Vic Mensa delivered a message to fans on behalf of U.S. veterans who defend the right of the NFL players protesting during pregame National Anthem ceremonies, on Wednesday, October 11, and he did so by allowing a U.S. military veteran to share it.
In a video that Mensa posted to Instagram, he introduces a man who claims to be a combat vet who served in the Iraq War. To say that the soldier speaks from experience would be an understatement, seeing how he was given a purple heart after being wounded in a gun battle. Hence, the man put his life on the line for his country, and while he did so by honoring the nation's flag along the way, he says he sees no issue with anybody kneeling or raising a fist before it in protest. In fact, it's something he encourages.
"There is absolutely zero reason for anybody to use veterans as a reason to not protest, or that the NFL players that are protesting are doing anything wrong or insulting veterans," he says in the video. "I find it to be literally the greatest compliment for people to go ahead and do those things because protest is ultimately what our country is all about. It was founded on protests."
While veterans who show open support for the protests are seeming greatly outnumbered by those who are silent supporters, neutral, or outright opponents of the protests, they certainly are out there. Those who've followed the evolution of the protests, since Kaepernick first began demonstrating during the 2016 NFL preseason, will recall the former 49ers QB actually converting his method of sitting during the anthem, to taking a knee, thanks to a sit down he had with former player and U.S. Army veteran Nate Boyer, who convinced him to kneel. And the rest was history, with trending hashtags being forwarded by service men and women, and acts of solidarity being carried out by veterans, as was the case when a pair of veterans took a knee before the Arizona state capitol building to protest racial injustice.
