strikes

31Aug

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

SPORTS

Let’s call athletes ‘workers,’ and let’s call these NBA protests what they were – strikes

The Milwaukee Bucks’ startling refusal to take to the court for their NBA playoff game on Aug. 26 was the most consequential political development in sports over the last 50 years. In recent years, the prevailing media narrative is that athletes have routinely used their platforms to “raise awareness” or “bring attention” to a social issue. Awareness, though, has its limits. Rarely does it lead to the kind of structural changes the shooting by police of Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin seems to demand. In this case, the players met the moment, marking a fundamental shift in the direction of activism generated by Black athletes. The mass player walkouts that followed the Bucks’ initial protest were no exercise in awareness, though some commentators framed it as that way. Instead, these...

Why Students of Color Are Stepping Up to Lead Climate Strikes

The youth-led movement builds on the momentum of the increasingly Black and Brown leadership behind the Green New Deal. Kawika Ke Koa Pegram has lived his entire life in island communities and is all too familiar with what sea level rise looks like firsthand. Pegram, a 17-year-old junior in high school, recently moved back to Hawaii—where he was born—from the Philippines. Two years later, Hurricane Walaka hit the state. “It was one of the worst storms the island has seen in modern history,” he remembers. “It had floods that went up to your knees and legs.” Pegram says he had seen that degree of flooding before, but this storm was different: It actually sunk an entire Hawaiian island. Pegram is one of more than 60 student leaders who have stepped up to lead climate st...

Trump Effect STRIKES AGAIN: Walmart Shopper Assaults Hispanic Employee With Vile Racist Rant

A customer at a Wal-Mart in Irving, Texas, saw fit to casually share his racist views about Hispanic people (who he referred to as “foreigners”) with a female Hispanic employee trying to help him. The employee, an immigrant from El Salvador who became a U.S. Citizen 20 years ago, felt it necessary to take her phone and record a racist tirade from a white male customer being directed at her and an African-American customer. In the video, the man can be heard telling the employee that people like her need to “go to your own countries” and fix their problems there. “It has hurt me a lot because we are working people. We pay our taxes. We have children who study in college,” said Adela, who spoke on the condition that only her first name be used because she is concerned for her well...