How Kaepernick is Using his Jersey Sales to End the Mass Incarceration of Chicago’s Black Community

San Fransisco 49er’s quarterback Colin Kaepernick has decided to use his own money and the money he has made from his jersey sales to help the people of the Chicago area by supporting a campaign to end mass incarceration and over-criminalization of communities of color in Illinois.

The 28-year -old member of Kappa Alpha Psi, who refused to stand during the national anthem during NFL games last year said he would donate the first $1 million he made from last season to organizations assisting communities affected by racial injustice and police brutality.

“I’ve been very blessed to be in this position and be able to make the kind of money I do,” Kaepernick said. “I have to help these communities. It’s not right that they’re not put in the position to succeed or given those opportunities to succeed.”

“I will donate one million dollars plus all the proceeds of my jersey sales from the 2016 season to organizations working in oppressed communities, 100k a month for 10 months,” he said on his website.

One of these communities just so happens to be Chicago and its south suburbs.

For his recent pledge, Colin donated $25,000 of the money made in December to Southsiders Organized for Unity and Liberation (SOUL) a community-led organization whose aim is to “assist low-income people of color in the Chicago Southland to build power, then subsequently leverage that power to fight for their own interest and liberation.”

“We are working to create a full-employment economy, so that everyone (despite the color of their skin, their economic demographic, prior criminal history, etc.) has the opportunity to work with access to gainful, sustainable, living-wage employment. We believe that good, quality public education is a right and not a privilege. And we are committed to ensuring that public funds are leveraged fairly, to invest resources in the communities that need them the most and not redistributed to keep local economies beholding to corporate greed,” SOUL wrote on its website.

To make their mission work, SOUL partners with, “congregations, people of faith and local community groups, training them in disciplined organizing strategies, to build leadership, create public policy and foster legislation, engage in direction action, and hold their public officials accountable to the interest of their communities.”