Episode 164: The Return of Sports and Athlete Activism, and Renee Montgomery on Stepping Away from WNBA

This week, Jessica, Amira, and Shireen talk athlete activism and the return of sports [9:00]. After that, Shireen interviews WNBA Atlanta Dream player Renee Montgomery about why she's stepping away from basketball for a year to focus on activism in Atlanta [28:30].

Of course, you’ll hear the Burn Pile [48:22], the Bad Ass Woman of the Week segment, starring Anna Cockrell [58:32], and what is good in our worlds [1:01:17].

Links

Inside WNBA legend Maya Moore's extraordinary quest for justice: https://www.espn.com/wnba/story/_/id/29315369/inside-wnba-legend-maya-moore-extraordinary-quest-justice

When the W Comes Back, I Won’t Be There by Renee Montgomery: https://www.theplayerstribune.com/en-us/articles/renee-montgomery-wnba-racial-injustice

Will NBA’s return distract from more important matters? https://www.latimes.com/sports/newsletter/2020-06-15/nba-return-sports-report

USC student-athletes form organization to ‘combat racial inequality’: https://www.latimes.com/sports/usc/story/2020-06-17/usc-black-lives-matter-student-athlete-group-ubsaa

UCLA football players demand protection from ‘injustices’ amid pandemic return: https://www.latimes.com/sports/ucla/story/2020-06-19/ucla-football-players-demand-protections-amid-pandemic-return

Vicki Wood, Who Broke Car-Racing Gender Barriers, Dies at 101: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/sports/autoracing/vicki-wood-dead.html

IFSC mourns the tragic loss of French climber Luce Douady, at the age of 16: https://www.ifsc-climbing.org/index.php/news/364-ifsc-mourns-the-tragic-loss-of-luce-douady

Woman disqualified in cross country for wearing hijab asks for religious expression legislation: https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2020/06/12/woman-disqualified-in-cross-country-for-wearing-hijab-asks-for-religious-expression-legislation/

Roxanna Scott named managing editor for sports at USA TODAY: https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/2020/06/17/usa-today-sports-managing-editor-roxanna-scott-lead-team/3205260001/

Ty Harris wins SEC Female Athlete of the Year Award: https://wach.com/sports/usc-gamecocks/usc-womens-hoops-ty-harris-wins-sec-female-athlete-of-the-year-award

Transcript

Jessica: Welcome to Burn It All Down, the feminist sports podcast you need. I’m Jessica Luther, freelance journalist and author in Austin, Texas. On today’s show I’m joined by Shireen Ahmed, a writer, public speaker and sports activist in Toronto; and Amira Rose Davis, assistant professor of history and African American studies at Penn State. First things first: our thoughts and thanks go out to all the people who are on the front lines of the continuing COVID-19 pandemic and to those protesting against racial injustice and working towards equality. We are keeping you all in our thoughts. Also, happy father’s day to everyone who celebrated this past weekend.

As always, thank you to our patrons whose support of this podcast through our ongoing Patreon campaign make Burn It All Down possible. We are forever and always grateful. If you’d like to become a patron, it’s easy: go to patreon.com/burnitalldown. For as little as $2/month you can access exclusives like extra Patreon-only segments or our monthly behind the scenes vlog. On today’s show we’re going to talk about athlete activism, if sports returning is good or bad for activism, and what happens with athlete activism once sports are actually back. Then Shireen interviews Renee Montgomery, Atlanta Dream point guard, who just days ago announced that she’s stepping away from the court for one year in order to focus her attention on the Black Lives Matter movement while building up Atlanta and her community. And of course we’ll cap off today’s show by burning things that deserve to be burned, doing shoutouts to women who deserve shoutouts, and telling you what is good in our worlds.

But first, before we get into all of that: this past Friday in the United States was the 155th anniversary of Juneteenth. The original Juneteenth was here in Texas and so it has always been a big deal here, but a lot of people this year, I gather, learned about it for the first time. In case you were not one of them, Amira, Dr. Davis, resident historian here today, can you tell us a little bit about Juneteenth?

Amira: Yeah. [laugh] This has been very weird, to watch it…It’s just weird. Yeah, it’s so interesting, so, the short kind of dirty version history of Juneteenth is marked by commemorating June 19th, 1865, when a Union general rolled into Galveston, Texas, and read a proclamation about the war being over, about freedom, about emancipation. Of course the story there is that the news about freedom took so long to spread over to Texas that it was two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation, it was a few months after the end of the war, and that they didn’t even know that freedom had come. So he rides into Galveston, he reads this order. I think it’s important to note that it wasn’t like, “You’re free, now go live in freedom.” It was like, “By the way, you’re free. You should go back to your plantations and ask your slave masters for jobs.” Right?

But it still set off a moment of jubilee and, make no mistake, when we’re talking about the end of the Civil War we’re talking about the fact that enslaved people forced the issue of freedom, from the inception of this country and on. Whether it was picking up arms and joining the union to fight, whether it was people like Frederick Douglass pushing abolitionism – enslaved people themselves compelled the country to act upon the issue of slavery. So when people say they freed themselves, this is what they mean. So that day, particularly in Texas, became a day of celebration. The next year in 1866 on June 19th it was Jubilee Day, and it’s important to note that throughout the south there were different emancipation days. Mississippi celebrates Emancipation Day on May 8th, there’s people who celebrate Emancipation Day in July, in August, in January. So there was a lot. Everybody had their specific celebrations when they felt liberated, and for Texas that has always been Jubilee Day, which then turned into Juneteenth.

I was born in Beaumont, Texas, an hour and a half from Galveston, and in Texas it was very common for there to be parades, there was always a kind of celebration around it. Now, the kind of expansion of the holiday we don’t really see until World War II. What we also see with the Great Migration – and if you wanna read more about that I highly recommend The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson – and what happens with the Great Migration and you get huge demographic shifts is you have Black folks from the south going to the urban north, going to the west, and as that happens they’re bringing various traditions and celebrations with them, including that of Juneteenth. When we’re talking about the period after World War II what we’re talking about is, slowly, Black people with southern roots across the country bringing these celebrations there. Juneteenth kind of resurfaces and takes off. A lot of times family reunions would also be scheduled around these emancipation day celebrations, these jubilee day Juneteenth celebrations, those would be the days you went back down south for family reunions. In 1985 the state of Texas recognized that as a holiday.

That is nothing compared to this moment and this week where despite people asking for things like, I don’t know, defunding the police, it clearly became what I’ve been calling Juneteenth™ where I feel like it was very easy for corporations to seize upon it and be like, great, we’re gonna give this day a holiday, or we're gonna talk about this. I think it’s sometimes easier to build monuments and holidays than it is to sustain movements, so I think that’s a little bit of what we're seeing. For me, I’m not gonna lie, it was kind of a weird struggle to see everybody suddenly lean in to Juneteenth. But I highly recommend this piece by Annette Gordon-Reed, a historian, about growing up in Texas with these celebrations. At the end of the day, Juneteenth is a celebration. It’s wild that we don’t have a celebration about emancipation in this country. July 4th, independence, has always rung hollow, and so Juneteenth really takes on this kind of secondary…I don’t even wanna say secondary independence day, but it really is a day for gathering and for being together and for family. That’s what I return to this past week.

My great-great-great-grandmother was born enslaved in Natchez, Mississippi; she was buried in an Indian cemetery in Houston. My great-great-great-grandfather picked up arms himself and enlisted in the Union army in 1863 to compel his own freedom. My great-great-grandfather was born in 1968, three years after the war ended, and he lived til 1975. Just imagining what he’d seen in his lifetime…I said on IG, we’re now 7 generations deep on this soil, and Juneteenth has always been a celebration for us. I enjoyed reflecting with my family and barbecuing and just being joyful, because joy is an act of resistance. I highly recommend checking out my good friend Dr. Derrick White and Dr. Lou Moore’s podcast The Black Athlete, where they had Dr. Vanessa Holden on to talk more about the history of Juneteenth and, in the context of athletic teams and organizations, leaning in and going all in on Juneteenth in a corporate way as well. So, there you go.

Jessica: That was wonderful, thank you. I also think one of the great things about Juneteenth, one, that so many people learned about it just because they had it off [laughs] so they had to be like, what’s happening here? They’re not great, let’s say, about teaching that Texas had slavery at all, and this holiday in particular really brought that out and into the light in a way that was sort of remarkable.

Amira: That’s really great. The one last thing I’ll say is that I saw a few things, people saying, “What action are you gonna take on Juneteenth?” or using Juneteenth to recommit to action, a kind of day of service that Martin Luther King Day has become. I just want to remind everybody: do not do that! Juneteenth is celebrating not doing free labor anymore! It’s not a day of service, it’s not a day of action. It’s a day of joy, it’s a day of relaxation, it’s a day of celebration, right? Do not work…Whatever. Especially if you’re Black. Do not do shit on Juneteenth. Celebrating your existence and your ancestors and your family is what it’s about, so don’t in this kind of corporatization, commercialization of it, pick up your Juneteenth pie from Target – which they literally are selling – and think you’re compelled to do any service. That’s not the essence of the holiday.

Jessica: So, the NBA is trying to return to play in Orlando sometime soon. This past week, Commissioner Adam Silver was on ESPN talking about the return of sports when he said this: “We think that for the country it will be a respite from the enormous difficulties people are dealing with in their lives right now. And I also think in terms of the social justice issues, it will be an opportunity for NBA players and the greater community to draw attention to this issues, because the world’s attention will be on the NBA in Orlando, Florida, if we’re able to pull this off.” And when I saw this clip I immediately sent it to my co-hosts and said, can we please talk about this this week! Because we’re in this particular time unlike any of us have experienced before with the overlap of this pandemic that has caused radical changes in how we do basically anything that concerns more than three people, and the protesting against racial injustice that is taking place in all 50 states and multiple countries around the world.

So in the same breath, Silver said the NBA returning would be a “respite,” a distraction, a balm for what is happening in the world, but also a way to draw attention to what is happening in the world. So, which is it – and can it be both? When sports return, will they drown out the activism and organizing around racial injustice and, for that matter, the seriousness surrounding the pandemic? Or will sports serve as a vehicle through which athletes and coaches can talk about these things to a large audience? Additionally, we’ve talked on this show about athletes speaking up and out about racial injustice more broadly, but also specifically within sport. This week there was more of that, with some college football players challenging their coaches’ shitty racist politics, such as at Oklahoma State, and others questioning if they can trust their coaches when it comes to their health and COVID, such as at UCLA.

That all works now, but I wonder what this will mean once sports actually starts back up. Will the normal power dynamics that exist shift back into place and the silence of players follow? Will athletes who have been speaking up about racial injustice, especially white players, stop – and blame their silence on their focus on the game? I have all these questions on this, and the perfect person is here. Amira, what do you think about this?

Amira: Yeah, I mean, I love how you set it up, right? You can’t have it both ways. I think it’s a very interesting to have. I think that there is a lot of evidence to suggest that in this global pandemic we are well aware of sport really takes up space in society. Time, obviously money, but just time in terms of what we talk about and what we analyze, and I think that we’ve talked about it here, we’ve talked about it in conversation with Dr. Harry Edwards, etc, that in this moment part of the reason we’ve had space to talk about these protests or talk about other things is because sports is not taking up that space that it usually does. So I think there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that the absence of sport is reifying platforms to speak out. I understand the feeling like, oh, well when I’m playing again my platform will only grow because more eyes are on that.

But the other thing is that the system is right now, I feel, kind of ground to a halt – I’m literally picturing those, like, interlocking gears starting up again. And the thing about when the gears start up again and the system starts moving is that, yes, you have a platform, but now you have media coverage in a prescribed way, right? You have the 20 minutes before a game or after a game, right? You have all of this analysis about what happened on the court. You have the regular system moving that is giving you the platform that you’ve always had but maybe under this umbrella athletes who have demonstrated that they now feel more compelled to speak out, perhaps because they feel less precarious or more energized, whatever it is – maybe that will make it different, but other than that, to me, those gears starting is also power reasserting itself.

I think to me that instance is really emblematic of this moment. You still are going to have racist coaches, you still are going to have an outside power dynamic where they’re controlling playing time, where they’re controlling scholarships, where they’re controlling jobs at the professional level. We haven’t changed the inherently racist structure of a lot of these teams and so the idea that returning to play is only gonna expand platforms, I think, is really naive. I think that this withholding of their labor because everything’s ground to a halt has really allowed various things to be exposed and for platforms to arise in this moment. The more and more athletes like Kyrie and people who call into question what returning to play looks like, the more and more they’re seizing their labor force. We’re seeing this in terms of unionization, we’re seeing this return to the drawing board about CBAs, and I think that that is only come out of the absence of actually playing. So that’s kind of where I am about it, but I think it’s certainly a very interesting debate to have.

Jessica: Yeah, I mean I have so many things to say in response to that. I do wanna mention as far as the gears starting up again and what it will look like – Shireen recently did a hot take with Meg Linehan and Stephanie Yang about the NWSL’s Challenge Cup that’s coming up. One thing that I remember Meg talking about is that she’s not really sure what access she’ll have to players. We don’t even know what media, and therefore the platform itself, will actually look like on the other side of this. Of course, if you’re LeBron James it’s a different thing, but I do sort of wonder for players who are out there that maybe pre- and post-game isn’t a big thing for them normally, this is actually a bigger platform right now because, as you said, there’s an absence. So I was thinking about that.

I would like to mention – you talked about Kyrie – people who gave really good quotes about this. Lou Williams, he’s a Clippers guard, he said about the future when the NBA gets going, “In six weeks the world may need some healing. They may need us to be on the floor.” But, “If more black kids, more black adults, or any adults that’s dealing with police brutality are getting killed and we’re still outraged, I don’t know if it’s in our best interests to suit up because it looks like we don’t care. You know what I mean? It’s just a fine balance we’re trying to create.” I thought that was really interesting as far as what it looks like when the players suit up as far as racial injustice. I also think, what does that mean for COVID? Like, is this showing it’s not a big deal anymore when it’s clearly still a big deal and, again, affects disproportionately which communities?

And then I wanted to mention Stephen Jackson, a former NBA player; I think he played for 14 years. He’s been in the news a lot because he’s a close friend of George Floyd’s. This is what Stephen Jackson had to say: “I love the NBA, man. That’s my family. But now ain’t the time to be playing basketball, y’all. Now ain’t the time. Playing basketball is going to do one thing: take all the attention off the task at hand right now and what we fighting for. Everybody’s going to be worried about the playoffs, they’re going to have all that blasting all over the TV, and nobody’s going to be talking about getting justice for all these senseless murders by the police, and nobody’s going to be focused on the task at hand, bro.” So I mean, players are really talking about this, and they’re worried about what this will mean. Amira?

Amira: Yeah, I love that point Jessica, because you can already see the narratives of sport as this grand healing communal space where everybody’s coming together, all the narratives of unity. Sports is always so ready for that, and I think you nailed it, because I couldn’t even articulate it, but that is my fear, that people suiting up and going back on will send signals like, we’re all in this together, we’ve made it, here’s a wonderful fun distraction, COVID is over, racism is over, look at our multiracial team coming together to win. It’s ready-made to advance these narratives of unity that elide the struggles that are still happening on multiple fronts.

Jessica: Yeah, I agree. I wanted to go back to a point that Amira made before about power dynamics, especially in college sports, especially in college football. We talked about this on the show, but back in 2015 the Missouri football team boycotted – or, they threatened to boycott – a game, force the resignation of the president of Missouri after there were multiple racist incidents on campus and other students had already organized…There was already a student who was doing a hunger strike at the time, but it was really the football team coming together and saying “We’re not gonna play against BYU next weekend” that forced the hand of the university – they have that kind of power. And so one thing that’s been interesting is watching all these players speak up in this one moment. I love it, I want college athletes to feel empowered and to do that, because they do have power, but the real cynical part of me thinks that unless they’re going to boycott the actual playing, if they’re not gonna do it in season, then I’m not sure that really matters in the end. I think Chuba was a really good example of this. Amira, did you have anything else on that?

Amira: Yeah, I think one of the lessons from Mizzou, which…I think you’re absolutely right, it’s happening in season, it’s happening days before they’re supposed to play, a million dollars is on the line, right? It compelled all this action that Black students have been asking for for a year until they linked up with athletics and it got done in 48 hours. But the other thing that happened with that is that the coach stood by them, the coach affirmed their position, and what they quietly wrote in the contracts in the wake of that was that coaches could not stand with players in these moments anymore, right? I think that that’s really instructive so, if you wanna do more reading or if you’re interested, there is a history of athletic protest particularly in college football at the end of the 60s and I just did an interview for the Chronicle of Higher Ed where I go deeper into this, but one of the things I wanna highlight is that one of the things that happen as you start getting integration, you get into these leagues.

Basically, in the 60s there was maybe 1 or 2 Black athletes in all of these big white school powerhouse football teams. By the 70s, that number was like 20-30 and by the 80s of course 40% of players in the SEC were Black. You have a huge demographic shift, and right at the late 80s and early 70s a lot of these athletes started to protest, especially in 1969. You saw a boycott, you saw claims, you saw pamphlets, very similar to what you’re seeing now, and a lot of the points were even similar – hire Black coaching staff, right? Some of them overlap with the concerns of Black students who were non-athletes: hire more Black professors, put special scholarship aid for us, etc etc.

One of the things that I wanna draw attention to is that in the wake of these college protests by Black college athletes, quietly in January of 1973, the NCAA passed legislation that replaced four year athletic scholarships, making it a one-year renewable grant. So when we talk about the precarity of scholarships even not being fully guaranteed, we can look at this happening in 1973 on the heels of multiple efforts of protests by college athletes as one of the ways to see…When I talk about power reasserting itself, that’s what it looks like, right? It looks like systemically changing it so when you’re giving scholarship to somebody it’s on a one-year renewable contract. That shifts the power back to the coaching staff, back to the school. So now it’s much harder to mobilize if you can be easily dismissed. It’s much harder to mobilize if your scholarship’s not gonna be renewed. It’s much harder to mobilize when the NCAA currently has transfer rules if you’re gonna have to sit out if you transfer.

If part of getting a waiver to not sit out is saying you're leaving the school because of these issues, you need to get a letter from the school affirming your account, which means schools would be expected to provide a letter saying, yeah, we did treat them unfairly – that’s not gonna happen. This is what the structure looks like, which is why it’s so hard to sustain these protests at the college level. Then the other thing that happens is people graduate, they leave. I think that that’s kind of what I’m seeing in this moment when I’m thinking about that history of college protests, I’m looking and saying, what feels new about this? What feels new is it feels like it’s popping up all the way around, and I’m hoping it’s sustained. I think that what history compels us to do is watch the details, is watch for those moments where things are written in or legislated to slightly change in order to tip the balance of power again. I think that’s one of the places we need to keep our eye on.

Jessica: That’s all so interesting. So then let’s shift back to the professional level where players have a lot of power in different ways than collegiate athletes, but still, even when they’re using this platform they are playing, they have the platform, we see that that can even still be corrupted or fucked up or messed up – whatever the right wording is here. Shireen, you have a good example of this.

Shireen: I do, I’m very mad about this. I found out last night…I had a great day yesterday and, of course, I shouldn’t check Twitter half an hour before bedtime because inevitably Serie A, Italian professional soccer, is going to make me very angry in its antiblackness. What ended up happening is there’s a Serie A – we don’t talk a lot about Serie A on this show because every example we ever bring up is of racism…Literally, I think it’s the only time we’ve gone into detail about Serie A, except for Champs League. But my point is, is that Torino was playing Palermo yesterday, it was a 1-1 draw, and there was a defender for Torino, his name is Nicolas Nkoulou. After he scored he took a knee, and it’s a very profound thing. There was a club internal statement that goes out in the newsletter after the game; after the match he said that he thought immediately about his brother, Floyd.

Now, Nkoulou is a Cameroonian player who plays in Serie A, and it’s a beautiful thing to think that at one point UEFA used to fine the players for doing this for any political movement, but now they’re not. Just recently, I think about three weeks ago, they had said that they would definitely not be fining the players, there would be no financial penalty or whatnot. So, the photo was captured. The problem with the photo that whoever is working comms or the PR team at Torino…They captured a photo not just of him kneeling, but he’s kneeling what looks like in front of a white player who’s standing there looking at him. I don’t know who said white player is, don’t know why he couldn’t get the fuck out of the frame, or why the photographer couldn’t edit the frame, but what happened here is that the message that Nkoulou is trying to get out gets overshadowed by furiously, horribly racist imagery. He looks like he’s kneeling before this white guy, and you’re gonna tag that with #BlackLivesMatter? First of all, I’m so angry at the photo editor. How is this okay? And do you know why this isn’t okay? This is manipulation.

In fairness, Professor Silke Maria, who has been on the show before, she replied with “Remember the banana incident?” The monkey incident. “This is by design.” So they know, because there was a reaction to it. They could’ve taken it and done it better, but the problem is clearly everybody working in Torino and their comms team, the PR team, there’s not a BIPOC person…The acronym is Europe is BAME – Black, Asian, Middle Eastern – there’s nobody there working to be able to say this is problematic. It was even worse when all of this erupted last night, they doubled down again and changed the heading instead of “Black Lives Matter,” they just took a quote from the player. But the problem is that you don’t see what the photograph was problematic, you don’t see what the imagery is doing, you don’t see how you’re being unhelpful in posting something like this.

That’s my problem, is that I want the movement of the players and their actions and their sincerity to be showcased, but it’s distracted when you’ve got corollary people that are completely fucking up all the time. That makes me really mad, but that also points down to, very much, we know in sports that media is complicit. Media is 100% complicit. I’m just really quickly going to read you something that a friend of mine, his name is Jesse Wente, he's an Indigenous writer. He wrote on the power of media…Sorry, he was on a radio interview on Metro Morning, an incredibly popular radio show in Toronto. What he said was, “Media in both the US and Canada are also creations from within colonial states. While they may confront power occasionally, they tend to uphold the underpinnings of those states – namely, capitalism and white supremacy, which makes them ill-equipped or unwilling to appropriately cover movements that directly challenge those things, which we are seeing now.” Jesse Wente said this. And that applies to Europe as well, that 100% applies.

The lens through which they look…This is why I’m always screaming about having…I don’t even like the word “diverse,” I hate that word now, because diversity often translates to white women. I want racialized people working in sports media and I want them on comms teams because this is offensive and it just needs to be undone completely. Wow, that became a burn pile real fast didn't it?

Jessica: I think that what we’ve landed on, right, is that the system itself is messed up in so many ways, and it’s incredibly powerful, and so as soon as the system as Amira said shifts back into gear and gets going we have a real fear that the media will mess this up, the photo editors will mess this up, the college athletic system will go back into place and everyone will get silenced – all these things will just return to normal. So one thing that we're seeing is some athletes have decided to just step outside the system to say the athletic system is not the place where I’m going to do this work. Shireen, do you wanna talk to us a little bit about this?

Shireen: A beautiful example of somebody who’s doing this is Maya Moore, and we’ve talked about it on the show in a way that’s…Her literally stepping away from the court where she was hugely successful and legendary in order to do other stuff is incredibly important, literally trying to dismantle the racial injustice against Black prisoners, and she’s helped out people that have been victims of white supremacy and the justice system. Maya Moore is literally creating a blueprint for how athletes can do this, and that just translates perfectly into the interview I have with Renee Montgomery of the Atlanta Dream, the point guard, who just days ago announced that she is stepping away from the sport for a year in order to focus her attention solely on Black Lives Matter while building up her community in Atlanta.

Hi flamethrowers, Shireen here. I’m so honored and excited to have an incredible athlete activist on the show with me today: Renee Montgomery, #21 of the Atlanta Dream. I think all of you know Renee, especially from her recent publication in The Players’ Tribune, though I’ll tell you a bit more. Renee was born in West Virginia and she is, as mentioned, part of the Atlanta Dream of the WNBA. She was drafted 4th overall in the draft class of 2009 to the Minnesota Lynx. In addition to being a UConn Huskies alumni – she was won national championships with them, and with the Lynx in 2015, 2017. She also won three championships during her high school year, in addition to leading in her sophomore year the under 20 US national team at the FIBA championships in Mexico City.

She’s been named an All Star in 2012, as well as sixth woman of the year in 2015 during her tenure with the WNBA, and has broken countless records including – this is so cool – the most three pointers in a half, she absolutely nailed save of them, and has now made a really important announcement that we will talk about on the show, in addition to the many things she’s accomplished on the court. One of the most formidable is probably her life as a philanthropist and athlete activist, in addition to the broadcast work she does and the hosting, she’s also an incredible community organizer and activist. Renee, thank you so much for being on Burn It All Down.

Renee: Thank you for having me.

Shireen: Okay, so can you tell me a little bit about, for those that hand’t caught your piece in The Players’ Tribune – and I repeat, you need to go and read that – can you tell us a little bit about what you wrote and announced to the world?

Renee: Yeah, so I announced to the world that I will be opting out of this WNBA season, this 2020 season, and the reason I was opting out was because I felt like there was a lot of work that needed to be done in the communities, and I feel like there’s only this moment once in a lifetime, and right now we have a beautiful moment happening, and we have to keep pushing that moment forward. I felt like I was better suited to be here in Atlanta, and so I just talked about my family background, I talked about growing up in a predominantly white area, going to a predominantly white school. I just talk about the different things that make me who I am, which brought me to this decision.

Shireen: That’s incredible. What was the response from your teammates, because I know you said you consulted with your family – your mom sounds like the wisest person, with the gems she’s dropping. What were your teammates’ reactions? Because I know you also said you had consulted your former coach, Geno Auriemma, and he talked you through it and questioned and reaffirmed your decision. What about your teammates?

Renee: Yeah, my teammates were supportive in a sense that I didn’t expect. They talked to me like were were still teammates, and to me that’s all I wanted, so…They was like, “Look, you handle things down there in the A, we got it over here in the bubble!” You know, it was that kind of tone. They were just like no, do your thing, we get it, and we’re gonna handle stuff over here, we gotchu, you know? So that made me feel even better about my decision.

Shireen: I mean, the things you've accomplished with the Dream and the way that you’re going ahead, and you’re so successful in your career – do you think that that held you back at all? I’m not saying that if someone’s constantly losing then they should leave it and go do something else, both things are so important and impactful and meaningful. Did that make it harder for you?

Renee: Oh gosh. It didn’t necessarily make it harder for me. It was interesting, because when people would always ask me, like, are you excited for the season, what’s the talk? I had to realize that that wasn’t what I was excited about. What I was excited about was my event that was yesterday, but at that time it was upcoming, it was my Juneteenth pop-up block party. So then I started realizing, I’m not even thinking about basketball. Just that realization for me, it made it easier, in that aspect, because I knew where my mind and heart was.

Shireen: And why do you feel like – this is a question that Jessica on our team wanted to ask you – why do you feel like this moment is different than, let’s just say 2016, when you were on the Lynx and Philando Castile was murdered. Why do you feel things are different at this point?

Renee: Because in 2016 the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter was offensive, you know? You fast forward to 2020 and it's everywhere. It’s different because when you look out at the protests you can see some protests are 50/50 Black and then others, some there’s more races than the Black people at the protest. That’s unbelievable, that’s not normal, that’s new. You see nationwide protests, global protests – other countries are marching for this. Other countries are marching so that Black people can have equal rights in America. That’s unbelievable. So if anybody wants to know what's different, that’s what’s different. This is no longer just a Black issue, this is an everybody issue.

Shireen: Yeah, I think that’s really really important to understand and to remember. Do you have a specific way that you’re intending to move forward with this? Is is through your own foundation, is that how you’re going to proceed? Because you do connect already with communities, grassroots community organizations in Atlanta. Are you going to continue doing that?

Renee: Yeah, that’s how I wanna try to continue this educational piece and educational talking, conversation. It is gonna be my foundation, and even just speaking engagements, just because right now I’m jobless, so speaking engagements would be welcome, but also keeping the conversation going. The point is to educate. Something close to me is financial literacy, because we all know, we’ve seen the ESPN 30 For 30 Broke. There’s too many minority millionaires that go broke. The problem is it’s because they don’t know how to handle finances. That’s not taught in schools so if it’s not taught in school a lot of Black families haven’t taught it at home, so we gotta figure out a way to try to educate, get an educational piece for financial literacy starting younger. And then, you know, there’s the voting coming up, there's an election in November. Getting young people ready, excited about voting, getting some Obama numbers like we had.

We all know in Obama’s year it was a whole thing to vote – if you didn’t vote, people were like, “What are you doing, man!? You better go vote!” You know? We need to bring it back to that type of vibe where the standard, the norm is to vote. I’ve voted since I could legally vote. My parents…It was never an option, you know? That was what we did and that’s what I mean. We need to make it start to be part of the culture, part of just the norm. Also, my first experience with voting was I voted for President Obama, his first run, and I was really excited because Coach Auriemma – and it all comes back to that again, UConn – but Coach Auriemma had had a party whenever we found out that Obama was elected. It was a great experience, like, that's my first memory that I associate with voting, because I felt like, wow, the first time I voted I voted for Obama and Obama won. From then on out it was kind of this thing that for sure I’m doing it, and I wanna be a part.

Shireen: That’s so important, and working with youth in your community. In your piece you said you’ll be back, it’s not like you’re leaving completely and, like you said, your teammates are gonna hold down the fort. But are there parts of you that can use basketball also while you’ve taken a step away from the WNBA, you can use all your skill and talent in basketball to combine educational programs because, you know, one way to communicate with people is through ball. Is that something that you’ve thought about?

Renee: Definitely. I think that’s something that basketball has helped blossom and grow is my ability to communicate. I’ve learned to communicate at a high level because when you’re playing sports you have to learn how to communicate in the best way possible but the quickest way possible as well, because then you don’t have a lot of time, a lot of things are moving fast. So I think that me being a communicator and me being a leader in basketball, I feel like I can take those things and just carry it off the court. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell people, I’m trying to get some wins off the court, because that’s my mindset. I’m a competitive person, so even though I’m leaving the court I’m still going to be thinking of ways, how can I make a change? I wanna make a big wave, I wanna be the player that makes a big wave. Wouldn’t it be cool if everybody was competing to see how much positive change they could cause? So, I don’t know, I wanna get those vibes going.

Shireen: Who are some of the people or athlete activists, because now there's a term for it that wasn’t necessarily there before, but as an athlete activist or philanthropist because on your website it says you consider yourself a philanthropist, which I love as well – who did you look up to, or did you learn this on the fly, or was it communities you were surrounded by?

Renee: Yeah, you know, I would love to say that I was so well-educated before on this matter but I wasn’t. I really wasn’t. Now I’m trying to educate myself the best way possible by reaching out to people that I know already, ie my parents, or even just people in the community. A lot of state representatives have reached out to me now, you know, just people that they know where I’m trying to go and they wanna help me get there. So yeah, this has kind of been on the fly in a sense. I’ve always had a certain moral compass in the sense that I was raised in the church. Anybody knows that church people, it’s the we before the me. You don’t give and expect a return. Those types of things, I learned that in the church. That’s kind of the mind frame, how my mind was framed.

Shireen: You mentioned as well in the piece – this is something I want to talk to you about – you talk about how you were surrounded with a lot of beautiful Black culture growing up, your mom had lived in Detroit during the riots of ’67, and she has lived experienced in this actual thing, and it’s something we may not realize that our parents get through something it’ll come down to us. You talked a little bit about that, that you’re outraged and people should be outraged, and what happened to your mom shouldn’t be happening to you. How do you deal with that, how do you channel that energy?

Renee: You know, I channel that energy by focusing all my energy towards it. That’s exactly why I felt that at this very moment in time right now I can’t do both, I can’t go play basketball and try to focus on this because I’m a person that I like to be locked in and focused. For basketball it just takes so much of your time, you know, and that’s why I said if I’m out and about doing speaking engagements those are one-off deals, but basketball, three games a week, not including practice, then you’ve got film sessions – and I'm the type of player that I like to be prepared, so I do extra film on top of the film that’s already required. So where will be the time for me personally to do the things I wanna do? So that's just me knowing myself and knowing that I need to step aside this season and see what I can get going right now.

Shireen: And on that note as well, this is another question that Jessica had, was you talked about the idea that some players will have a bigger impact by participating in sport and not stepping away from it, and the other ones would be able to focus, like you just said, 100% of your attention on this cause. But in addition to why you wouldn’t consider postgame pressers or scrums or stuff like that as platform, I love though how you said there's many different ways to the one thing. When did you start thinking about this? How did you come to this realization?

Renee: I would say about three weeks ago, first of all on May 25th when George Floyd was murdered, I mean, I feel like that had to have opened up the world’s eyes. That caused a global domino effect, it was that bad. I’ve never seen the whole thing, I can’t watch it, but that was the first moment where I’m like, wow, this is bad. We have to do something. That was the first “we have to do something about this.” Then once I talked to my mom and realized it was generational I started to tell them probably a week later like, I don’t know about the season this year, I feel like right now is the time to do something, I just don’t know if basketball is it for me this year, right now I feel like I need to do something else.

I had already been telling them that, so I would say since about three weeks ago I had really started to feel this pull towards something else, and then about four days ago I talked to my head coach about everything I was thinking and feeling and that I’m probably not gonna play. She was like, as a coach this sucks but as a human, you know, I get it. She was like, I get it and I commend you for it. I think just having the affirmation, the confirmation from my coach, my parents and my teammates, that was what…And then I talked to my coach from UConn the day before, and I was just like, I’m gonna do it. I’m gonna do it and whatever happens, happens.

Shireen: Yeah, that’s absolutely incredible. A question…You’ve played overseas, Lithuania…You were talking about how it became a global domino effect, the murder of George Floyd caught attention, caught the world by storm. It’s not as if he was the first Black person to be killed by the police, we know this is a systemic problem, but I’m wondering about those players you’ve played with overseas, whether it was Poland, Israel, or Russia – have they reached out to you too?

Renee: You know, I would probably be lying if I said no. I really don’t know, and this is to say that I haven’t been able to check a lot of my messages [Shireen laughs] with the media frenzy in sense that I’m trying to keep up with it. So I haven’t kept up maybe more so with my messages, trying to keep up with this moment, but I keep saying it time and time again: moments equal momentum, so I would be remiss to not give this moment the attention it needed, and I will be responding to everybody’s texts and messages. But I honestly haven’t had a chance to dive into that yet.

Shireen: Because your decision was very very recent. Our listeners will hear this on Tuesday most likely, but it would be less than a week since you announced this, so you must be getting a lot of media requests and a lot of texts and stuff like this. You said that the responses have been very very positive. Why weren’t you expecting that, because you say you were surprised?

Renee: Yeah, because I had seen how some of the conversations were going when this discussion came up before in regards to NBA players and different things of that nature, and just how people saw it, you know? Some people, they’re fans, so they want sports, they don’t wanna hear about athletes that don’t wanna play sports, you know? I’ve seen that, I’ve seen the tweets, I’ve seen the sentiments, so I felt that people probably just felt one way about it or the other, and so me saying that I’m opting out, well, the people that didn’t like that idea, they’re not gonna like me or me doing it, so that’s kind of where I had that apprehension.

Shireen: A quick question, I usually like to ask this of all the basketball players we have, I’m just gonna change the tone a little bit. Your favorite shoes, Renee, your favorite kicks?

Renee: Favorite shoes? I’ll have to say Vans. 

Shireen: Okay. To play in, or just to wear?

Renee: Oh, to wear. To play in, I’ll only play in Kobes.

Shireen: Okay. [laughs]

Renee: To play, yeah, that’s Kobes.

Shireen: Okay. Can you tell me what you’re reading right now?

Renee: Ooh, I just read Girl, Wash Your Face by Rachel Hollis. Love it, love it, love it.

Shireen: Okay, I’m gonna have to check that out. The other thing I asked you initially, your favorite foods are pasta and tacos. Do you have a specific place that you love going so if any of our listeners ever visit Atlanta or they’re in Atlanta they can check out these places?

Renee: Yes, Sabores, in Mableton, Georgia, it’s like, from scratch, Caribbean-style food, different foods – I can’t do it enough justice to tell you [Shireen laughs] – some stuff, let me just say, this is why they pop in my mind right away, because I’m very particular about how I eat. Some stuff I don’t even like to try, and my fiancé was like, “You have to try it!” So I tried it, and it was delicious. Stuff I thought I didn’t like, I like at Sabores.

Shireen: Okay. The last thing that I was gonna ask, just flashing into my head. Our listeners are gonna wanna know how to amplify and support your work. Can you please tell us all how can we do that? What do we do? 

Renee: Absolutely. Join in on the cause by following me, @rmfnonprofit (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook.) Join on the conversation; a lot of times keeping the conversation going involves public support. If publications know that when they post something about me it’s gonna get a lot of retweets, a lot of likes, then they’ll continue to post, they’ll continue to post the issue. So just a simple retweet, a simple like. And then I have a gofundme on my page where I’m using that money for different things and different initiatives we’re doing here. Everyone knows to just do any events it costs money, so I plan on doing events from now until next season, obviously, so that’s gonna be a running gofundme just to go fund these initiatives that I’m trying to do in Atlanta and nationwide.

Shireen: And your website address is…

Renee: RMF21.org, and that’s ReneeMontgomeryFoundation.org.

Shireen: Okay, that’s awesome, thank you so much. Where can we find you on Twitter? 

Renee: You can find me on Twitter and Instagram @rmfnonprofit for my foundation, and then for me personally it’s @reneem_ and on Instagram it’s @itsreneem.

Shireen: You’re such an inspiration and we’re so excited for you and what this journey is, whatever happens, we’re cheering for you. Absolutely I’m cheering for you anyways because I completely stan UConn and I always have and I always will, so there’s an extra reason. [laughter]

Renee: Love it.

Shireen: But anyways, you are welcome on Burn It All Down anytime if you ever wanna jump back on and talk about how your journey’s going. We would love to have you. One thing that I just wanted to say, people think that you’re leaving your team but the way you looked at it, you alluded to Maya Moore, you’re joining her team. I felt that was so profound; we can all be a team in a different sense if we commit to the cause.

Renee: Thank you, I appreciate that. And listen, love the podcast – burn it all down! That’s what we gotta do, we gotta burn down systematic racism, all aspects of it. So I’m here for it. Thank you guys for having me.

Jessica: Now it’s time for everyone’s favorite segment that we like to call the burn pile, where we pile up all the things we’ve hated this week in sports and set them aflame, and I will say once again that I’m amazed how much there is still in sports despite the fact that there’s almost no sports happening. I’m gonna get us started today. This week, the US Tennis Association, the USTA, announced that they will hold the US Open this year. It will take place in New York at the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center on its original dates, August 31st to September 13th. There will be no spectators, no media, and no line judges – they will use electronic line calling instead. When they originally announced it they said there will be no singles qualifying; men's and women’s draws will be reduced from 64 to 32 teams and mixed doubles, junior and wheelchair competitions are gone completely.

Tennis is an expensive sport to play, and participating in a Grand Slam can be make or break for players. Cale Hammond wrote for tennis.com, “All in all, the cancellation and shrinkage of just the qualifying and doubles will result in a loss of 256 qualifying entries and 64 doubles teams. Needless to say, many lower ranked players struggling to earn a living on the exceedingly challenging pro tours are displeased and discouraged.” The USTA has said that it will give $3.3 million to each of the men’s and women’s tours to distribute to players who will miss out on participating in singles qualifying or in a full 64 team doubles draw. But this was all particularly painful for wheelchair athletes. Dylan Alcott, who plays wheelchair tennis, took to Twitter to voice his anger over the decision to cut wheelchair tennis altogether. Alcott won the 2015 and 2018 wheelchair singles titles at the US Open, and is the reigning doubles champion. I’m gonna read from his tweets: “Just got announced that the US Open will go ahead WITHOUT wheelchair tennis.. Players weren’t consulted. I thought I did enough to qualify - 2x champion, number 1 in the world. But unfortunately I missed the only thing that mattered, being able to walk. Disgusting discrimination.”

“And for sure there are far more important things going on in the world, but that choice should’ve been up TO ME. It is blatant discrimination for able bodied people to decide on my behalf what i do with my LIFE AND CAREER just because I am disabled. Not good enough @usopen.” His words, they might’ve worked. Friday, the USTA announced they handled the cutting of wheelchair tennis poorly. According to one player, the USTA laid out three possible options moving forward: cancel the 2020 competition but have $150,000 in total compensation for wheelchair athletes; hold the US Open wheelchair matches in Orlando, Florida, where the USTA national campus is; or hold the competition in Flushing Meadows in New York during the US Open but with a 5% reduction in compensation from 2019, which was $325,000. I mean, that’s good, right? They should do something. But something should’ve been done in the beginning from the jump. I want to burn the fact that nobody apparently considered wheelchair athletes at all in their COVID planning for the US Open. So, burn.

All: Burn.

Jessica: Amira, what do you wanna torch?

Amira: Yeah, so I want to burn so much in college football, which is not a surprise, but particularly I wanna burn their continuing fumbling their response to COVID. Colleges are still across the country trying to figure out what the hell to do about going back, and one of the main motivators of schools rushing to go back is because they really don’t wanna lose that football money. Here at Penn State they did a survey of season ticket holders at Beaver Stadium which fits 110,000 people, and overwhelmingly, like, 80% of season ticket holders said they were still planning on going to games. So, it’s ridiculous. And because of that what we’re seeing is many schools returning to “voluntary workouts.”

Ohio State required its football players to sign a waiver – very similar to the one the administration attempted to have people sign to go to a stupid campaign rally that was a disaster. Anyways, this waiver calls on athletes to say they “pledge to take responsibility for my own health and help stop the spread of COVID.” It warns the athletes that, “Although the university is following the guidelines by the CDC, they understand that they’ll never be completely shielded from all the risk of illnesses.” The reason why schools like Ohio State are having players sign these waivers is because what we’re seeing around the country is nothing short of a sacrifice of Black labor as bait to see what happens when we get people back playing voluntary workouts and if they’re going to get COVID. The answer, resoundingly, is that they will.

Just this week at the University of Texas they announced 13 players tested positive – that’s one week after they came back for voluntary workouts. Also in Texas, University of Houston had to suspend voluntary workouts after, again, one week, because 6 athletes tested positive for coronavirus. Clemson had 28 student athletes test positive for coronavirus this week; 23 of them play football. At least 30 players at LSU are being quarantined due to a COVID outbreak; we have no idea yet how many of those tested positive or not, but at least 30 are being quarantined. Kansas State has shut down football workouts because 14 of their athletes came back with positive tests. Both Alabama and Auburn have dealt with positive tests.

This is ridiculous. This is ridiculous. I return again to that Gundy quote – “Who cares, they’re 18, 19, 20 year olds. They’re gonna get COVID but they're gonna be fine, and we need money to go through the state of Oklahoma.” That’s what this is. This is disgusting! Did you hear the numbers I just said?! Across the country, within a week or two weeks of doing “voluntary” workouts – which are anything but voluntary – they're contracting COVID! They’re contracting COVID and nobody gives a damn because they just need their system to gear into action and work on the backs of these students! It’s not enough that you’re hurting their brains, it’s not enough that you’re shortchanging their education, it’s not enough that you render them disposable in any other way already? This is irresponsible. It’s irresponsible. Shut it down, cancel the season already, just do it. Burn.

All: Burn.

Jessica: Shireen, what are you burning?

Shireen: I’m going to offer a quick trigger warning for everybody listening because some of the details of this lawsuit are very distressing. Just a couple of days ago Dan Carcillo, who is a former CHL…CHL is the Canadian Hockey League, and for those that don't know, under its umbrella there are three member organizations: the WHL, Western Hockey League, the Ontario Hockey League, and Quebec Major Junior Hockey League – those are called the minors, essentially, right? So Dan Carcillo is a very outspoken player who has talked about things like unlearning racism and homophobia, and does a lot of teaching online and has become a really good ally for different communities within hockey. He and Garrett Taylor who also played in the Canadian Hockey League, he played in the Western Hockey League. They filed a class action lawsuit against the CHL, and they both played 2008-2010.

The details are really really disturbing, they’re alleging abuse on many different levels. Rick Westhead of TSN, a colleague of mine, has done some incredible reporting on this. Some of the stuff that he reported was they suffered “almost constant abuse for the entire 2002-03 season.” So, they played for a while and at the time this happened the young men were like, 16-17 years old, they’re not even legal adults in some cases. The level of abuse is quite staggering. For example, rookies were hit on bare buttocks with a sawed-off goalie stick, and they’d have welts and sores. Things like, they couldn’t sit down…And they were still attending local high school classes, because what happens is when you play for a minor team you stay in someone’s house and then you go to a local high school to finish. Things like during showers rookies were required to sit in the middle of the shower room naked while other players urinated, spat saliva and tobacco chew on them.

There’s a 46-page statement, and it’s quoted to say, “At least once, the head coach walked into the shower room while this was occurring, laughed and walked out.” I’m quoting directly from Rick Westhead’s piece on TSN. It goes on and on, it’s quite…I had the same visceral reaction when I read this. The point is that the system of abuse…We talk about the misogyny, about the rampant sexism and the machismo and the toxic masculinity here – this is very much a part of that system.

Now, speaking out against this is very difficult because it can retraumatize and trigger a lot of things, but also to know that men out there who have been abused, hockey players who have suffered and suffered in silence because the culture of toxic masculinity is to be a not say anything, “man up, it’s not a big deal.” I’m sorry, getting hit with a sawed-off goalie stick is a big deal. It is abuse any way you cut it, and it’s abuse of minors. I hope everybody named in this suit is held to the highest account. Our solidarity and support and love goes out to the survivors of abuse, many of whom have not come forward. The extent of what damages are being sought are not listed, they’re not made public, but we will keep on this story for you. I just wanted to say the systems of toxic masculinity in the CHL specifically and any other abhorrent hockey system, I want to burn it down. Burn.

All: Burn.

Jessica: After all that burning it’s time to celebrate some remarkable women in sports this week with our badass women of the week segment. Rest in peace to 16-year-old French climber Luce Douady who died this week. She won her first Youth World Championships title at last year’s competition in Arco, Italy. Also, Vicki Wood, a pioneer in auto racing, passed away at the age of 101 earlier this month. She was the first woman to compete in NASCAR events and she set so many speed records that she was nicknamed “the fastest woman in racing.”

Now, our honorable mentions. The 2020 Sports Humanitarian Awards include the Stuart Scott ENSPIRE Awards. This year’s ENSPIRE honorees include the WNBA and the WNBPA “for their groundbreaking, eight-year collective bargaining agreement that charts a new course for women's professional sports” and human rights activist Maryam Shojaei “for her work to lift the ban on women attending soccer matches in Iran.”

Last week, Noor Abukaram, the high school student in Ohio who was disqualified from her cross country race because she was wearing a hijab, testified before the Ohio Senate advocating for a bill that will allow student religious expression in extracurricular activities. The bill passed out of committee and will move to a vote by the full Senate soon.

Tyasha Harris of the South Carolina Gamecocks wins the Roy F Kramer Athlete of the Year award just ahead of beginning her WNBA career with the Dallas Wings.

Congratulations to Roxanna Scott for being named managing editor for sports at USA Today. Her resume is extremely impressive: Scott is former president of the Association for Women in Sports Media. She is the former assistant managing editor for USA TODAY Sports and managing editor of Golfweek. Scott directed coverage of six Olympic Games at the newspaper. Okay, can I get a drumroll, please?

[drumroll]

Our badass woman of the week is Anna Cockrell, the defending NCAA Champion in the 400m hurdles, who sent a letter to USC’s Athletics Director Mike Bohn on behalf of USC’s Black student athletes and allies, which have come together to form a new organization called the UBSAA: the United Black Student-Athletes Association. [clapping] In the statement, Cockrell and the UBSAA ask Bohn to state that Black Lives Matter, make a promise that no retaliation for public statements from student-athletes, include student-athletes in discussions regarding COVID-19 and return to campus, and commit to seeking a diverse applicant pool in considering Black candidates for open positions, as part of a much larger list of asks. It’s always amazing to see Black athletes, especially Black female athletes, pushing their universities to do and be better.

Okay, we’ve reached this fun part of the show. What’s good, y’all? I do want to say – I’m just going to jump in – Kinsey Clarke, who’s the producer of the show, she has a what’s good this week. She has put in an application to adopt a senior dog, and we’re very excited for her. If she gets her little dog she’s gonna name her Scarlett, which is such a lovely name. So that’s good in Kinsey’s world. Around here, my house, same old same old I kind of feel. But I did make this amazing strawberry/blueberry pie yesterday, and it turned out so well. I always have trouble with pie crusts – this is my baking enemy – so, I have a friend Martha, bless you, Martha, who is much better at all this than I am, so she’s given me a ton of tips. I got myself a metal pie plate, which is supposed to be better than glass. I made sure not to pull at all while I was putting the dough in the plate, and I weighted it down with a ton of sugar. Like, I filled the pie plate with sugar while I was baking the crust, and it worked! I’m so, so excited about this. The pie was amazing. Watermelon’s in season, which is always good for me, so I’m excited about that. Shireen, what’s good with you? 

Shireen: I have a lot, as usual. First of all, Premier League is back. Yay! I’m so excited. But I would be happy if I wasn’t a fucking Arsenal fan. But yes, two matches this week, and I’ve been commiserating with fellow gunners on Twitter. What a disaster that team is! Oh my gosh, Arteta, what are you doing?! Luckily for us, many of us also support the women’s side who have legitimacy and merit on the pitch! Sorry…I’ve missed it so much, and I get back and 20 minutes into it I’m like, this is garbage! Which is so true to being an Arsenal fan. Anyways, on a happier note, the women’s football–

Jessica: I was gonna say, is this “good?” Is this your good, Shireen?

Shireen: It’s good! I have so much to burn this week that I was like, I can’t burn Arsenal. So it’s good, it’s good that they’re back. I’m mad at them, but I also love them, so the constant distress of football I missed. So women’s football is coming back. We have the women’s Champ League schedule announced, it will be towards the end of August. I did want to say, I was really happy to see friend of the show Dr. Courtney Szto in The Hockey News, in a profile. She does not like media at all, but I’m so excited for her because I love that she’s in media. She’s doing this incredible anti-racism Q&A because she and the other people co-wrote a policy paper for hockey federations all over. It’s incredible, please register for that. It’s on June 29th.

I went hiking/walking voluntarily yesterday and it was wonderful. I’ve been making shortbread – it’s very very easy, and I’m excited about it. So I make two things: I make banana chocolate chip muffins and I make shortbread, and they’re very good. I just wanted to share some fun news from me: I’ve signed on to do some work with TSN, the sports network in Canada, and so I will be appearing there from time to time. Just written to start, and then we’ll see what happens, so I’m very excited about that. There’s a lot of things I hope to do while I’m there and there’s a lot of things I hope to share while I’m there and I’m proud to be part of that and I hope to implement some change.

Jessica: That’s great. Amira, what’s good with you?

Amira: Yeah, so I was off the pod for a few weeks because we packed three kids and a dog into our car and took the 23 hour drive down to Texas to find grandparents, finally. It was glorious, it was absolutely glorious. We surprised my sister for her 30th birthday, I got to see my nieces. It was just so rejuvenating to be home, it was lovely, the weather was lovely. They definitely don’t care about COVID in Texas, that was not exciting! But we mostly stayed in the backyard and grilled and were basically together, and I loved that. The one sad thing about Texas is that my dad wasn’t there; my dad’s a trucker and has still been running routes across this country in the midst of the pandemic, but I wanted to shout him out because it’s not only father’s day but it is his birthday as well. So despite him being a Cowboys fan, he’s why I’m so emotional, he’s where I get my nose, and so I love you, feliz cumple, I hope your day is amazing.

The other thing that’s good is me finding the joy in Juneteenth. It’s no secret I’ve drunk the Peloton Kool Aid…I said the silver lining of the corporate response to Juneteenth is that they assembled the Black Peloton avengers. It was dope, because they’re just all so dope. There was a great Black Pride ride, they had a few Juneteenth rides, and Chelsea, Chelsea Chelsea Dr. Chelsea Jackson Roberts is the only person who can get me to sit still and do meditation or even pretend to attempt to do yoga – and her playlists, my goodness! Her Juneteenth playlist was literally life-affirming. It was glorious, and I just felt so seen and so rejuvenated by that.

The other thing that was wonderful, I don’t know if anybody has checked out the New York Times’ FREEDOM IS IN THE CLAIMING spread for Juneteenth. Aesthetically it’s something you have to see, because it’s a collection of pictures and words around…But I wanted to shout out Patricia Smith’s poem for it, and if you haven’t read it please, please go read it. Then re-read it again. And then go back and read just the last word of each sentence because there’s another poem even within that. I just wanna close by reading a few words of the poem that, again, do not do it justice. Go read it for yourself. But these words spoke to me and really helped me find the joy in the day. She says, at one part of the poem,

“See how we push on as enigma, the free out loud, the audaciously unleashed, how slyly we scan the sky— all that wet voltage and scatters of furious star—to realize that we are the recipients of an ancient grace. No, we didn’t begin to live when, on the 19th June day of that awkward, ordinary spring—with no joy, in a monotone still flecked with deceit—Seems you and these others are free. That moment did not begin our breath. Our truths— the ones we’d been birthed with—had already met reckoning in the fields as we muttered tangled nouns of home. We reveled in black from there to now, our rampant hue and nap, the unbridled breath that resides in the rafters, from then to here, everything we are is the stuff of astounding.”

Later, at the end of the piece, she says,

“Only those feigning blindness fail to see the body of work we are, and the work of body we have done. Everything is what it is because of us. It is misunderstanding to believe that free fell upon us like a blessing, that it was granted by a signature and an abruptly opened door. Listen to the thousand ways to say black out loud. Hear a whole people celebrate their free and fragile lives, then find your own place inside that song. Make the singing matter.”

Jessica: That’s it for this week’s episode, thank you all for joining us. This show is produced by Kinsey Clarke; Shelby Weldon does our social media, episodes transcripts. You can find Burn It All Down on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. If you wanna subscribe to Burn It All Down, you can do so on Apple Podcasts, Soundcloud, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play and TuneIn. For more information about the show and links and transcripts for each episode, check out our website: burnitalldownpod.com. You can also email us from the site to give us feedback – we love hearing from you all.

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Shelby Weldon