They will not say his name. Not now, after what has been done by these players. It is important not to recognize her.
Think of it as opposition jujitsu.
The WNBA finals have begun. On Sunday, the Seattle Storm defeated the Las Vegas Aces, 104-91, to take a two-match-to-no-lead in their Best-F-Five series. Game 3 is Tuesday night.
In its 24th year, the women’s league has some of the most fiery players in basketball, but it still struggles for widespread recognition and respect. This strange season in you, which came next In the Florida region without fans due to the coronavirus epidemic, at least the atmosphere provides a bright background to shine the league’s growing talent.
The legacy of the 2020 season, however, is not just about non-court action and winning the championship. It will also be about the WNBA’s continued leadership in the fight for human rights.
This is in no way clearer than how its players have been defamed by an unexpected source: Georgia Senator Kelly Loffler, co-owner of Atlanta Dream.
When they talked about it, they refused to take his name.
Think back to the days after the assassination of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis. As the nation turned around and introspection began, the WNB was one of the first professional leagues to say that its next season would be dedicated to pushing for social justice and promoting the Black Live Matter movement.
That was not surprising. About 70 percent of the league’s players are black and a significant number of its stars are lesbians. They are women who are well aware of the full consequences of discrimination. That is why he has been a leader in the fight for justice for so long.
It was not surprising when he was hit.
Surprisingly, the blow came from within. To be precise, one of the most influential voices in the league, Loffler, the Republican, is vying for his seat in the November 3 election.
Lofler responded by publicly laughing at the league’s pledge to support social justice in 2020. She criticized the decision to cover the player’s jersey with the slogan “Say her name,” with the intention of focusing on the deaths of black women like Brianna Taylor. The hands of the police.
In a letter to the WNBA commissioner, Lofler wrote, “I have relentlessly opposed the Black Lives Matter political movement,” before listing a series of inappropriate claims that promoted violence and destruction throughout the country.
There was a method of Loffler’s blocking attitude. He is engaged in a hard-fought battle for Republican voters in a conservative state. To remove his aptitude in his party, he was rude from a well-worn book used by President Trump: to show rudeness, verbally attack black athletes and draw them into a fight.
Even if it means attacking the players on his team – the whole league as well.
But things did not turn out as planned. Each of the league’s dozens of teams sat on a sports training campus near Tampa Bay and stopped by with the players. They knew that the WNB commissioner’s office had condemned Loffler’s views. They also realized that her cash-settlement league wasn’t exactly in the main position as she put her 49 percent stake in Dream Up for sale. Between epidemics and widespread economic disasters, who will be the buyer?
So the players devised a strategy, and advanced it in their usual thoughtful way.
“We realized, ‘Oh, he wants to drive us crazy,'” said Seattle’s Pte guard Sue Bird, recalling the moment we spoke by telephone last week. “She wants us to try and kick her. He will pay more attention to it. This is what he wants. “
“We had to find a better way.”
Instead of gaining strength with force, the players decided to work around it to provide fodder that would only stimulate Loffler’s campaign.
Like Jujitsu.
His first move was both decisive and peaceful Aggressive: In interviews, public announcements and on social media, they decided to stop naming the co-owner of Atlanta.
They refused to give him pride.
“Words are things,” said Nekta Ogwamike, president of the Los Angeles Sparks Forward, the league’s players’ association. “Words have power. And I think it makes a lot of sense to give a name an energy release. So, we stopped saying that name. “
The next move was more on the issue.
It began with leaguewide video calls involving advisers, including Michelle Obama and Stacey Abrams, who became the first black woman to be elected governor of Georgia anywhere in the United States in her bid to become governor of Georgia in 2018. Discussions focused on politics and power.
The players began to taste Loffler’s political opponents in the next election, looking for a way to put themselves in a race that could change the balance of power in Congress. They sat down with one candidate: the Rev. Dr. Rap. Raphael Warnock, Democrat and pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was the co-pastor.
Once Varanasi addressed the players at Zoom, there is no doubt about it. “It immediately became clear to us,” Bird told me. “It simply came to our notice then. You can literally go down with what we take care of, and we were aligned with it. It was like, ‘Wow, we want this guy in the Senate. This is the candidate we want in the Senate. ”
Within a few days, almost everyone in the league began wearing black T-shirts to show off their national television games, which had two words: vote for Warner.
That kind of support to a single candidate opened a new chapter in the athletes’ protest announcement.
“It’s unprecedented,” said Amira Rose Davis, an assistant professor of race, sports and gender at Pennsylvania State University. Davis noted many examples of individual athletes supporting political politicians. It has been the same tradition of sports.
“But this is different,” he said. “Coordination. The strategic part. Uniqueness, takes time to meet the candidate and then endorses the candidate as a group. This has never happened before. ”
After the player push, Warnock told the campaign he found significant momentum in enthusiasm and financial support: a spokesman said support for the T-shirt had turned to the 23 236,000 campaign in the days since it began. Although it is impossible to make a direct connection with WNBA activism, At least one major poll shows that Vernok is ahead of Loffler and other candidates for the first time.
This race for the Senate is far from over. If a candidate does not get a majority of votes, there will be a run-out with the top two winners in January.
“If Vernonck wins and the byproduct is that no particular person is in the Senate, then, hey, we’re all happy,” Bird refused, saying, of course, to name him.
No matter how the season or the election unfolds, the women’s professional basketball team has once again helped lead. This time showing the best way to work around grandfathering.
