Colin Kaepernick and Nessa Diab’s ‘We Are Free, You and Me’

This past fall, I had the privilege of interviewing Colin Kaepernick and Nessa Diab at the Scholastic headquarters about their new children’s book, “We Are Free, You and Me,” published in collaboration with Scholastic and Kaepernick Publishing.

Kaepernick, known for his past career as a professional athlete and current work to lift up Black and Brown communities, created the Know Your Rights Camp, a youth-focused community outreach initiative.

His new picture book with Diab, “We Are Free, You and Me,” is inspired by the principles of the Know Your Rights Camp. Kaepernick and Diab hope to instill a sense of agency and resilience in young readers.

Here are some highlights from our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity:

Kid Reporter: What inspired you to write “We Are Free, You and Me” based on the principles of the [Know Your Rights Camp] camp?

Colin Kaepernick: “We Are Free, You and Me” is based on the principles of the camp, yes, so part of it was for knowing rights camp. We engaged primarily with middle school and high school kids for we are free, you and me, we wanted to bring that to a younger audience, and now having a daughter who's two years old, we wanted to make sure we brought that message.

Kid Reporter: How are you able to create a kid friendly and uplifting picture book while also addressing especially important social issues?

Colin Kaepernick:  We accomplished that by taking the principles of “Know Your Rights” and the ten points. What does it look like for a child to be free? What does it look like for them to have the freedom to dream, be courageous, feel safe and to be able to have an amazing illustrator bring the illustrations to life in a way that you can see some of the freedom, the safe community within the cover itself.

Kid Reporter: What do you want young people to learn to take away from the book?

Colin Kaepernick: I want them to take away is you are in control of your destiny. You are in control of how you interact with the world, how you show up in the world. You will not have control over the circumstances or situations, but you have control over how you can navigate that.