In struggle and sports Dave Zirin
http://bit.ly/ywp4Ch
http://www.thenation.com/blog/165610/how-most-lopsided-trade-nba-history-explains-world
When you study the rosters of all 30 National Basketball Association teams or even casually watch a game, you find yourself facing two stubborn facts: 1 - Every team possesses an international mosaic of talent. 2 – The last All-Star produced by the high schools of New York City is 32 years old and just changed his name to Metta World Peace.
Calling hoops “the city game”, as Pete Axthelm did 40 years ago, only makes sense if the city is Barcelona. Two decades of globalization alongside the crumbling of our urban infrastructure has dramatically altered who we see on the court. If there was one moment that represents both the birth and brutal pathos of this process, it was draft day 1998 when two teams took part in what must be seen as the most lopsided trade in NBA history. That was when a Michigan Wolverine superstar born and raised in inner-city Detroit, Robert “Tractor” Traylor, was sent from the Milwaukee Bucks to the Dallas Mavericks for a skinny teenager from a place called Wurzburg, Germany named Dirk Nowitzki, and role player Pat Garrity. Now Dirk is considered the best player on earth and Robert Traylor is dead, passing away earlier this year from a heart attack at the tender age of 34.
It’s unbelievable that these two folks were traded for one another. But equally unbelievable is that this was seen as a steal for the Milwaukee Bucks. Then CNN/SI scribe Dan Shanoff wrote at the time, “After trading away No. 4 draft-pick Stephon Marbury last year, the Bucks get it right in ’98 by stealing the marketable and talented Robert Traylor from the Mavs for an overhyped foreign prospect.”
I asked Dan Shanoff about this ill-fated prediction this week, and he said, "Looking back, I am mostly appalled at my simple-minded analysis and implicit xenophobia. Projecting (and developing) draft picks into Hall of Famers demands imagination that Don Nelson and Mark Cuban clearly had and I lacked. I also didn't account for the maniacal dedication that Dirk would put in to honing his craft. It is perhaps the ultimate irony that as my 5-year-old son became aware of basketball this past spring, he announced that Dirk was his favorite player. Nowitzki's talents are that obvious. I only wish I could have understood that back then."
We can laugh, scoff, or shake our heads at Dan Shanoff, but his analysis wasn’t a wild statement by any stretch. They represented my thoughts at the time along with most observers. But in hindsight it’s now clear that this deal was more than the most lopsided trade in hoops history. It was a "canary in the coal mine" for the way the game and the world has changed over the last 15 years.
The Dirk story is now well known. From Wurzburg, Germany, the 19 year old blew up in pre-draft workouts and, despite having the muscle tone of a baby deer, became the object of numerous team’s affections, including the Celtics (who had to “settle” that year for Paul Pierce.) But in the shadow of Dream Team I and II and the utter domination of “our guys” at the Olympics, the conventional wisdom was that Euro players were too weak, too fragile, and basically too lame to make it on the big stage. A soft seven-foot jump shooter? Not in this man's league.
The Traylor story is less known. He averaged 16 points and 10 boards as a junior at Michigan, and was the Big Ten Tournament MVP. His freshman year, “the Tractor “ tore down a rim and made it look easy. With the sweet charisma of a gentle giant, Traylor was in a national sneaker ad before his first pro game. He was “Big Man”, “Barkley, Jr.,” and any nickname that speaks to those rare players whose baby fat makes them magically aerodynamic. Traylor, as Shanoff wrote, was seen as a “can’t miss”: the Big 10 Superstar with the big league body.
But Traylor’s body didn’t go from baby fat to Baby Shaq. Instead he battled obesity throughout his career. He also battled income tax evasion charges that ended in a conviction for hiding the money of his cousin, a convicted drug dealer, But Traylor's greatest obstacle wasn’t weight, taxes, or scandal. It was his production on the court. In 438 NBA games, Traylor averaged 5 points and 4 rebounds. He then bounced across the globe, playing for professional teams from Turkey to Puerto Rico. It was in Puerto Rico when Traylor was talking on the phone with his wife when, she thought, the line disconnected. Unable to reach him again, she called team officials who found him dead of a heart attack.
It was remarked by those who knew Traylor that this cause of death was painfully ironic, given his generous heart. ESPN’s Jemele Hill, who is from Detroit, wrote, “He was generous to a fault. Traylor, like a lot of promising, black athletes from troubled backgrounds, never learned to say, ‘no.’ He received three years probation after he admitted he prepared a false tax return that hid the assets of his cousin, Quasand Lewis, a convicted drug dealer. He squandered a lot of his NBA millions, admitting in a 2009 Detroit Free Press story that he once took care of as many as 20 friends and family.”
Traylor was the guy from the projects who’s bigger, stronger, and faster than everyone else and is pegged for the NBA from the time he walked onto a court. Everyone told him that he would be a star, that the money would always be there, and that he had to take care of his friends at all costs. He also, even in Detroit, had the inner-city infrastructure, from youth leagues to avid boosters, that gave him a path to the League. Dirk was a skinny kid who had no justification to believe that a beanpole from Germany could ever be hailed as the best in the game. For several years other GM’s watched Dallas, and dipped one toe in the water, thinking the game’s globalization might just be a mirage.
Now the league is filled with badass players from across the earth. It’s also filled with Dirk imitators, born both inside and outside the states: seven footers who rain jumpers for days. It says a great deal that arguably the league’s best player, Kevin Durant, plays like Dirk and is from the Maryland suburbs. Rough, rugged, and raw rebounders like Traylor, with a little meat on their middle are in very short supply. As for Detroit, the attacks on the city's union and non-union workers has never missed a beat, and it's spent 15 years as victim of every neoliberal "shock therapy" on the populace. Last year, it was named the United States’s “most stressful city” by virtue of being in the top 10 for murders, robberies, poverty, and, yes, heart attacks. Brutal cuts to city programs has also meant that extracurricular activities, exercise, and for some, opportunity, have become casualties of “the new normal.” As we spend this shortened season celebrating Dirk, let’s also remember Robert Traylor and the way this one trade marked a fork in the road toward a very different NBA: a different NBA that reflects they way our world has changed and left many behind.
Dave Zirin is the author of “The John Carlos Story” (Haymarket) and just made the new documentary “Not Just a Game.” Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.
Showing posts with label Dave Zirin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dave Zirin. Show all posts
Monday, January 30, 2012
Sunday, November 13, 2011
"An Olympics Without Black Athletes"
E of S Nation: Please read and enjoy the following excerpt published on Deadspin of the John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment that Changed the World.
You can purchase the book at:
http://www.haymarketbooks.org/hc/The-John-Carlos-Story
Or, if you mush, you can order it off of amazon.com at:
http://www.amazon.com/John-Carlos-Story-Sports-Changed/dp/1608461270/thekonformist
I challenge you not to biy the book after reading the below excerpt.
http://deadspin.com/5853690/an-olympics-without-black-athletes-martin-luther-king-jr-john-carlos-and-the-boycott-that-wasnt
"An Olympics Without Black Athletes": Martin Luther King Jr., John Carlos, And The Boycott That Wasn’t
John Carlos is best known as the man who, along with Tommie Smith, raised a clenched fist—the Black Power salute—on the medal stand after the 200 meter race. Carlos took bronze, and Smith gold, at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. But that moment was a culmination of months of political discussion among black leaders in America. One such discussion happened in early 1968 in New York City. Carlos explains, in a section excerpted from The John Carlos Story, written with Dave Zirin.
I recall going down to the Americano that evening, walking into the lobby and being just overwhelmed by the size of it all. I had never really made time in the downtown Manhattan hotels and my eyes almost popped out of my head. It looked like a movie set, with 50-foot-high ceilings, gaudy chandeliers, and the kind of deep, smoky woodwork that looked like it had been carved and sanded for kings. It crossed my mind that I'd turn the corner and bump into John Dillinger. I gathered myself and I went up to the room where the meeting was to take place.
When I entered that room, I had no expectations whatsoever as to who might be at the meeting or anything of the sort. I just knew it would be the place to be to talk boycott. Other than Harry Edwards, I had no idea who would be there or why. When I walked in, I was immediately shocked to see some of the social-movement political giants that I had seen on television—Andrew Young for one, and Ralph Abernathy, the number two man of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). I was thinking to myself that I couldn't possibly get in trouble with my parents for walking out on that paint job because the SCLC could do no wrong in our household. I was already feeling like gold and awestruck around Abernathy and Young. But not in my wildest imagination was I ready for the next individual to walk into the room: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. When he walked into our meeting, for the first time in my life I was absolutely and completely tongue-tied. All I could do at that precise moment was think about my mother. My momma admired Dr. King so much, she could talk about him and tears would pool in the corners of her eyes. She felt like Dr. King was the first lieutenant to God, sent to this planet to heal the sins of this nation. At that moment, all I could think was, "Wow! I wish that my Mom could be a rock in my pocket or a bug on my lapel and just be here to take in this moment." I was in awe. I know I probably looked completely unnerved, but Dr. King had this way of putting the people around him at ease. He came out with such a warm manner—you could say an almost comedic style—and it relaxed all the young athletes who might have been starstruck in his presence.
If Dr. King had been born in another life and another skin, and didn't get involved in religion and the civil rights movement, he could have made a Brinks truck worth of money as a stand-up comic because he was so funny and charismatic, cracking jokes before the meeting, putting everyone in stitches and making us all comfortable. Then, with Dr. King present and accounted for, the meeting started in earnest. Dr. King made it clear from the beginning that he wasn't just there to lend moral support. He wanted to help us hammer out a plan and he made it clear that he would be a public supporter of the Olympic boycott. He also stated that while we had his public support, he wouldn't and couldn't be the lead man at the front of the march and in front of the cameras. He said that it would do the movement no favors. He wanted Harry Edwards to be the lead man, and said he would be very happy taking marching orders from Harry on this. Dr. King felt the boycott was a very worthy project and could prove to be a mighty platform to make clear the need to establish justice and equality for all men and women on this planet. He said that our strongest leverage was that an Olympic boycott could have a global reach. We could shock the world and we could do it by also adhering to the principles of nonviolence that he held so dear. We could bring attention to the problems of society, but we did not have to throw a rock or burn a building in order to do so.
This was Dr. King's methodology. He understood that militancy didn't mean violence. He understood that courage did not mean throwing punches. Sometimes it meant just the opposite. He also told us that if we wanted to go down and hold a demonstration during the Olympics in Mexico City, he would join us and bring the civil rights marches people knew from Selma and Montgomery right to the Mexican capital. I still remember him saying that he would get to work on that right after he saw through this garbage strike he was working on supporting in Memphis, Tennessee.
At the end of the meeting, I finally found my voice and was able to ask two questions of Dr. King. The first question I asked him, very respectfully, was why this idea of an Olympic boycott was attractive to him. He expressed to me that the concept and visual power of an Olympic boycott would be like a ripple in the water spreading throughout the world to let people know that the people of color of this earth were very disenchanted about their treatment and we could aspire to something better as a human race. He said that the visual power was in the void it would create: an Olympics without black athletes. He said that the process would be like black soldiers stepping back from the military. "We're not saying ‘burn it down,'" he said. "We're just merely saying we don't care to participate and see how you feel without us as a part of the show." I totally agreed. We weren't throwing any fire. We were just saying that we choose not to go. We felt like we had to step up because as I remember someone saying at the meeting, "If not us, who?" How do you become a "leader"? Well it helps if you decide that you are going to lead.
My second question to Dr. King was something a lot of people in the room were wondering and it had nothing to do with anything that had to do with the Olympics. We wanted to know, "Why are you going back to Memphis when they are threatening your life?" Remember, Dr. King had been back and forth to Memphis where he was supporting a sanitation strike that had gotten so violent it became an article of faith that Dr. King had been marked for death. We all knew it. We knew that if someone had a clear shot at this great man, the trigger would be squeezed. He was addressing not just racism at home but also standing up against the war in Vietnam. He was just becoming too dangerous to too many people. At that moment, Dr. King made a very positive statement directly to me. He said, "John, I have to go back and stand for those that won't stand for themselves, and I have to go back for those that can't stand for themselves." The way he said it was very distinct and very precise. Once again, he said he had to "stand for those who won't stand for themselves, and stand for those who can't stand for themselves." Won't and can't: he had enough room in his heart for both. When Dr. King said that, it made my life more certain. Maybe this is just the way I remember it more than forty years later, but that moment gave me a direction. Until then I was kind of a rebel without a cause, like Brando when they said, "What are you rebelling against?" and he replied,"What have you got?" I never had any kind of a game plan or formula for what I was going to do in my life. I didn't have a compass. I would improvise and speak out against injustice as I saw it arise. But when Dr. King said those words to me, it was like he joined my mind and my heart and guided them toward one direction. This is when I became a heart and soul member of what we called the Olympic Project for Human Rights.
You can purchase the book at:
http://www.haymarketbooks.org/hc/The-John-Carlos-Story
Or, if you mush, you can order it off of amazon.com at:
http://www.amazon.com/John-Carlos-Story-Sports-Changed/dp/1608461270/thekonformist
I challenge you not to biy the book after reading the below excerpt.
http://deadspin.com/5853690/an-olympics-without-black-athletes-martin-luther-king-jr-john-carlos-and-the-boycott-that-wasnt
"An Olympics Without Black Athletes": Martin Luther King Jr., John Carlos, And The Boycott That Wasn’t
John Carlos is best known as the man who, along with Tommie Smith, raised a clenched fist—the Black Power salute—on the medal stand after the 200 meter race. Carlos took bronze, and Smith gold, at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. But that moment was a culmination of months of political discussion among black leaders in America. One such discussion happened in early 1968 in New York City. Carlos explains, in a section excerpted from The John Carlos Story, written with Dave Zirin.
I recall going down to the Americano that evening, walking into the lobby and being just overwhelmed by the size of it all. I had never really made time in the downtown Manhattan hotels and my eyes almost popped out of my head. It looked like a movie set, with 50-foot-high ceilings, gaudy chandeliers, and the kind of deep, smoky woodwork that looked like it had been carved and sanded for kings. It crossed my mind that I'd turn the corner and bump into John Dillinger. I gathered myself and I went up to the room where the meeting was to take place.
When I entered that room, I had no expectations whatsoever as to who might be at the meeting or anything of the sort. I just knew it would be the place to be to talk boycott. Other than Harry Edwards, I had no idea who would be there or why. When I walked in, I was immediately shocked to see some of the social-movement political giants that I had seen on television—Andrew Young for one, and Ralph Abernathy, the number two man of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). I was thinking to myself that I couldn't possibly get in trouble with my parents for walking out on that paint job because the SCLC could do no wrong in our household. I was already feeling like gold and awestruck around Abernathy and Young. But not in my wildest imagination was I ready for the next individual to walk into the room: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. When he walked into our meeting, for the first time in my life I was absolutely and completely tongue-tied. All I could do at that precise moment was think about my mother. My momma admired Dr. King so much, she could talk about him and tears would pool in the corners of her eyes. She felt like Dr. King was the first lieutenant to God, sent to this planet to heal the sins of this nation. At that moment, all I could think was, "Wow! I wish that my Mom could be a rock in my pocket or a bug on my lapel and just be here to take in this moment." I was in awe. I know I probably looked completely unnerved, but Dr. King had this way of putting the people around him at ease. He came out with such a warm manner—you could say an almost comedic style—and it relaxed all the young athletes who might have been starstruck in his presence.
If Dr. King had been born in another life and another skin, and didn't get involved in religion and the civil rights movement, he could have made a Brinks truck worth of money as a stand-up comic because he was so funny and charismatic, cracking jokes before the meeting, putting everyone in stitches and making us all comfortable. Then, with Dr. King present and accounted for, the meeting started in earnest. Dr. King made it clear from the beginning that he wasn't just there to lend moral support. He wanted to help us hammer out a plan and he made it clear that he would be a public supporter of the Olympic boycott. He also stated that while we had his public support, he wouldn't and couldn't be the lead man at the front of the march and in front of the cameras. He said that it would do the movement no favors. He wanted Harry Edwards to be the lead man, and said he would be very happy taking marching orders from Harry on this. Dr. King felt the boycott was a very worthy project and could prove to be a mighty platform to make clear the need to establish justice and equality for all men and women on this planet. He said that our strongest leverage was that an Olympic boycott could have a global reach. We could shock the world and we could do it by also adhering to the principles of nonviolence that he held so dear. We could bring attention to the problems of society, but we did not have to throw a rock or burn a building in order to do so.
This was Dr. King's methodology. He understood that militancy didn't mean violence. He understood that courage did not mean throwing punches. Sometimes it meant just the opposite. He also told us that if we wanted to go down and hold a demonstration during the Olympics in Mexico City, he would join us and bring the civil rights marches people knew from Selma and Montgomery right to the Mexican capital. I still remember him saying that he would get to work on that right after he saw through this garbage strike he was working on supporting in Memphis, Tennessee.
At the end of the meeting, I finally found my voice and was able to ask two questions of Dr. King. The first question I asked him, very respectfully, was why this idea of an Olympic boycott was attractive to him. He expressed to me that the concept and visual power of an Olympic boycott would be like a ripple in the water spreading throughout the world to let people know that the people of color of this earth were very disenchanted about their treatment and we could aspire to something better as a human race. He said that the visual power was in the void it would create: an Olympics without black athletes. He said that the process would be like black soldiers stepping back from the military. "We're not saying ‘burn it down,'" he said. "We're just merely saying we don't care to participate and see how you feel without us as a part of the show." I totally agreed. We weren't throwing any fire. We were just saying that we choose not to go. We felt like we had to step up because as I remember someone saying at the meeting, "If not us, who?" How do you become a "leader"? Well it helps if you decide that you are going to lead.
My second question to Dr. King was something a lot of people in the room were wondering and it had nothing to do with anything that had to do with the Olympics. We wanted to know, "Why are you going back to Memphis when they are threatening your life?" Remember, Dr. King had been back and forth to Memphis where he was supporting a sanitation strike that had gotten so violent it became an article of faith that Dr. King had been marked for death. We all knew it. We knew that if someone had a clear shot at this great man, the trigger would be squeezed. He was addressing not just racism at home but also standing up against the war in Vietnam. He was just becoming too dangerous to too many people. At that moment, Dr. King made a very positive statement directly to me. He said, "John, I have to go back and stand for those that won't stand for themselves, and I have to go back for those that can't stand for themselves." The way he said it was very distinct and very precise. Once again, he said he had to "stand for those who won't stand for themselves, and stand for those who can't stand for themselves." Won't and can't: he had enough room in his heart for both. When Dr. King said that, it made my life more certain. Maybe this is just the way I remember it more than forty years later, but that moment gave me a direction. Until then I was kind of a rebel without a cause, like Brando when they said, "What are you rebelling against?" and he replied,"What have you got?" I never had any kind of a game plan or formula for what I was going to do in my life. I didn't have a compass. I would improvise and speak out against injustice as I saw it arise. But when Dr. King said those words to me, it was like he joined my mind and my heart and guided them toward one direction. This is when I became a heart and soul member of what we called the Olympic Project for Human Rights.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Konformist Book Club: The John Carlos Story
E of S Nation: just a reminder that you can purchase the John Carlos Story right now at http://www.haymarketbooks.org/hc/The-John-Carlos-Story
Those who want to support Teaching for Change, can buy it at
http://zinnedproject.org/posts/11445
Those who support the amazon cabal of global doom can buy it at
http://www.amazon.com/John-Carlos-Story-Sports-Changed/dp/1608461270/thekonformist
In struggle and sports,
Dave Zirin
Olympic Protester Maintains Passion
NEIL AMDUR
October 10, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/sports/john-carlos-of-68-olympics-protest-maintains-his-passion.html
More than 40 years after Tommie Smith and John Carlos ignited the sports world with their black-gloved fists raised on the victory stand at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, Carlos says, “I still feel the fire.”
Any doubts that time and age have somehow diminished the passion that fueled his track and field career are dispelled with the publication of “The John Carlos Story,” written with Dave Zirin and published by Haymarket Books.
“If I shut my eyes, I can still feel the fire from those days,” Carlos, 66, says, as early as the second page of a memoir with the intensity and power of a 200-meter dash. “And if I open my eyes, I still see the fires all around me. I didn’t like the way the world was, and I believe that there need to be some changes about the way the world is.”
Those who thought they knew Carlos as a brash New Yorker may be surprised by some of his more personal recollections, including having an early obsession with swimming across the English Channel and having Fred Astaire as a childhood hero. Carlos says Astaire would show up outside the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem in “top hat, tails, shoes and cane,” watch Carlos and his young friends perform dance and acrobatic routines and then reward them with silver dollars.
And there are the poignant admissions that he was embarrassingly dyslexic as a grade-schooler (“in those days they didn’t call you dyslexic, they called you dummy”) and that he “didn’t care a lick if I won the gold, silver and bronze” in the 200-meter final in Mexico (he won the bronze behind Smith and Peter Norman, an Australian).
“Before the race started,” Carlos writes, “I made up my mind I wasn’t going to test Tommie for that gold medal.”
He adds, “I was there for the after-race.”
It is that after-race for which Carlos is most remembered. Carlos and Smith bowed their heads while the national anthem played, raising their fists to protest treatment of blacks in America. As a result, they were told to leave the Olympic Village.
The positive reception that Carlos says he is receiving on his book tour is far different from the bitterness and news media backlash that affected Smith’s and Carlos’s lives after Mexico, and different also from the way their relationship with each other evolved. Carlos’s first wife, Kim, whom he married while still in high school, committed suicide in 1977, four years after they split up, an event that led him into depression and still haunts him, he says.
Smith’s autobiography, “Silent Gesture,” written with David Steele, was published in 2007 and fractured Carlos’s relationship with him until they were reunited in Mexico City for a 40th-anniversary ESPN special.
“I understand Tommie a lot better now in terms of who he is, his attitude and his views,” Carlos said.
Carlos is less patient with the state of track and field and its assorted drug scandals. “How can you live with yourself and call yourself a champion, when you repeatedly have lied to yourself and lied to society?” he asked. “It’s gotten so bad that it’s actually destroying the sport and eating out the root of the sport from the bottom, and the bottom is about to fall out.”
Carlos was also dismissive of sprinting’s current sensation, Usain Bolt of Jamaica, saying, “I don’t look at him.”
At an appearance Carlos made last week at the Capital City Public Charter School in Washington, a student asked why he had risked his career to take such a controversial stand. Carlos replied, “Because it was so many individuals that were in positions of power that chose to just lay back.”
Carlos will appear at the Rosenthal Pavilion in New York University’s Kimmel Center on Wednesday night with his co-author, Zirin, and the writer and commentator Cornel West.
Now remarried and working as a guidance counselor at Palm Springs High School in California, Carlos offers his own prescriptions for success and survival. Don’t run from the moment, he tells students; in return, he says, they teach him how to stay young.
“I’m where I need to be, or should be, or could be in my life,” he writes. “I think as well as I’ve worked with kids, there are things I don’t think I had the opportunity to do in this life. I think God had intentions for me to do more, but yet still I hear the breath of God telling me, ‘You did more than most people ever thought you would be able to do under the circumstances, so just keep on keepin’ on and we’ll see what comes.’ When I hear that voice, I tell God politely that he sounds too much like the devil for my taste.”
Sunday, October 2, 2011
Troy Davis, John Carlos, and the Moment that Still Matters
E of S Nation: this week marks the release of my book The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment that Changed the World. (Haymarket Books).
As much as I love writing this column, I can only do it if the Edge of Sports readers buy my books. Please take a moment to purchase a book that Michael Moore said he "couldn't put down." Also Dr. Michael Eric Dyson called it, "A remarkable chronicle of an epic life sketched against the defining crisis of race in America.... An inspiring and eloquent story about a great American whose commitment to truth, justice and democracy were tested and found true."
You can purchase the book NOW at the Haymarket Books website at:
http://www.haymarketbooks.org/hc/The-John-Carlos-Story
I also recommend supporting the Non-Profit Teaching for Change and buying the book at:
http://bbpbooks.teachingforchange.org/book/9781608461271
For those who feel compelled to support the independent-bookstore-destroying-monolith that is amazon.com, the link of evil is:
http://www.amazon.com/John-Carlos-Story-Sports-Changed/dp/1608461270/thekonformist
I also wrote a column that people can tweet or post about why I wrote the book. It's below.
Thank you all.
Dave Zirin
Troy Davis, John Carlos, and the Moment that Still Matters
Dave Zirin
http://bit.ly/nHX2wf
On September 21st, the day that Troy Davis was executed in Georgia, 200 very angry Howard University students pumped their fists in front of the Barack Obama’s White House and chanted “No Justice, No Vote.” At that moment, I understood why an image from 1968 still resonates today. It was 43 years ago this week when Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their black-gloved fists on the Olympic Medal Stand and, along with supportive silver-medalist Peter Norman, created a moment seared for all-time in the American consciousness.
This week also marks the release of John Carlos’s autobiography, The John Carlos Story, which I co-wrote. When John asked me to write the book, I felt compelled to do it because I’ve long wondered “why?” Not why did Smith and Carlos sacrifice fame, fortune and glory in one medal-stand moment, but why that moment has stood the test of time.
Of course, much of the book details why John Carlos took his stand. It was 1968. Dr. King had been assassinated. The Black Freedom Struggle had become a fixture of American life. In the world of Olympic sports, apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia were regulars at the games. There were scant black coaches. Avery Brundage, an avowed white supremacist, ran the International Olympic Committee.
John Carlos in particular, in the 1960s, went from being a Harlem high school track star - walking down the street talking both smack and politics with neighborhood regulars like Malcolm X and Adam Clayton Powell - to being a scholarship athlete at segregated East Texas State. The gap between his sense of himself as a man and going to the South and being treated like a boy drove him politically toward his medal stand moment.
The answer to “why do so many of us still care” was tougher to decipher. In 2010, I appeared on a panel on the history of sports and resistance with Carlos, after which a long line of young people born years — even decades — after 1968 patiently waited for his signature on everything from posters and T-shirts to hastily procured pieces of notebook paper. Why? And why have I seen street-corner merchants from Harlem to Johannesburg sell T-shirts emblazoned with that image?
The most obvious is that people love a good redemption song. Smith and Carlos have been proven correct by history. They were reviled for taking a stand and using the Olympic podium to do it. A young sportswriter named Brent Musberger called them “Black-skinned storm troopers.” But their “radical” demands have since proved to be prescient. Today, the idea of standing up to apartheid South Africa, racism, and Avery Brundage seems a matter of common decency rather than radical rabble-rousing. After years of death threats, poverty, and being treated as pariahs in the world of athletics, Smith and Carlos attend ceremonial unveilings of statues erected in their honor. America, like no other country on earth, loves remarking on its own progress.
But it was the Howard students, chanting “No Justice, No Vote” to an African American President on the night of a Georgia execution, who truly unveiled for me why the image of black-gloved fists thrust in the air has retained its power. Smith and Carlos sacrificed privilege and glory, fame and fortune, for a larger cause. As Carlos says, “A lot of the [black] athletes thought that winning [Olympic] medals would protect them from racism. But even if you won a medal, it ain’t going to save your momma. It ain’t going to save your sister or children. It might give you 15 minutes of fame, but what about the rest of your life?”
Carlos’ attitude resonates because for all the blather about us living in a “post-racial society”, there are reservoirs of anger about the realities of racism in the United States. The latest poverty statistics show that black poverty rate of 27.4% is nearly double the overall U.S. rate. Black children living in poverty has reached 39.1 percent. Then there’s the criminal justice system, where 33% of African American men are either in jail or on parole. The image of Carlos and Smith evokes a degree of principle, fearlessness, and freedom that I believe many people think are sorely lacking today. They stood at the Olympics unencumbered by doubt, as brazenly Free Men. We are still grappling with the fact that they had to do it and the fact that it still needs to be done.
Dave Zirin is the author of “The John Carlos Story” (Haymarket) and just made the new documentary “Not Just a Game.” Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.
As much as I love writing this column, I can only do it if the Edge of Sports readers buy my books. Please take a moment to purchase a book that Michael Moore said he "couldn't put down." Also Dr. Michael Eric Dyson called it, "A remarkable chronicle of an epic life sketched against the defining crisis of race in America.... An inspiring and eloquent story about a great American whose commitment to truth, justice and democracy were tested and found true."
You can purchase the book NOW at the Haymarket Books website at:
http://www.haymarketbooks.org/hc/The-John-Carlos-Story
I also recommend supporting the Non-Profit Teaching for Change and buying the book at:
http://bbpbooks.teachingforchange.org/book/9781608461271
For those who feel compelled to support the independent-bookstore-destroying-monolith that is amazon.com, the link of evil is:
http://www.amazon.com/John-Carlos-Story-Sports-Changed/dp/1608461270/thekonformist
I also wrote a column that people can tweet or post about why I wrote the book. It's below.
Thank you all.
Dave Zirin
Troy Davis, John Carlos, and the Moment that Still Matters
Dave Zirin
http://bit.ly/nHX2wf
On September 21st, the day that Troy Davis was executed in Georgia, 200 very angry Howard University students pumped their fists in front of the Barack Obama’s White House and chanted “No Justice, No Vote.” At that moment, I understood why an image from 1968 still resonates today. It was 43 years ago this week when Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their black-gloved fists on the Olympic Medal Stand and, along with supportive silver-medalist Peter Norman, created a moment seared for all-time in the American consciousness.
This week also marks the release of John Carlos’s autobiography, The John Carlos Story, which I co-wrote. When John asked me to write the book, I felt compelled to do it because I’ve long wondered “why?” Not why did Smith and Carlos sacrifice fame, fortune and glory in one medal-stand moment, but why that moment has stood the test of time.
Of course, much of the book details why John Carlos took his stand. It was 1968. Dr. King had been assassinated. The Black Freedom Struggle had become a fixture of American life. In the world of Olympic sports, apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia were regulars at the games. There were scant black coaches. Avery Brundage, an avowed white supremacist, ran the International Olympic Committee.
John Carlos in particular, in the 1960s, went from being a Harlem high school track star - walking down the street talking both smack and politics with neighborhood regulars like Malcolm X and Adam Clayton Powell - to being a scholarship athlete at segregated East Texas State. The gap between his sense of himself as a man and going to the South and being treated like a boy drove him politically toward his medal stand moment.
The answer to “why do so many of us still care” was tougher to decipher. In 2010, I appeared on a panel on the history of sports and resistance with Carlos, after which a long line of young people born years — even decades — after 1968 patiently waited for his signature on everything from posters and T-shirts to hastily procured pieces of notebook paper. Why? And why have I seen street-corner merchants from Harlem to Johannesburg sell T-shirts emblazoned with that image?
The most obvious is that people love a good redemption song. Smith and Carlos have been proven correct by history. They were reviled for taking a stand and using the Olympic podium to do it. A young sportswriter named Brent Musberger called them “Black-skinned storm troopers.” But their “radical” demands have since proved to be prescient. Today, the idea of standing up to apartheid South Africa, racism, and Avery Brundage seems a matter of common decency rather than radical rabble-rousing. After years of death threats, poverty, and being treated as pariahs in the world of athletics, Smith and Carlos attend ceremonial unveilings of statues erected in their honor. America, like no other country on earth, loves remarking on its own progress.
But it was the Howard students, chanting “No Justice, No Vote” to an African American President on the night of a Georgia execution, who truly unveiled for me why the image of black-gloved fists thrust in the air has retained its power. Smith and Carlos sacrificed privilege and glory, fame and fortune, for a larger cause. As Carlos says, “A lot of the [black] athletes thought that winning [Olympic] medals would protect them from racism. But even if you won a medal, it ain’t going to save your momma. It ain’t going to save your sister or children. It might give you 15 minutes of fame, but what about the rest of your life?”
Carlos’ attitude resonates because for all the blather about us living in a “post-racial society”, there are reservoirs of anger about the realities of racism in the United States. The latest poverty statistics show that black poverty rate of 27.4% is nearly double the overall U.S. rate. Black children living in poverty has reached 39.1 percent. Then there’s the criminal justice system, where 33% of African American men are either in jail or on parole. The image of Carlos and Smith evokes a degree of principle, fearlessness, and freedom that I believe many people think are sorely lacking today. They stood at the Olympics unencumbered by doubt, as brazenly Free Men. We are still grappling with the fact that they had to do it and the fact that it still needs to be done.
Dave Zirin is the author of “The John Carlos Story” (Haymarket) and just made the new documentary “Not Just a Game.” Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.
Thursday, September 29, 2011
After Troy Davis's Death, Questions I Can't Unask
by Dave Zirin
http://www.thenation.com/blog/163568/after-troy-daviss-death-questions-i-cant-unask
Folks - In honor of Troy Davis, I gave more than I can afford to the Campaign to the End the Death Penalty. at the following link. Please do the same:
http://bit.ly/qnxerv
In struggle,
Dave Zirin
1. Can Troy Davis, who fought to his last breath, actually be dead this morning?
2 - If we felt tortured with fear and hope for the four hours that the Supreme Court deliberated on Troy's case, how did the Davis family feel?
3. Why did the state of Georgia need to leave him strapped to the death-gurney while waiting for the Supreme Court to rule?
4. Why does this hurt so much?
5. Does Judge Clarence Thomas, an impovershed African American son of Georgia, ever acknowledge in quiet moments that he could easily have been Troy Davis?
6. What do people who insist we have to vote for Obama and support the Democrats "because of the Supreme Court" say this morning?
7. Why does the right wing in this country distrust "big government" on everything except executing people of color and the poor?
8. Why were Democrats who spoke out for Troy the utter exception and not the rule?
9. Why didn't the New York Times editorial page say anything until after Troy's parole was denied when their words wouldn't mean a damn?
9. Why does this hurt so much?
10. How can Barack Obama say that commenting on Troy's case is "not appropriate" but it's somehow appropriate to bomb Libya and kill nameless innocents without the pretense of congressional approval?
11. What would he say if Malia asked him that question?
12. How can we have a Black family in the White House and a legal lynching in Georgia?
13. Why does this hurt so much?
14. Can we acknowledge that in our name, this country has created hundreds of thousands of Troy Davises in the Middle East?
15. Can we continue to co-exist peacefully in a country that executes its own?
16. What the hell do I tell my seven year old daughter who has been marching to save Troy since she was in a stroller?
17. If some Troy's last words were, "This movement began before I was born, it must continue and grow stronger under we abolish the death penalty once and for all", then do we not have nothing less than a moral obligation to continue the fight?
http://www.thenation.com/blog/163568/after-troy-daviss-death-questions-i-cant-unask
Folks - In honor of Troy Davis, I gave more than I can afford to the Campaign to the End the Death Penalty. at the following link. Please do the same:
http://bit.ly/qnxerv
In struggle,
Dave Zirin
1. Can Troy Davis, who fought to his last breath, actually be dead this morning?
2 - If we felt tortured with fear and hope for the four hours that the Supreme Court deliberated on Troy's case, how did the Davis family feel?
3. Why did the state of Georgia need to leave him strapped to the death-gurney while waiting for the Supreme Court to rule?
4. Why does this hurt so much?
5. Does Judge Clarence Thomas, an impovershed African American son of Georgia, ever acknowledge in quiet moments that he could easily have been Troy Davis?
6. What do people who insist we have to vote for Obama and support the Democrats "because of the Supreme Court" say this morning?
7. Why does the right wing in this country distrust "big government" on everything except executing people of color and the poor?
8. Why were Democrats who spoke out for Troy the utter exception and not the rule?
9. Why didn't the New York Times editorial page say anything until after Troy's parole was denied when their words wouldn't mean a damn?
9. Why does this hurt so much?
10. How can Barack Obama say that commenting on Troy's case is "not appropriate" but it's somehow appropriate to bomb Libya and kill nameless innocents without the pretense of congressional approval?
11. What would he say if Malia asked him that question?
12. How can we have a Black family in the White House and a legal lynching in Georgia?
13. Why does this hurt so much?
14. Can we acknowledge that in our name, this country has created hundreds of thousands of Troy Davises in the Middle East?
15. Can we continue to co-exist peacefully in a country that executes its own?
16. What the hell do I tell my seven year old daughter who has been marching to save Troy since she was in a stroller?
17. If some Troy's last words were, "This movement began before I was born, it must continue and grow stronger under we abolish the death penalty once and for all", then do we not have nothing less than a moral obligation to continue the fight?
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