Episode 150: Coronavirus cancels sports, Interview re: Skateistan, U.S. Soccer's sexism persists
This, week, Lindsay, Amira, and Brenda open up the show by talking about how the coronavirus is impacting their own lives. Then, they discuss the dramatic events last week when coronavirus canceled sports, and question what's next. (7:49).
Shireen chats with Talia Kaufman, programs director, and Zainab Hussaini, general manager, about Skateistan an award-winning organization that got its start in Afghanistan, and uses skateboarding as a tool to empower kids, keep girls in school, and amplify the sport globally. (25:56)
Then, Lindsay, Amira, and Brenda talk about an eventful week in the ongoing equal pay dispute between U.S. Soccer and the USWNT, that started with horrifically sexist court filings, peaked on Wednesday with sponsors speaking out and the players protesting, and ended with Carlos Cordeiro resigning. (44:32).
Finally, we have the Burn Pile (57:00), BAWOTW (1:04:17), and What's Good (1:07:44).
Links
Inside the NBA’s coronavirus response and its decision to suspend season: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/03/12/nba-decision-suspend-season-rudy-gobert/
The week the coronavirus ground the sports world to a halt: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/03/14/sports-cancellations-timeline-coronavirus
What NBA and NHL owners are planning to compensate arena staffs for missed games: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/03/14/what-nba-nhl-owners-are-planning-compensate-arena-staffs-missed-games/
NCAA extends eligibility for many athletes whose seasons were cut short: https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2020/03/13/ncaa-eligibility-sports-cancelled/
U.S. Soccer President Carlos Cordeiro Resigns: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/12/sports/soccer/uswnt-carlos-cordeiro-us-soccer.html
Sponsor Coca-Cola Rips U.S. Soccer for 'Offensive' Legal Arguments vs. USWNT: https://www.si.com/soccer/2020/03/11/coca-cola-us-soccer-uswnt-equal-pay-legal-arguments
When corporations are your conscience, it's time to start from scratch: https://www.powerplays.news/p/when-corporations-are-your-conscience
USWNT lawsuit versus U.S. Soccer explained: Defining the pay gaps, what's at stake for both sides: https://www.espn.com/soccer/united-states-usaw/story/4071258/uswnt-lawsuit-versus-us-soccer-explained-defining-the-pay-gapswhats-at-stake-for-both-sides
Transcript
Lindsay: Welcome to Burn It All Down, the feminist sports podcast you need. Thank you so much for listening to us this week. My name is Lindsay Gibbs, I am the author of the Power Plays newsletter and after quite a week I am so happy to be here with two of my co-hosts: Dr. Amira Rose Davis, associate professor of history and African American studies at Penn State. Hi, Amira!
Amira: Hey!
Lindsay: And Dr. Brenda Elsey, associate professor of history at Hofstra, who I believe is in Detroit right now. Hey, Bren.
Brenda: Hi!
Lindsay: So first of all, our usual thank-you to our patrons. We are taking some steps towards adding some people to our team and could not be more excited, and the only way that is possible is because of the support from our patrons. If you go to patreon.com/burnitalldown for as little as $2/month you can get extra benefits, listen to extra segments, be a part of our Patreon community, and help support this independent venture that we want to keep going even in the, I believe, zaniest is one word for it, of times in this world. I don’t know quite how else to put it, but in today’s episode we’re going to talk about, obviously…We talked about it last week but it’s a whole new world this week. We’re gonna talk about the coronavirus and what it’s doing in the sports world, which is a lot! Then we’re gonna talk about US Soccer Federation and its legal battles with the US women’s national team that has led to former president Carlos Cordeiro resigning this week. Then Shireen chats with Talia Kaufman, the programs director, and Zainab Hussaini, the general manager of Skateistan, the award-winning organization that got its start in Afghanistan and uses skateboarding as a tool to empower kids, keep girls in school, and amplify the sport globally.
But first, I just wanted to do a check-in with you two, Amira and Brenda, I know it really does feel like a different world than at this point last week, so I just wanna check in. How’s the coronavirus impacting your lives? How are you and your kids doing? Brenda, I know you’re in Detroit now. How are things?
Brenda: Shitty. I’m supposed to change all my courses to online now for the rest of the semester. I have four courses that I teach, and I think I have a hundred students right now. I’m sad I won’t get to see them and I’m doing that whole migrating face-to-face abruptly to online learning when my girls’ school is cancelled for at least two weeks, so it’s like…You know, stay-at-home mom plus extra professory. Of course I know this is not worst, I know there are people who are really really suffering from this and I’m very sad and I’m happy to quarantine and keep everyone safe, but it’s not the easiest.
Lindsay: No, doesn’t sound easy at all.
Brenda: And there’s no sports! [weepy noise]
Lindsay: Yeah, there’s no sports. We will get to that. Amira, how are you?
Amira: Yeah, our spring break was last week and the population of State College is emptied out as 50,000 undergrads and multiple families from the community have spread all over the world during our spring break this last week, and so now the university is going remote until April, but also my kids’ schools are closed until that time as well, and really what we’re doing is assessing what’s going to happen as everybody starts dumping back into the town and seeing what the health of the entire community looks like as people are coming back from all around the world into a tiny little space. Personally for me this was the month I was finishing my book manuscript, and my kids have already been home for 10 days…Over the course of March they’ll have gone to school for 5 days and I just…It’s not just that productivity has gone out the window but it’s that even in times of global pandemic where there’s great disruption to your life, we’re so wedded to productivity, by necessity, right?
Like Brenda said, there’s so many people who are really affected by this in terms of losing pay and losing jobs and not having health insurance, but there’s a certain precarity in the distance for people like me who are untenured, where it’s like, we can’t stop writing because the tenure clock hasn’t stopped, and so it’s not an immediate type of precarity, but it’s like, do I wanna have my job in a few years when I need to get my book out? So even in this moment when the last thing I wanna do is focus and write, I don’t know how to not. So that’s where I’m at with that.
Lindsay: Yeah, I’m really feeling you there. On one hand I’m incredibly lucky right now because I – and we’ll talk about this a little later – when ThinkProgress closed one of my top options was to go full-time freelance because I know that world really well, and had I gone that route I would be without any income over the next who knows how long. Thankfully for Power Plays I have a different structure now. But yeah, it doesn’t stop at all. There’s no downtime for me during this, the newsletters and the work needs to keep coming. I’m trying to help the community…Last week my grandfather passed away and I was back and forth to North Carolina, and it really did seem like every two days when I went from North Carolina to DC it was a whole different atmosphere. Things were just changing at such a rapid speed and it was very weird to be going through that personal stuff while this global pandemic was spreading. It’s been a very strange time. I’m back in DC and for me, like I said, I’m very lucky but at the same time it is a shift: I have to figure out what a three times a week sports newsletter look like in the world of no sports!
Amira: Right.
Lindsay: It’s an adjustment and I think all of us can be grateful that we’re not in worse positions and thankful for those, but still acknowledge that this is a big change in all of our lives. But we still have a show to do, and this is the type of normalcy that I love, talking to you all. The good thing is that our show has been quarantine-proof since the beginning because we’ve always done this completely online, so we’re kind of ahead of the curve! Oh…wait! I did not announce, I assume that people know this but the USC show has unfortunately been cancelled–
Amira: Postponed! Postponed.
Lindsay: Postponed. Cancelled for this month. You will not be seeing us on April 1st but it will be postponed to the fall and we will keep you up to date on when that is happening, and we cannot wait to make it to LA. Alright, well speaking of the coronavirus’s impact on our personal lives and how much has changed this week, it is also a different sports situation from last week when we talked about the coronavirus here. Amira – I think there was one day where a lot of stuff happened, maybe take us through Wednesday?
Amira: Yeah, so when we last had this conversation last week, we were what seems quite benignly now thinking about if March Madness would go on, or go on without fans. Brenda gave us a great history of the 1918 flu pandemic, and we were kind of wondering what March Madness would look like without any fans, that was the bulk of our discussion. That episode dropped on Tuesday, and then things happened in, like, 24 hours between Tuesday night and Thursday morning. Just mayhem. So, first off the bat, yes, the NCAA said there was gonna be no fans at March Madness, what we had been talking about and predicting in the episode. They went ahead and said that on Tuesday: they’re gonna play games without fans. Other things kind of went on as people clinged to normalcy. For instance, in Greece, the IOC lit the damn Olympic torch. Like…I dunno.
Lindsay: [laughing]
Amira: But stateside, the US Olympic Committee and Para Committee cancelled its media summit that featured over 100 prospective Olympians and Paralympians. Other leagues such as the NHL, the MLB, the NBA, MLS, look steps – again, baby steps – to try to stay safe, including barring locker room access, making individual players available to media in a very sanitized way. We saw these little steps happening to protect the leagues, that leagues kind of thought were sufficient steps, which at the time felt like significant steps. You had instances like Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz who even kind of mocked these efforts, like there’s not much more we can do more than what we’re already doing, like, we’re not gonna stop high-fiving people. He actually left the press conference touching all the mics in jest, remember that.
Lindsay: Yeah! [laughing]
Amira: Tuesday rolled around with people still clinging to normalcy, even though the Ivy League went forward with cancelling its participation in postseason basketball tournaments, which was widely debated and almost condemned at that time: it was seen as an overreaction. But by Wednesday the Ivy League had gone a step forward and cancelled all spring sports. The NCAA had said no fans, the NBA had games scheduled but again was proceeding with no fans, and so on Wednesday morning it felt like this was so severe already. There were no fans in attendance, games were being played, the Ivy League seemed to be way way overreacting, but right before tipoff of the OKC and Utah Jazz game, a PA announcer said it was postponed. Soon it was announced that that very Gobert had tested positive for COVID-19. Swiftly the NBA cancelled games and set in motion essentially endless announcements from the ATP, from MLS, from NHL, from MLB, from the WTA; the NCAA went forward and cancelled all of March Madness, PGA tour, and by Friday the Masters and the Boston Marathon had also followed suit.
So, here we are. We don’t have sports. Since then, two other NBA players have tested positive, including Donovan Mitchell, a teammate of Rudy Gobert on the Utah Jazz, and also the person he was playing against on the Detroit Pistons who was defending him the whole game, has tested positive. If you think about all the teams that the Utah Jazz played in this period of time and then all the teams they played, you can see why the NBA very quickly moved to say that we need to halt everything. I think it’s also important to note here that the Utah Jazz somehow found 58 tests to give to its team after Rudy tested positive, which represented almost 60% of all testing capabilities in the state of Oklahoma at the time. And we’re in a testing shortage, so the fact that professional teams have been able to access these tests is also something that maybe we should talk about.
But here we are. Sports have gone silent, we’ve never really seen this before; to this degree certainly not at all. So, what do we talk about? What do we watch? What does this reveal about our dependency on sports? Also, in a very real way, it took this halt from the sports world to really, I think, capture the larger attention of society to say no, this is serious and this is happening. In the words of Cardi B, shit is getting real.
Lindsay: Yeah! So real! Brenda, what do we do without sports? Have you begun to kind of figure out how that is impacting your life? Has it sunk in?
Brenda: It’s terrible. I actually strategizing what old sports events I should watch and make my kids watch. [laughing] Like, my kids have never seen Rumble in the Jungle, you know? Ali and Foreman and Zaire. My brain goes right to “How else can I regulate my life? I’ll go to old sports!” So I think it really shines a light on how the schedule of sports really is comforting for me and a lot of people, it sort of regulates time. People are really critical of this, sociologists or historians, that say well, this is about the imposition of capitalists to make you follow a particular schedule, and that might be! But I experience it as incredibly comforting, my exploitation in this sense! So yeah, for me it’s really disconcerting. Amira listed all of these cancellations; the one that I have never seen, and I’m sure is without precedent, is the qualifiers for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, and that’s just bonkers to me. Of course it’s obvious it needs to happen, but for me it really set in, that cancellation, because they’ve played many times without fans and I assumed that that’s what they would do, and then it became clear that the players who were coming from Europe were gonna have to be quarantined. So there’s three players at least from Juventus that play for Brazil that were gonna come and have to miss the qualifiers and then you realize the global nature of sports and how connected we are, and yet still how vulnerable. It’s been really fascinating, and for me disconcerting.
Lindsay: Yeah, I think we’re so used to…At least during my lifetime, whenever there is a huge global event or really big news thing, sports are kind of the thread that ties us together during those times. We know there is no separating sports and politics, but it does at times kind of bring society together, so the fact that we’re kind of all going through this and without sports, to me it’s a hard adjustment. But there’s also also the fact that this, economically, is having a huge impact. Amira?
Amira: Yeah, certainly. To your point Linz, this is FDR urging baseball to go on with World War II, this is the Patriots playing on national TV after 9/11, right? I think to your point even in those moments, even in all of our sporting moments, we lose sight of all of the more precarious and visible labors it takes to make the machine of sports still run. One of the things that’s happening in this moment is that we’re seeing that those vulnerable populations are in very very fragile situations: arena workers who work concessions or do janitorial work for these big stadiums, that has been a point where you’ve seen a lot of people – not enough in terms of the ownership side – step up and say we’ll donate money to keep that going. People like Zion Williamson and Kevin Love…The fact that a 19 year old has the wherewithal to say that this is the money that I’m donating to make sure that arena workers are taken care of, and not every owner…There’s been owners, certainly – I never thought I would praise Mark Cuban, but here we are – who have been on the front lines of making sure that people are taken care of, but there’ve been too many owners who’ve been absolutely content to sit back and watch athletes who are not billionaires like them…They’re sitting back and letting them do these acts of goodwill. I think it also reveals not just arena workers, right, but Lindsay, you mentioned freelancers. What does it look like in your opinion for people who cover sports? We all talk about ESPN like “what are they gonna show?” – they’ll be fine! Can you talk to us about how this might impact the other labor force in sports, which is the media?
Lindsay: I mean, I’m terrified! I know it’s a little bit trivial but there’s so many people who make their living covering sporting events. Like I said, if I was freelance right now I would’ve been planning all of my income to be coming from probably Indian Wells, the tennis tournament, and then the women’s March Madness tournament, you know? And I would’ve had all these contracts lined up, and then they would’ve just all been gone immediately, they’re the first things to go. There are certainly no billionaire owners stepping in to support the media, period, you know? There aren’t enough supporting the arena workers but there’s no infrastructure, right? The industry is already failing, so I’m afraid first of all that we’re going to start to see more layoffs from places like the ESPNs or the Sports Illustrateds or other sporting websites, so I’m afraid the people who do have jobs are gonna lose them because these sports sites are gonna start losing profit and they all have to answer to shareholders, so it’s not like people are gonna be generous. I don’t know what freelancers are gonna do, and I’m very scared for them.
I want to urge, if you’re an editor listening and you had a travel budget set aside for your salaried employees this month, to instead give that to freelancers, you know? If you in any way can keep people, we need people to be covering sports. It does matter. We needed people there the night that Rudy Gobert and all that stuff was happening, right? We needed reporters to be figuring that out. I’m just scared. I’m scared for my industry and I’m scared for the most vulnerable people, freelancers, and I’m scared that at the end of this then this industry is gonna be even more decimated than it already has been. We know that this will disproportionately impact women’s sports, and I don’t know. It sounds silly but…It doesn’t sound silly, but it’s my industry and I’m scared for it, I’m scared for of course many others. One thing though is that not 100% of sports are shut down. It seems like that but, Amira, is there one that’s keeping going?
Amira: [laughs] Yes.
Lindsay: [giggling]
Amira: That would be UFC. It’s UFC. So, Dana White, as everybody else was cancelling, Dana White said he received advice “straight from the president!” and the vice president over the escalating outbreak and he said oh, Trump and Mike Pence said “Be cautious, be careful, but live your life!” He said he will continue to run UFC events…
Lindsay: [laughing, unable to speak coherently]
Amira: I don’t know. So, you know…one of the things that has happened is he has budged on this, so there are UFC events that will be held behind closed doors, but they had 8 events and he basically was like, we’re going forward! The issue that they’re facing is that a lot of places where they’re holding the events have now imposed rules about public gathering and how many people are gonna be there. So for instance in London, Dana White’s like, “It’s gonna proceed as planned! We’re working with the government there to try to make sure it’s moving forward!” And it’s not funny, but it’s just like, what are you doing!? Ay-ay-ay. For instance, in Columbus, when the governor issued a ban on public events over 100 people, Dana White’s response was not to say, hmm, maybe we should postpone the event, but to move it to Vegas! So they are on their own campus and they can control having the event or not. So, you know, people are taking precautions and I look back to when the Ivy League was being lambasted for overreacting, and now I feel like we’ve swung in this way where we’re like, people are under-reacting! Your friendship with this administration is not gonna save you, they’re incompetent! Don’t do that! Stop putting other people at risk! I literally…It makes me so irritated I don’t even know what to say, other than this is ridiculous.
Lindsay: Somehow…When the NCAA is making more normal decisions than you are, you know you have reached rock bottom of the capitalism scale.
Amira: Right!
Lindsay: The capitalism immorality scale. So, obviously it’s the right move to cancel all of these things, but am I alone in just feeing bad for these seniors and really hating this? Bren.
Brenda: I don’t think that it’s bad to feel sorry for seniors at all. I mean, I feel terrible for the students that don’t get to go through commencement and graduation, much less their dreams shattered. Hofstra had made the NCAA tournament for the first time in like, 20 years, and I feel terrible for all the athletes that have worked so hard. I also feel that for all students right now.
Amira: Yeah, certainly. I would have to agree with that. I saw a tweet somewhere that said the class of 2020 started college in the fall with the 2016 election and ended it with this, and I think anytime you have dreams or visions of how something’s gonna go and it’s disrupted, it’s really hard. I can’t imagine for these seniors who are both athletes and non-athletes, both in high school that are looking at the world that they’re about to go into and on the collegiate level who are missing their senior days, who aren’t getting their proms…My kid’s a theater kid and kids who have worked all fall and winter for musicals that now won’t go on…I saw one tweet where they live-streamed a musical without the audience that people could watch. Laura Benanti made a thread and said if your high school musical’s been cancelled, sing for me, I’ll be your audience. I think I’m feeling that for everybody, like Brenda said, and certainly of course for the athletes we’ve been following, like Sabrina, who’ve had a complete disruption to what should’ve been her crowing year.
Lindsay: Yeah, and really quickly, do you two as mothers have more insight into how this is impacting the youth level and kid’s sports and what the impact that will have? Bren?
Brenda: Well, most of the seasons will be postponed and that’s incredibly disruptive, but that’s part of just belonging to the world and I feel for everybody. Maybe this’ll be a moment of compassions, and in some sense I think it gives me a measure of a reality check in terms of the idea that sports is this important. But everything’s this important right now.
Lindsay: Yeah, I think if anything it’s very easy to feel divided these days, but this is a very real reminder that we are all citizens and very much all in this together when it comes to a public health emergency, it takes everyone doing their part. Alright, next we have Shireen’s interview about Skateistan.
Shireen: Hello flamethrowers, this is Shireen. Today we have two very very very special and important guests on the show with us. I’d like to introduce Talia Kaufman, she is the program director for Skateistan, and she’s coming to us from Berlin. I would also like to introduce Zainab Hussaini who is the general manager of the program in Mazar-e-Sharif, Afghanistan. Hello to both you!
Talia: Hi.
Zainab: Hello.
Shireen: I’ll begin with you, Zainab. Can you tell me how long you’ve been with the program and what you do in your role as general manager?
Zainab: I started working with Skateistan in 2013 and now I work as the general manager leading a group of 23 people who are teaching children, skateboarding and education.
Shireen: That’s wonderful. Talia, you’ve been with the program since 2012. What exactly do you do?
Talia: My job seems to be constantly shifting, but I work with the local teams on program design. I also work somewhat on our long-term strategy with the other directors and I have a team of programs managers both in Berlin and then with programs directors in schools who all collaborate together on making sure that we’re delivering really great programs. So, setting goals for girls’ inclusion, setting goals for how many disabled students we want participating in the program, and making strategies together on how to achieve those goals. We’re also responsible in the programs side for reporting to our donors on our successes and how we’re spending our funds.
Shireen: So, Talia, is Skateistan exclusively run on donors? For example, our podcast runs exclusively from Patreon by our generous listeners. Is it the same for Skateistan, or do you get grants internationally or from different places?
Talia: Our individual donor base is increasing but it’s not exclusively the source of our funds. We also do get some foundation grants and grants from local embassies, so we do try to diversify where we’re doing our fundraising, but we’re trying to always grow our individual donor base because it’s that untied funding that we can really work with flexibly. We have a program called Citizens of Skateistan, and that’s our monthly donor program. Anyone can sign up at skateistan.org/citizens to become a Citizen.
Shireen: Zainab, can you tell us a little bit about the programs themselves and if you could explain why skateboarding has become such a hit, and what that means for the girls in the communities that they’re from?
Zainab: Skateistan programs include mainly skating, a back to school program, a youth education program, and a drop-in program. Skateboarding is the largest sport in Afghanistan, and it’s quite a new sport. I can say Skateistan is providing all these programs for free, and it has a safe space for children, especially for girls. There are many private sports clubs but most of the families in Afghanistan don’t allow girls to participate or go outside of their home to take part in any kind of sports. Of course they do, but Skateistan is covering a huge number of students, boys and girls, and it’s all because of the free transport, free programs, and most importantly a safe space.
Shireen: Talia, who came up with this idea? Let’s back this up just a little bit. This sounds very well-crafted and well-thought out and from what Zainab is explaining, the programs are tailored to be very cognizant that there should be spaces specifically for girls and for boys as would be culturally appropriate. Who put this together?
Talia: So, there’s a skateboarder named Oliver Percovich and he founded the project back in 2008. He was in Afghanistan, Kabul, with his girlfriend at the time, and as a skateboarder he had brought a few boards with him and was skateboarding in the streets, as skateboarders do, and there are lots of unsupervised children who were very vulnerable, very at risk of all kinds of negative outcomes in their lives because they’re in the streets and they’re poor and they’re trying to sell stuff and talking to strangers. These children were coming up to him and were very curious about his skateboard, and from there he used a disused water fountain that was in a park, and make that a sort of safe space for skateboarding outside, and there was so much interest that the sessions really took off. He had some older Afghans helping him with the sessions, and he noticed the girls stopped participating by a certain age. After girls hit puberty they would stop attending and they’d just sort of watch or just not be seen anymore.
He found out that what they needed was a private space and girls-only classes and female leaders, and so he listened to the kids and worked really hard to get some land and some small donations at first and get that space in Kabul. So the model came from there and it was replicated in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, and then in Mazar and Johannesburg. We have about 2500 students worldwide, but on a weekly basis we have attendance of about 3000 participants.
Shireen: Wow.
Talia: Sorry, that was a bit of a mistake, maybe I should count back and explain what that means. We have close to 3000 attendances a week across our schools, so some of those are children coming more than once in a week for different activities. We’re reaching 48-49% girls participating, but over half of our registered students are girls.
Shireen: Zainab, do any of the participants end up coming back and working for the program? Or volunteering with the program?
Zainab: Most of the employees who are working at Skateistan in Kabul and Mazar-e-Sharif are our former students. They become our volunteers – they start as youth leaders and then become volunteers, and then after learning Skateistan’s program they become employees. We do have an alumni program that started at the beginning of 2020, which brings all our former students together. We do have some plans for them to come to Skateistan and start a new program.
Shireen: What age do you have the skaters join?
Zainab: Students from the age of 5 through 17.
Shireen: Five! So they’re like little babies on skateboards!
Zainab: [laughs] Yeah. Until 17.
Shireen: Until 17. And other then helmets and pads, the participants can wear what they want, right? They don’t have to wear…Because I see these beautiful photos of girls wearing their traditional clothing, and it’s wonderful. Does that help, do you think? They don’t have to wear a kit or a jersey. Do you think that helps?
Zainab: We don’t have any limitation about the students’ clothes. They can wear long dresses, they can come in school uniforms, but we do encourage them to be in hijab because not having hijab will somehow limit them because Afghanistan is experiencing a very new democracy, and we do have a very long way ahead to be accepted as a human. We don’t have a choice to select our clothes, we can’t wear them as a western woman [would].
Shireen: Right.
Zainab: We try, our students try to wear what they want, it will limit them and push them to improve. So we do prefer the girls themselves prefer to be in hijab, or very long dresses.
Shireen: Okay. One of the key things…I started learning about Skateistan in 2012, and before that I think one of the things I really appreciated about this program is that it wasn’t directives given from people from the outside, a lot of the cues culturally and socially were from Afghans themselves. I think this is really important in development work anywhere, particularly in sport, where you can get what’s essentially white saviors coming from outside into these places. Skateistan doesn’t have this, but you look to those on the ground in these places to contribute to the program. I’m assuming that was intentional, Talia?
Talia: That’s definitely a risk working in international development, something to be really aware of. We’ve also made a shift away from having foreign staff in the skate schools, so some key roles at the schools in the past were held by international staff and over time there’s been a handover, and more trust built up and better processes to manage everything collaboratively and do it effectively from a remote office.
Shireen: Skateistan was widely recognized in the form of an Oscar award for a documentary film. Congratulations to you both, first of all, and the program, on being the subject of an Academy Award-winning feature. So the next question, Talia, is about that. How did that come to be, and when did the filming of that documentary start?
Talia: The initial scoping of that documentary started in 2016. There was one visit that year, and then the filming happened, I think, over the course of two or three very short trips to Afghanistan. The director of a short doc that had been made about Skateistan, his name is Orlando. He has become really successful in recent years and won an Academy Award for his documentary about the poaching of mountain gorillas called Virunga, in 2014, and he was interested to do another film with us. He’s working with Grain Media and I think they were contracted through A&E, so it all came together that way.
Shireen: That’s amazing, I mean, what tremendous publicity as well, and opportunity to amplify. Has that helped people to know about your program?
Talia: Oh, definitely. It’s given us exposure on a different scale. We’ve gotten a big uptick in Citizens and media pieces and interest in general, social media following, all the good types of support that we get, it’s been extremely noticeable – visits to the website, everything’s gone up since February 9th.
Shireen: That’s wonderful. Zainab, do you have people now in Afghanistan who’ve heard about this and the win of the film? Have they paid attention?
Zainab: Of course, we have a famous TV [network] in Afghanistan called TOLO TV, and yeah, it was breaking news on TOLO TV when we got the BAFTA and Oscar. After that night everyone was really happy in Afghanistan overall. They were posting about Skateistan…Before that a few people in Afghanistan didn’t know about Skateistan’s programs, and after that people were proud, and even my friends and people in Mazar were talking about the Oscars and encouraging our students, and telling us that they’re proud that one of the Afghan organizations got an Oscar award, it was amazing. I didn’t see any negative thoughts about Skateistan programs after that.
Shireen: That’s wonderful. This is my last question, Zainab – has there been pushback from society or criticism of the program in Afghanistan?
Zainab: Of course. To be honest, as most of the sports organizations, some of the people in communities disagree with girls in sports and they’re trying to say “Sports is not good for the girls” and forbidding girls from sports and making rumors, propaganda, but there’s always a way to convince them and to speak with them, that the only way we’re trying to involve the community at Skateistan is inviting them and showing them the programs, showing the classrooms and teaching Islamic subjects at Skateistan.
Shireen: Right, and I think that’s good to do something from a holistic perspective, do a curriculum that suits where you are. That’s one of the things I appreciate very much about the program, that there’s a lot of thought put into it. Zainab, do any of these students come up to you with their own suggestions for what they want, or suggestions on what they love? What’s the feedback from the skaters themselves?
Zainab: We are always open for students, and we are asking about their suggestions. Before each curriculum we ask students what they want to learn next at Skateistan and we collect their ideas. Most of them are asking about the lessons that they’re not learning at public schools, or sometimes they are asking about the lessons that they don’t have specific materials [for] and they want to make sure they can provide those materials to learn new skills at Skateistan.
Shireen: That’s amazing. I want to ask, Talia, where can our listeners find Skateistan and find the work you do, and how can they support the organization?
Talia: So, anyone who’s keen to support us can find us at skateistan.org and on Instagram at Twitter @skateistan, and it’s great if people become Citizens. So, to be a Citizen you sign up to be a monthly donor of any amount and it’s that consistent commitment that really helps us. The untied funding is extremely meaningful for such an innovative and creative program and the type of work we’re trying to do locally. So yeah, it’s all very appreciated and if people become citizens they get special exclusive newsletters from the schools. So yes, please give us a follow and check it out.
Shireen: I just will have you know, Zainab and Talia, I wanna thank you so much for being here on the podcast, but one of my bucket lists is actually to come and visit one of your schools.
Talia: Yes, that’d be amazing. I hope you can.
Shireen: Yeah, it really is. I cannot skate – Zainab, maybe one of the students can help me learn how to skate, because I have no idea.
Zainab: Yeah, for sure.
Shireen: But I’m just in such awe of the wondrous work you do and how sport can really be a too of empowerment and a connector of people, so lots of love and respect from everybody at Burn It All Down, and thank you so much for being on our show.
Talia: Thank you.
Zainab: Thanks so much.
Lindsay: Alright, not many other sports stories were going on this week besides the coronavirus cancellations, but US Soccer sexism still managed to make headlines! Talk about breaking through, talk about commitment to the cause! Brenda, what happened this week?
Brenda: So, it all sort of came to the fore on March 7th when US Soccer Federation then-president Carlos Cordeiro wrote a letter – this was on the night before International Women’s Day! – publicly updating people on the status of negotiations with the US women’s national team, and he hinted at some of the arguments we would see later in the legal filings, and in it was a very strange, bungled letter where he already starts to blame the women themselves in the negotiations; he also shifts blame to FIFA in that letter. It was sort of a foreshadowing of what we saw on March 10th when the court filings were released, and thanks to friend of the show Meg Linehan at The Athletic for staying up all night and posting and screenshotting those documents. They were just simply shocking, arguing that women have scientifically less ability than their male counterparts, that they shouldered less responsibility, that they had less possibility for making vast sums of money from prize winnings, and I think it was really fascinating because a lot of what we’re used to is the soccer federation leaning on marketing and the idea of markets and sports markets being different, and that being the rationale. I think in the society we live in that’s become much more accepted as an argument, as not being sexist, even though we know it is, but in fact being more palatable than patent misogyny.
What was revealed in those court filings is that the legal team and Carlos Cordeiro have no problem making just blatantly sexist arguments. So over the subsequent days there was a lot of backlash about this by national team players, and in the midst of that the US women’s team just had a banging performance, and it was sort of the most mishandled thing in quite a while, maybe akin to Trump and the coronavirus. Then on March 12th Carlos Cordeiro resigned, to be replaced by the vice president and former player Cindy Parlow Cone, who has taken over. It’s been a real wild ride, and one that I think many of us are just so surprised about in terms of how US Soccer Federation just didn’t recognize the goodwill that this team has generated and just miscalculated how angry people would be at these sorts of arguments.
Lindsay: Yeah. It takes a lot of gall to trash the goodwill of a World Cup championship team in such a spectacular way! At a time when the Federation should be building on that momentum, instead US Soccer tried to downplay it and fight against it, which is so cool! [laughs] Amira, how are you feeling?
Amira: Yeah, I mean I personally, as Brenda alluded to…You couldn’t script this better, to have these asinine arguments laid out and then have Megan Rapinoe and Christen Press have beautiful, beautiful goals that were a high degree of difficulty, just amazing shots, as a kind of in-person ready meme for people to say, “Oh, if only they had skill!” in a kind of sardonic way to poke back at the USSF. So there’s that, but of course we’re down the week and it was so on the nose that all of these sponsors…It made it very easy for people to get behind the women’s national team. The thing that I was watching was of course the players protest where they turn their shirts inside out and you can’t see the crest but you see the four stars, #FourStarsOnly, immediately made that a shirt from their Players Association that I definitely bought as soon as I saw Jess post the link, because you know I don’t wanna wear Americana stuff but this was perfect for me…
Anyways, you also had the corporate sponsors…Again, this is fodder for…This is right up the alley of things like Volkswagen who have gone all-in corporately behind equal pay measures, etc etc. Their version of “woke branding” is really gender equity, it’s a no-brainer that they were forcefully condemning that. But it wasn’t just them. I think one of the more curious tweets that came out was from now-president Cindy Parlow Cone, who tweeted: “I am hurt and saddened by the brief USSF filed. This issue means so much to me, but more broadly to all men & women and, more importantly, to little girls & boys who are our future. I disavow the troubling statements and will continue to work to forge a better path forward.” And it’s just things that make you go “Hmm!” because…
Lindsay: [laughing] “Hmm!” indeed!
Amira: That’s your legal team, homie! You’re vice president! And so it was this weird moment where I felt almost that Carlos’s resignation, which really was because of the corporate response, his lukewarm apology was because of the corporate response, but I think largely his resignation has really been scapegoating the entire federation that includes the now-president who was tweeting things like they were separate from the legal apparatus putting forth these arguments! What’s remarkable to me is that we have been saying – us, Meg, all the people who are paying attention – that their entire legal argument was grounded in sexism and here you go, they’re just saying the quiet part out loud. And now all these other people in positions of power wanna act shocked by it? It was here all along! So that’s kind of where I am with this.
Lindsay: Yeah. This is nothing new. If nothing else, weeks ago there were leaks, right? Not leaks but depositions came out, where it was very clear – I wrote about it in Power Plays – that this was their legal strategy. Let’s just take a minute to note how scary it is. I talked about this a little bit a couple weeks ago on Dave Zirin’s podcast Edge of sports where I said that you have the worth of women’s sports on trial, right? The very worth of whether or not women deserve to be their own category and whether that category is worthy of support and equality and investment and respect. We’re now putting that up to a random judge?! It’s too much chance! How are we doing this? It’s so uncomfortable, it’s so dangerous, and every single person on the US board, either they knew this was the strategy and blindly went along with it, or didn’t do anything to stop it, or they didn’t know which means they weren’t doing their job, they weren’t engaged in a very important legal battle.
So I have skepticism about all of this going forward because I don’t really know how US Soccer as a whole federation recovers from this, because we are not at the beginning of this fight. We are like 6 weeks from when this could go to trial, there’s been millions of dollars spent to justify this argument! This is not the very beginning, and it’s honestly too late in my opinion. What especially drives it home is while the players show great unity with their protests, if the sponsors had not stepped up, if Visa and Coca Cola and Volkswagen had not spoken out about against this, there’s no way Cordeiro would’ve resigned. Amira?
Amira: Yes, certainly. I think the corporations who have made these statements, this is their corporate branding! They’re able to brand as “pay equity warriors” as long as their product is still on the field, but you see the limits of it because it’s not as if Volkswagen is saying, hey, we’ll pay your salaries while you boycott to actually get equal pay, we’ll help you force their hand. And so I think one of the things you also have here is a bit of that murkiness, a bit of those limitations or constraints on the players themselves and what actions they can take and the limits of corporate sponsorship’s “woke branding” and I think that’s something to keep an eye on as we move forward.
Lindsay: Yeah, and Brenda, you had a great tweet this week about girl’s soccer and about how those fees are all a part of this US Soccer system. Can you share your thoughts on that with us?
Brenda: Yeah. One of the things to remember is…There’s a couple, these are really interconnected points. One of them is that all of us who are signing up, any youth soccer or even adult soccer, we pay part of our club fees and those fees go to the US Soccer Federation. So one thing is there’s athlete activism and there’s also the possibility for the larger community to say no. There’s absolutely…What is it for? What is US Soccer Federation for? I mean, school soccer functions just fine without it. Do we really need to be paying club fees to this organization that basically says women do not have the capacity to play like men? Is that something I wanna pay into at that level and sign my daughters up for? It’s just one of those things that’s really frustrating. I think most people don’t realize, and some people pay four, five different organizations, you pay for tournaments…US Soccer Federation can say you just get a little cut, it’s usually a dollar for a youth player and two dollars for an adult player, but if you’re signing up that’s millions of kids, and you’re signing up 3 or 4 sometimes in one season. It’s really striking that we’re sort of paying into an organization that we don’t sometimes realize that we are.
It really went to the question of responsibility. Think of the responsibility that this women’s team has; we’ve talked about the labor of being an “inspirational” athlete all the time. It’s just unbelievable to me that that’s a responsibility, but the fact that the women have inspired the world is not a responsibility? It was really disheartening for me on many levels, and then to just be asked to go right ahead and sign up my kids for soccer when I know they’re getting a cut is just the height of hypocrisy on the part of US Soccer Federation.
Lindsay: Alright, I feel like we’ve already started our burn pile with our US Soccer Federation chat but we’re gonna have our burn pile anyways, we’re gonna throw a few things this week that we are frustrated with in the sports world onto the burn pile. Let’s see, Amira, can you get us started?
Amira: Oh, I can!
Lindsay: [laughing]
Amira: As we’ve talked about arena workers who are affected by the coronavirus and leagues shutting down, we mentioned a lot of people who are helping this. I also wanted to burn one organization who’s already in flames, because it’s the Calgary Flames. They have come out and said that they were not going to pay their employees past their scheduled shifts on March 12th. They said we will pay you for the March 12th shift if you were scheduled to work, as the notice of cancellation was less than the 24 hours required by Alberta employment standards. However, after that, they were not paying anybody any money for lost shifts. One worker at the Flames arena estimated that he would stand to lose, just thought he end of the month, about $2000-3000 as a primary income. What makes this particularly appalling is that taxpayers themselves just in December have agreed or been forced into a subsidy that is providing basically a $550 million price tag for the construction of a new arena for the Flames. Of this $275 million will be provided by the taxpayers, many of whom are employees who now are not getting their shifts paid, are part-time staff who won’t have those financial payments.
The fact that these officials, the people who own the arena, are basically balking at the costs to continue to help these employees make ends meet during this shutdown, they’re balking at that on one hand while having the other hand out for the tax subsidy and price tag that is putting the brunt of $275 million on taxpayers, who you won’t even support with employment! Who you’re not helping, who you’re not taking care of! Your back has been rubbed, scratch somebody else’s back! Or, I don’t know, save a fucking life! I literally…This is the most disgusting type of greed, and I’m irritated. I don’t even know, there’s not a word I have to say how irritated this makes me. It’s just not right. So, Calgary Flames, particularly the Calgary Sports and Entertainment Commission who owns the Flames, and who’s made this decision, you are going on the burn pile. Burn.
All: Burn.
Lindsay: Bren.
Brenda: Yeah, on that note, let’s burn the English Premier League who tried to keep this season going for so long, risking any player, any stadium worker, any fan. Tried to keep it going through this weekend (March 15th and 16th). They did not cancel until March 13th, Friday, March 13th, and it took Arsenal coach Arteta who tested positive for that to happen! And then the Chelsea midfielder Callum Hudson-Odoi who also tested positive, so two entire squads, both Chelsea and Arsenal being in isolation for 14 days for them to finally cancel! I just have one more point about the hypocrisy of some of these people and these owners: this is the same league that just instituted the Financial Fair Play, right? Like it’s supposed to be about more that money. So, obviously it’s not. It’s a joke that it took that long, that there was a national emergency and the EPL was like, you know what? That doesn’t apply to us! That doesn’t apply to our funding schemes! So I wanna also, and I guess this is just, Amira, pile the EPL’s greed onto that incinerator and burn it.
All: Burn.
Lindsay: Okay, I’m channeling Shireen, I have three very very quick ones. [laughter] Spirit of Shireen who can’t be here. First of all, Iona hired Rick Pitino – what the actual f-?
Amira: Ay, ay, ay…
Lindsay: Burn, burn, burn! Second of all, all the people still going out to bars and restaurants, especially those in big cities like New York and DC, and LA, despite the fact that we know congregating in groups is the easiest way to spread the coronavirus, despite the fact that that you can be asymptomatic and still spread it: STOP! If everyone does what they can now and socialize online as much as possible, we can get sports back sooner! We can move back to normal life sooner. But if everyone keeps being selfish idiots and refusing to give up their brunch dates this is gonna drag on three, four months and so many more people are gonna die. So, burn selfishness.
I also wanna burn this Washington Post article which I think, really, just the title will be enough for the burn. This was written on March 14th, so that was on Saturday, and it says “sports cancellations leave one group of sports fans particularly educated: vasectomy patients.” There is this weird obsession with vasectomy patients every March for March Madness about how these men schedule it so they can watch more March Madness. I feel like nothing shows you the maleness, the amount of patriarchy wrapped into sports media on all levels, which is how many people write this story every March, and the fact that even during the coronavirus people are still concerned about these patients. There are just so many other important things to be focusing on now! Burn.
All: Burn.
Lindsay: Alright, after all of that burning it’s time to lift up some badasses of the week. First of all, Mikaela Shiffrin, who returned to the slopes for the first time since her father’s sudden death last month. She didn’t actually get to compete because the event was cancelled due to the coronavirus, but she said just getting back on the slopes was a feat for her and one of the scariest things she’s done in her life.
We wanna shout out the US women’s national team who showed great solidarity by protesting U.S. Soccer’s sexism before the SheBelieves Cup final, and then winning the SheBelieves Cup, as we discussed.
Oksana Masters, for sharing her candid and heart wrenching story, which began in an orphanage in the Ukraine and currently has her as a multi-sport and multi-time Paralympic champion. Her story was shared in both the New York Times and The Players’ Tribune this week.
The Boston Pride and the Minnesota Whitecaps both advanced to the NWHL final. The championship game is on pause indefinitely, but we wanna shout out both of those teams.
We won’t have an NCAA champion this year, although South Carolina did finish the season ranked #1, and so shout out to Dawn Staley and her women’s basketball powerhouse team. But I did want to give some props to the conference champions, since conference tournaments ended last Sunday, and sometimes Monday. South Carolina won the SEC, Maryland won the Big 10, Oregon won the Pac-12, UConn won the AAC, NC State won ACC, DePaul won the Big East, and South Dakota won the Summit League, so congratulations. I’m sure there’s some conferences I missed, but congratulations to everyone in women’s basketball this season.
Margaret Muriuki of Kenya won the LA marathon last week.
UConn commit Paige Bueckers won the Gatorade Player of the Year award.
Can I get a drumroll please?
Alright, our badass of the week is Maya Moore who spent the last year helping overturn Johnathan Irons’ conviction. Katie Barnes at ESPN wrote about this monumental decision that was made this week. Katie wrote: “The WNBA star put her career on hiatus to help Jonathan get released from prison, and on Monday, Irons' initial conviction was overturned. This day has been a long time coming, Moore said. We are just so grateful and thankful to God and to everybody who has played a role in bringing justice.” Irons has served 22 years of a 50-year sentence that he was handed in 1998 following a conviction of burglary and assault with a weapon in a suburb. There was no DNA on the scene, it was a very wrongful conviction. The fight isn’t quite over: there is a stay on the order, so the state has 15 days to request a review by the appellate court. Then if the state does not appeal, then St. Charles County has 30 days to decide whether it wants to retry Irons. But this is a huge, huge victory and just shows the power of Maya Moore and activism and, yeah, congratulations.
Okay, we’ve talked about a lot of bad things. Is there anything good in your life? Amira.
Amira: Um, yeah. I mean, I’m happy for health. I’m really happy for our health right now. My family is well, my parents are well, my siblings are well. So that is really significant, it’s good. On My Block season 3 hit Netflix just in time for this. I’m very thankful for all of the 90 Day Fiancé spinoffs, and for Sims 4 which is keeping me entertained, and for community. I’m an extrovert with ADHD, I’m already stir crazy. I need to schedule a lot of FaceTime dates to deal with social distancing because I get energy and motivation from people, and so I’m just really happy with the people who have agreed to Skype with me and FaceTime and Google Hangouts, have writing groups and have writing breaks, and figure out how we stay connected in this time.
I particularly want to shout out our grad students who are going through comps, Paulina and Rick, and Ellie Jean who is figuring out how to play professional soccer when there’s no soccer and is quarantined over in Denmark. And everybody who I’m connected to in my global village are navigating this but turning inward and connecting with each other in the face of this pandemic and it reminds me just how blessed we all are to have each other and to navigate it together, and that to me is good. And boxed wine.
Lindsay: [laughs] Bren?
Brenda: I echo Amira’s appreciation for health, my family’s well, and my appreciation for all my friends and family who are trying to keep me sane. I also want to give a big shout out to public librarians: the school being closed I went to Red Hook Public Library in Dutchess County, New York. They have drive-thru library stops, they have curbside library going on right now, and it is amazing because we are having to do something with our children who are not in school. It is just a tremendous relief to get new stuff in, new ways for them to learn and new things to do, so I really appreciate the work that they’re doing in the public libraries. I know it’s not just mine, I know it’s around the country, I’ve seen it on social media. And I also want to say that I’m here in Detroit to meet my miracle baby nephew: my sister is a quadriplegic and gave birth to Bennett in December. I have not been able to get out here because of crazy scheduling and I’m not happy about the coronavirus, I’m obviously worried about everyone, but this reprieve from everything gave me an opportunity to dash out here. I already changed a diaper within minutes of arriving and I’m just in love, so I’m really, really grateful.
Lindsay: That’s amazing! [laughs] That's the best. I too, I had a week that was all about, personally, kind of the circle of life. I got the call last Friday night that my grandfather wasn’t doing well, that it was time probably to come say goodbye, so I very quickly drove down to North Carolina and I found out that my cousin – so, this was the other side of the family, I was kind of the only connective tissue here – but my cousin on the other side of the family, his wife was in labor and I hadn’t realized that the women’s hospital had moved to be at the main hospital where I was going to visit my grandfather, it used to be in another part of the town and it just moved last week. Anyways, this hospital was huge but I ended up being directed to go into this one door by my dad, he gave me a short cut, and when I walked in after driving for six hours, and I walked in to go say goodbye to my grandfather, there was my cousin’s wife’s family right there in the lobby when I walked in the door to tell me that she had just given birth.
So that was just such a cool moment, I mean, just the circle of life. I’m so excited for my new cousin Elowyn, and my grandfather, Allen Roger Gibbs, we all called him Roger, was just the greatest man, and it was so special to be able to be with family because there are times when you can’t be with family during funerals and to say goodbye. As hard as the week was, I was so glad to be there and the funeral was just amazing. He was a great singer and we actually played a clip of him singing at his own funeral, so that was just so special. It was a very emotional week, a hard week, but it was a very good week, all things considered.
Alright, thank you all for listening to Burn It All Down. We are gonna keep this sports podcast going even though we have no clue when sports are going to be back but I think we’ll have plenty, plenty to talk about. You can keep up with us at our website, burnitalldownpod.com, Twitter @burnitdownpod, on Facebook @burnitalldown, and also on Apple Podcasts, Burn It All Down podcast. Please rate and review and help us reach new people! People are gonna need some new listening material to kill time while they’re indoors, help them find this feminist sports podcast that you need. It was actually an exciting week for us: we got shared by Apple Podcasts, the main account, which has like 600,000 followers, and Megan Rapinoe shared our episode with Rachael Rapinoe, her sister, last week. So first of all, go back and listen to that interview if you haven’t yet, and it’s fun to continue to grow even almost 3 years into this deal. Please, wash your hands, be as safe as you can, and just please be safe and healthy. Take care of yourself, but also remember that you need to take care of others too and that you can do that by staying home. We just appreciate you all so much, and we’ll be back next week.