like that when that community shields the people who are like that. This is the argument that gets lost in the discourse and if you want to fix the root problem of all this deal with the absolute income inequalities that exist. It's just a byproduct of what you have to deal with deal day in and day out if all you see every day is the worst of humanity you start to get conceptualized views of a certain community. I've lived in urban areas with predominant minority populations and rural areas with predominant white ones and the issue with police always leads back to the poorer areas no matter what racial makeup.

Also protesting is a major pillar of our country, it what we built the foundation on, Protest and standing up to injustices. But these so-called patriots don't want people protesting jobs or country or any form of authority at all anymore. Which goes directly against what we should be doing, if there's a major problem we should bring light to it and try to fix it, not bury it and criticize the people who bring it up.