Hello all you red-blooded, chest-pounding, flannel-wearing, flag-waving folks out there. It is my understanding that you think that football players taking a knee is disrespecting our flag and country. If you chose to be distracted by the rantings of a man who is making us look like fools around the world, with his flag-waving act, that is your right just as it is the right of a football player to take a knee at the game. Your rights in this great country were fought for and won by men and women who bled and died for the right to protest.

I am a 78-year-old white boy from Maine who had never seen a black person until I was 10. When civil rights was in the news, all I had ever heard of was how men were being arrested for being in the same restroom, which I did not understand. It took me many years to understand either how black people and gays were put down just because the white straight world outnumbered them.

All the while they were there bleeding and dying next to us in every war, helping make that flag deserving of respect. 

I support the right to protest, as did our Supreme Court when it found burning the flag in protest was protected by the First Amendment.

Richard Chick

East Lyme