Transcripts For ALJAZ The Stream 2020 Ep 147 20240712

A single word. Young conventionality of life is what inspires us. Witness documentaries on aljazeera. I have the arcadia watching the stream today were looking at athletes and activism is an example. From the way i got to work i. Want her i want out. Of. Here. To just. Settle to her. Or her. To the bigger black lives matter. So that was an n. B. A. Video released in june of this years showing support for the black line and social Justice Movements were talking about the power of athletes and activism and using their platforms i know youve got opinions you can jump in to add the cheap Comment Section and be part of this discussion let me introduce the stream very own dream team no pressure gas that day say hello to everyone who you. Oh hey my name is dave zirin on the Sports Editor at the nation magazine and ive written a bunch of books about the politics of sports nice to have you welcome back to the stream hello max so tell everybody he wanted you an introduction hello everyone my name is maxwell piers im at 3 im an influencer and i play for the Harlem Globetrotters thanks for joining us next hour and then tell introduce yourself how everyone my name is chantelle lavender im with the Indiana Fever is the debbie in the 18th the Womens National Basketball Association and i am active with and i am happy to be here until im just looking at the denver n. B. A. And they are out there now all with using app tally using our phone if you could pick one moment in the last couple of months of athletes using that platform for activism what was the moment that stuck out at you that we. Were definitely the entire initiative that the debbie n. B. A. Has pushed forward with say her to say her Name Campaign and where brianna taylors name on the back of their jerseys has been huge sports is one of the biggest platforms i think you can use force for activism because people watch it in people want to see it on t. V. And when you see athletes taken a stand people take notice people and i think that thats been the largest the biggest thing ive seen since cabernet in the one sitting out because of the recent killing there jacob lake. Next it was a moment familia where i just went gulp i cannot believe they did this and that was in the n. F. L. Players came out and said. We have to pull life not a Movement Just so you dont have to being so controversial have to the take a neat became a political discussion what was the moment for you where you just said this is extraordinary in the world of sports today. For me it was when the n. B. A. Teams decided not to play their games and seeing the impact of that and how quickly it spreads who other leagues i mean the m. O. V. The m. L. S. A few other leagues and other teams followed suit within 24 hours so to see the impact and and the silence that it brought so many people were looking forward to watching sports games but when its an honor t. V. And theres no sports and theyre seeing why these players arent playing it really forces us to think about the injustices that theyre speaking up about them e and and yeah yeah i mean i really have to agree with what maxwell said because i think what happened a couple of weeks ago in the n. B. A. Its a w n. B. A. Major League Baseball Major League Soccer the National Hockey league naomi osaka in tennis when all of these folks in quick order in a matter of hours decided that they were going to go on strike for black lives it was such a remarkable moment because it is an equal in sports history were dealing with history without a compass weve never seen athletes step up to this degree and weve certainly never seen them use their labor power to say that racism needs to be challenged. And thats right that happened because so many different sports happened because jacob blake who who thankfully is not dead was shot by the police in the back and that video went viral and then after that were not were not playing we cant we play i want to share with you Shannon Ryan Stuart shes a Sports Reporter at the Chicago Tribune and she let me dave says this is something that very different thats happening with sports and athletes lets take a look usually when we think about athlete protests were thinking about individuals maybe muhammad ali or tommy smith and john raising their fists at a 960 olympics contest really taking any and whats different about todays protests is were seeing across different leagues different sports different races genders its really been a collective push and as i think through history when weve seen the most changes when theres been a united front from athletes right now youre seeing an be a has demanded arenas be used for polling sites. Mississippi athletes helped me push for change to change their state and to get rid of a confederate symbol whether it becomes a Tipping Point or not really depends on how much they can keep this momentum going and remain united i also want to show he since sots from the cheap comments and some people are upset that youre using a platform gentile a maxwell to come all says the only thing you are doing is destroying the sport and the league gentil you take the festival. Thats very interesting because when you have world issues you need to focus on them and being a black woman being a part of sports we are we make up a large percentage of the Sporting Community especially in that at all and i feel like if were not being respected how are we able to get out on the court and play a game and thats the part that frustrates me and gets me a little rowdy is because you have to respect us as a human being 1st we are people we do we play this sport but as a people we have to be respected and if you can come to a game and shearers on one and you should be able to respect us you can go home. With a guy says max im unfastening to buy up what you want is going to be what you got thank you for being on the shop just because someone knows how to hoop doesnt mean that hes all her opinion is of any the how you. Wow. First of all its this important to understand that whatever whatever job you have that say youre a politician whos interested in sports. You know everyone is entitled to their own level of opinion or intellect on things that they are not a professional in that thats 1st and foremost and then secondly. I am going just like all of the other athletes i am going to continue to use my platform that i have to speak on issues that i had direct ties and direct connections to as well as my Family Members and the members in my Community Just like. If you can come to a game and support me as an athlete then you should be able to support and respect me as the human behind the jurors because we are human beings 1st and athletes 2nd no matter how the way you want to look at. You know just leave the ignorance of those statements with all due respect coming from the internet are really overpowering when people say that they dont want sports and politics to mix what theyre really saying is they dont want sports and a certain kind of politics to mix they have no problem with politics in sports when were talking about nationalism when were talking about celebrating the military hack when were talking about celebrating the police many teams do these celebrations of Law Enforcement knights in war or whatnot but when it comes to the athletes themselves trying to use the platform that they have built that they have earned to speak out about their lives then all of a sudden the hammer comes down and there is i would argue s. Of a seriously racist undertone or sometimes overtone to this statement which is basically shut up and play which is basically get out there and entertain me and i dont want to hear what you have to say and its amazing that in 2020 were still wrestling with what was said in 1968 when tommie smith and john carlos raised their fists one of their slogans at in the for the 68. 00 olympics was they said why should we run in mexico city only to crawl home which is still what animates i think the athletic protests today why should we be loved with our uniforms on but then disdained when the uniform is off. Let me just show you naomi a sack as she won the u. S. Open on september the 12th and these images people who are waiting every day what mosque is she going to have a lot and you can see and she is wearing the mass of people who met a violent and because of Police Brutality every day she had a black eyes mats and Movement Mask on and then at the end of the u. S. Open when she won it this is what she told the commentator who asked her about the months you said from the beginning you had 7 matches 7 masks 7 day what was the message you wanted to send mail to tom or what was the message that you got it was more the question or feeling the point is to make people Start Talking what we most d gratified about the awareness that you raised on i mean for me where i didnt find of the bubble so im not really sure whats really going on in the outside world all i can tell is whats going on on social media and for me i feel like you know the more retreats it gets or thats so when but you know when more people talk about it gentile whats it like being a female athlete seeing other doesnt even matter being an athlete seeing other athletes all working together to the same and when you saw naomi do you that maxwell i know you tweeted out namely success on your twitter account as well gentle fest thats what you guessed it. Well its phenomenal and shes on one of the biggest stages that she can ask for in this Work Community and to see her speaking out and let people know the seriousness of whats going on in the world and she said something that was very interesting to me she said she want people to talk and i feel like i would i would kind of tweet that in a sense being with being in 2020 and this is about action its about physically going out and physically dont win something and i think that there has been a generational shift with this generation and were tired and were not going to deal with it and she knows the people that shes around and i love her response when she said what did you get out of it and thats what me was huge is because if the 1st is our friends that we need to step up is the people that are around or playing with our our teammates that are not black or teammate that that love us every day when we put on that jersey and compete with them but its about what they think its about what they feel if they can hear us cry out and speak out about it and go home and be with a racist Family Member thats not the message of that being clear and i love that she mentioned that its about how the world she is not an africanamerican people that are not being oppressed how they respond. Why absolutely for a while you know its its extremely admirable how. Naomi has spoken up and really how the w. M. B. A. Had been leaders in this movement i mean when you think about women in sports they deal with a whole nother layer of adversity they have to deal with massaging me they have to deal with hyper masculinity people constantly telling them that they shouldnt be playing the sport which is just completely blasphemous theres so many additional things that they have to encounter and deal with outside of being especially women of color in sports so i really do its at my head off to them and i am and i am trying extremely hard to match that energy and be in support even when support there can be scarce sometimes do you have any. Of mohammed watching her and how much can sports change racism in america. Well i keep when i hear that question i think about what dr Martin Luther king said about Jackie Robinson who called him a sit in or before sit ins of freedom rider before freedom rides Jackie Robinson integrates major League Baseball in 1947 almost a full decade before the flowering of the monk army bus boycott and the Civil Rights Movement in the south a sit in or before sit ins a freedom rider before freedom rides often times sports is like a weather vane in our society and it tells us which way the wind is blowing and scarcer enough right now what were seeing is the wind blowing towards justice the wind is blowing toward some sort of reckoning with the history of racism not just in the United States but throughout the world this is a Global Movement and i think what youre seeing it with so incredible about this is that what it does is it punctures privilege because its very easy to be a white person in the United States or i guess anywhere throughout the world and not have to confront the reality of what it means to be black not have to confront the reality of what it means to be an indigenous person and when you have sports athletes when you have them speaking out about these issues it punctures that privileged it severs that segregation and it forces people to really confront the reality is that people i mean thats what naomi who was doing she was saying look if youre a tennis fan you might have the luxury of not knowing who alijah mclane is but im going to put that name in front of you you are going to know who lives in the plane is and thats powerful but thats also why athletes i would argue are policed so heavily by the reactionary powers that be because they dont want them using that power precisely because they understand how powerful it is. I want to share a few athletes jonjo a max of some really supportive comments these ones this time coming from twitter and some still its about athletes and activism citizens speak out thats democracy for you and no one surrenders to assistantship at the locker room door dogs as the better question is not why. But why should they be denied an activist role in whatever they believe in and then actually just going to jump across to the mats well some of that you tweeted out in a story that reminds us that there is racism effete way and in sport and in the sports well so t. V. Host a banana at low cha to you off the harlem globetrotter what happened to me why is it relevant to what i speaking about today. So i was given an interview about an upcoming game and i was showing a few tricks with a basketball when one of the reporters were sued and one of the news anchors pulled out a tangerine from his pocket and threw it to me so i caught him very confused returned it to him and then he then threw it to someone off camera who threw the tangerine at me for a 2nd time this time i didnt catch it and then shortly after that a weight woman behind the camera threw a banana at me this is all happening on Live Television and so my initial reaction i caught them and then extremely stunned shocked i didnt know how to even begin to unpack what was actually a happening so then i left there immediately and my 1st thought was i need to get a copy of this video so i got a copy of the video and i debated on whether or not i wanted to go public with it for a while but i knew that i still had a job to do and i didnt want to ruffle the feathers of my job. So i try my best to surprise it and then Briana Taylor a motto or george floyd all of these things reignited the flame that had been applied at the time of this experience and thats when i knew that ok i have to speak up about this so i decided to go public with the story mainly to use it as a teachable moment for everyone who came across the experience for me i learned the value in using my platform and my voice and the power that i truly have. It empowers other people who experience my progressions on a daily basis to voice their experiences and not be quiet about it and it also shows that you know we need to in order to create real change were going to have to figure out how to take full accountability for the things that we do and learn from them. These micro aggressions have a shoe mong its impact on us and may seem sorrow boy any person who experiences my progress on a daily basis can tell you the actual and true weight of what these kind of things take up would bring you in on a couple things that happened big things happened said the n. F. L. Was sort of think you know something about the contaminant thing and not so many words the celtics for instance my laptop celtics unveil a 25000000. 00 a 10 year plan to fight Racial Injustice and you could be cynical because this isnt just happened in the last few months and the mood last year was not quite this story the new tone weve entered the era of branding for 9 weeks maybe suggesting that this isnt truly real or that maybe teams in a new dont have any option but to go along with it because what are they going to say no you cant mean right now how would they say to date exactly i mean we just have to remember that these are multibillion dollar corporations and they know which way the wind is blowing and they know that they have a very restive player so the n. F. L. For example they do not want their players to go out on strike like the n. B. A. The n. B. A. Major League Baseball except for a because they make billions of dollars off of Television Deals so theyre trying to figure out ways to make sure that their players are appeased so theyre putting forward these initiatives but for a lot of the players thats not enough and thats whats so real in all of this so theres all this fluff theres a lot of branding theres you know putting things like end racism in the end zones and assistant coaches wearing t. Shirts that say it starts with us but the players themselves have their own independent line their own independent analysis of whats happening so a lot of teams for example did not go out for this kind of Stage National anthem where they also played the black National Anthem as its known lift every voice and sing they stayed in the locker room in the miami dolphins. We dont want to be part of the propaganda we dont want to be part of the fluff and whats so interesting about it is that what the n. F. L. Is doing in particular is theyre putting out all these statements for Racial Justice initiatives but if you look at the one word theyre not using and the players are acutely aware of this the one where theyre not using is police you know theyre keeping that out of the picture because they dont want to offend that theyre scared i would argue scared of Law Enforcement scared of the Police Unions in this country and so their kids staying off actually addressing what the players want to address and frankly what the nation wants to address the nation thats been in the streets for the largest demonstrations in the history of the United States and thats Police Reform and thats the part that i have an issue with sometimes is the money and it was mentioned also that i have a job to do or its something that i dont want to lose my job or are going to make sure im saying it in a nice way and i think that thats where athletes have to get to where that we know that its not about oh hey we have to make sure we dont include Police Officers not to upset them i know one time in the w. B. And we had a team that was boycotting against minnesota which was boycott and against the police and the Police Officers left the game because we were making a stand and saying hey were tired of the Police Brutality that our race is experiencing and they dont even want to hear so to me its about getting to a place where people arent afraid and even in the sports world is there still has to tour around the actual idea there still is to talk about where you only can do a certain amount in order to keep our fans engaged and thats the problem as well and i feel thats where we have to get to in order to actually see ship people not being worried about the millions of dollars that are being talked about its really a social issue that has to be be excluded in the women and money cant be talked about and hurting people still it cant be talked about because this is a race thats being oppressed against and this is blame its clear in the media whats happening to black individuals that are on arms and. To me its not about money its not about anything other than what it is and thats what we have to really make a change in a ship and not worry about hey im going to lose our money or hey im going to us that the wrong group of people are going to lose this has to move from nash to hey this is the 1st issue in then well worry about that as it fall. Time and i just did a pretty good yeah yeah sorry i no i absolutely agree with that because and i think whats different about right now is that you know where were starting to see a shift in the percentages of athletes that are speaking out within these leagues i mean when when you look at the totality of all of the athletes that are now starting to use their platform youre seeing a shared empowerment from the athletes that stood up at the time when they were by themselves and so when youre when you stand up by yourself youre you because your job becomes more of a threat because its very easy to single one person out but there is strength in numbers and so now that were seeing a multitude of athletes use their platform and speak about the same things it makes it that much tougher for these weeks in these industries to want to go ridicule them for voicing their opinion or voicing how they feel about human rights and flat out what is right. Im going to bring one mostly seen just for the end of the show this is and if you have to keep athletes using that platform right its essential in 2020 its taken. It is a person of influence and overtly white space she says use her platform 2 ways awareness on a longstanding issues that are yet to be fixed stomach racism Police Brutality the fact that countless of black people are being on justifiably profile of and killed by those that are paid and sworn in to protect and serve as someone of the media its not only how she uses her platform but also how our influence of becks her fan base and how they talk and see in these matters that affect people who are still marginalized by the powers that be. Athletes get enough getting their public to talk about social Justice Gentile day thank you for using our home to talk about athletes and activists and appreciate you thank you us the next 3. After nearly 2 decades of conflict in afghanistan. The warring parties meet face to face at the negotiating table were watching now were in a different phase and i wish the afghans can blame the United States you know i didnt say its old school looking at it with urgency its a blast but i dont see that the more urgent. Some of the key players in the Peace Process talk to our jazeera. Whats most important to me is talking to people understanding what they are going through here and i just we believe everyone. Theres a story worth hearing. Hurricane sally is downgraded to a depression but its slow pace means its still a danger to life in the u. S. Youre watching aljazeera live from doha with me fully back t. Ball also coming up wildfires were said the air quality along the u. S. West coast the state of oregon reports a surge of patients suffering breathing problems. Greek police prepared to move thousands of refugees living on the streets into a new cab but many dont want to go work