Episode 186: The Best Of Burn It All Down 2020, Part 1
For the next two weeks we’re revisiting some of the best moments from the past year on Burn It All Down. First, we’re listening back to three of our favorite 2020 segments. We start back in June with Episode 164, when Jessica, Amira, and Shireen talked about athlete activism and the return of sports. [02:12] Then we’ll turn to September’s Episode 172, in which Lindsay, Brenda, Shireen, Amira, and Jessica discussed many of the ways in which climate change and its catastrophic effects are affecting how sports are practiced and played throughout the world. [26:33] And, finally, from November’s Episode 178: Amira, Jessica, Brenda, and Shireen tell each other some sports stories that should bring a smile to your face. [41:52]
This episode was produced by Martin Kessler. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist. Burn It All Down is a member of the Blue Wire podcast network.
Submit your Blue Wire Hustle application here: http://bwhustle.com/join
Transcript
Brenda: Welcome to Burn It All Down, the feminist sports podcast you need. It’s Brenda here – hi, flamethrowers! – wanting to wish you a happy holiday and new year. As is tradition on this podcast, at the end of the year we have a best-of segment episode, which is the one you’re listening to now. For the year in review, check out last week’s episode 185. Also, look for the best-of interviews on episode 187 for next week. On this one there’s gonna be just a brief intro from Amira, Jessica and myself, to the segments that we’ve selected as our favorites from this year. That’s gonna be episodes on athlete activism, climate change, and also an episode on our most joyous moments in sport. I think everyone is okay with seeing an end to 2020, but it’s nice to remember that not always lost, and even in a global pandemic lots of good things political and otherwise happened. So I hope you enjoy the segments that we found most compelling from this year.
Jessica: Hi, y’all. Jessica here. This segment is from episode 164, which we recorded in mid-June. In it Amira, Shireen and I talk about athlete activism and the return of sports. This was, if you can remember that far back, just before most sports returned. We discussed and speculated about what we thought would happen to the activism and organizing we’d seen athletes do for months up to that point, once sports and the playing of sports took center stage again. It’s fun to listen back now and to think about what we got right and what we got wrong – if we got anything wrong – and to continue considering the future of athlete activism as we enter 2021.
Jessica: 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. 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 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 now 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, I’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 against. I understand the feeling like, oh, well when I’m playing again my platform only grows 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 into 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 football 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.
But 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 a 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 team – 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 was 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 said 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, on the PR team, there’s not a BIPOC person…The acronym is Europe is BAME – Black, Asian, Middle Eastern – there’s nobody there of color working there 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 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.
Amira: Next up in our best segments of 2020 comes from episode 172 where all of us come together to discuss climate change’s impact on sports. Lindsay, Brenda, Shireen, Jessica and myself discussed many of the ways in which climate change and its catastrophic effects were affecting how sports were practiced and played throughout the world. We recorded this episode towards the end of September, after Hurricane Laura had devastated the Gulf Coast, and while wildfires were ravishing the west coast. While we used these two things as launching off points we widened our lens to really take a global perspective on this global problem. Sadly many of the discussions that we have around climate change are so relevant six months from now, a year from now, a few years from now, and our discussion here on sports and climate change is no different. It’s one of the reasons this episode was so impactful and meaningful to us and is very relevant today, and also definitely something we think about as 2020 comes to a close. Check it out.
Lindsay: Alright, right now fires are raging on the west coast of the United States this past week. We’ve seen these fires really alter the sports world through cancellations and postponements; this is nothing new. Climate change’s impact on the sports world is everywhere. Today we’re gonna take some time to talk about that impact on a global scale and a local scale, and look at what the future might bring. Shireen, can you take us through what's been happening this week in particular?
Shireen: Yes, thanks. We know that the wildfires are raging through California, Oregon and Washington state, and one of the things that we know is that this particular catastrophe environmentally will affect major league sports and pro sports. For example, a lot of the leagues have what could be considered an AQI policy, which is an air quality index policy, but they’re still pretty behind. For example, some have postponed their training, some have postponed their practices, but 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan said it was like an “apocalyptic state, but the air quality doesn’t seem as bad as it looks.” The thing is, we have to look at this and how it'll affect the athletes and the teams and the trainers. So, we’ve got NFL, MLB, MLS and NWSL spending a huge amount of time monitoring air quality.
The Portland Thorns season opener was postponed against OL Reign, and that’s been rescheduled to September 30th. But according to Professor Maddy Orr, who’s a professor at SUNY Cortland and coordinator of The Sport Ecology Group – and I’m quoting from an ESPN article, she says, “I can unequivocally say that there will be more fires moving forward. All the evidence suggests that it's only going to get worse because things are getting dryer, it's getting hotter, and when you put those factors together you get fire. American pro sports leagues are really far behind, frankly, when it comes to policy change on these issues.” So while there may be some movement, there is still much more to do. For example, Katelyn Best, a sportswriter, women’s soccer, got some info from a league spokesperson and an AQI of 200 is an automatic cancellation for the NWSL. Just for those that don't understand – zero to 500 is how they measure air quality. Mostly it’s been under the 200s, but 150-200 is unhealthy and above 300 is hazardous. So these are some serious numbers we’re dealing with.
Lindsay: Jess, I know this has also impacted a sport that is very close to your family’s heart.
Jessica: Yeah. So, a lot of my friends on the west coast…One thing that I saw when they were posting, alongside their pictures of the orange and grey skies that they were experiencing, was how they were noting that they couldn’t go outside and so they couldn’t exercise at all, and I was thinking about the ways in which climate change is affecting one of the most basic sports, which is running, right? You put on your shoes, you go outside and you run. That world in particular has been dealing with ever-increasing issues around climate change. I’ve talked about this before…I think the most obvious example is marathon running because it has such a formal structure to it and of course I keep up with it, because I live with a marathon runner who tells me all the time about the weather when I don’t care about it.
But I’ve talked about this on here before, so, the marathon for Tokyo 2020, which maybe will happen next summer, but in the prep for this summer they moved it to the north of the country and they were gonna start it potentially in the middle of the night to avoid athletes having heat stroke because the temperatures are so high now, as so many actually did when they did the IAAF/World Athletics championship in Doha last year. Maybe you’ll remember all the pictures of the women marathoners just all over…Something like 40% of them didn’t finish the race. So I kept thinking about that this week because I heard from more and more friends that couldn’t even go for walks – forget trying to run.
Lindsay: Of course there’s one country that’s specifically known for its distance running prowess that has been incredibly, incredibly impacted by all this. Amira, do you wanna talk about Kenya?
Amira: Yeah, I do. Climate change is impacting the region there in many ways, but one of which to keep an eye on is the Great Rift Valley in Kenya which has been experiencing intense flooding. It has already caused evacuations and displacements, and one of the continuing concerns there is the water level in two of their main lakes – Lake Baringo and Lake Bogoria – are rising, and they could merge. Just to give you context, the lakes used to be 12 miles apart. Now they’re just 8 miles apart. One is an alkaline lake and one is freshwater, so the cross-contamination could be disastrous for wildlife. To learn more about this I reached out to my colleague, Dr. Michelle Sikes, who studies distance running in Kenya, and here’s part of what she had to say.
Michelle: Right now, Kenya is experiencing a number of environmental challenges, from flooding to the worst invasion of locusts that the country has seen in a generation. These crises are worrying and may affect the sports world because people and communities in Kenya’s Rift Valley, where almost all of the nation’s distance runners live and train, heavily rely on farming and natural resources-based livelihoods, generally. Increasing severity of climate change has obvious negative effects on farming which mean that people will not be able to focus as much on sport when food supply and alternative livelihood prospects are under threat. Since most runners in the region are aspiring athletes whose pursuit of success on the track and the roads depend directly or indirectly on farming and they cannot solely rely on running to make ends meet, the destabilizing effect of climate change and its accompanying impact on the sport of distance running itself may be great.
Lindsay: Bren?
Brenda: Yes, staying on Kenya for a minute, I mean, one of the things that has also caused more pressure in Kenya is the number of refugees that have come from Sudan in particular, but other places. It’s pretty troubling how the environmental crises are contributing to an increased refugee population. So, we know that refugees are at an all-time high, about 80 million people – that’s double since 1990. Probably half of which or more are children.
Lindsay: That’s such a good point. I’m always amazed when I really start to think about it, about just how many different types of impacts climate change is having. Of course you have the rising sea levels where here in the United States there’s a lot of talk about how this is impacting the stadiums in Miami, in New York, in Jacksonville, in Oakland – these mega million dollar stadiums are being built knowing that these sea levels, if climate change continues they’re gonna be wiped out. You’ve also of course got snow sports, winter sports industries that are obviously incredibly impacted. We have droughts that are making it very expensive to maintain the grass fields that are needed, and of course I always just think about Jordan McNair dying of heat stroke, the Maryland football player, last May, and how we’re just gonna keep seeing more of that if policies don’t start to change to really impact climate change. Of course this is all just in the United States. Brenda, the disruption is worldwide.
Brenda: Yeah. Actually the United Nations has called on sports bodies to sign different types of accords that they will try to be carbon-free by 2050. I think it’s basically a joke to most of them. But it’s pretty scary. BBC came out with a report recently on the impact of flooding on English football where they expected about a quarter of the fields to experience flooding this season and ongoing. Then there’s weather disasters like the typhoon in Japan which we remember impacted Rugby Union worlds last year, and then Indian cricket officials who have long given up on air quality are now saying the problem is the temperatures and most of the venues can hit 104. [40 Celsius] So, it’s pretty frightening. The United Nations is targeting sports as one of the areas that could contribute to forming some policies that others could model.
Lindsay: Yeah, unfortunately it seems that these organizations are all more interested in offsetting their own carbon footprint than in really making changes that will help the world. It’s infuriating when you read about how much more money and resources are put in just to justify spending and building these ridiculous stadiums which of course, getting into the economics of the stadium-building and displacement and gentrification, that’s a whole other topic. But let’s just look at this Vikings stadium, the Minnesota Vikings stadium. The stadium offsets all its energy with renewable energy credits, and it has committed to being a zero waste facility – which is all great stuff. Similarly, UEFA was trying to, when we were supposed to have the European championships this summer, were trying to offset their carbon footprint. But once again they were doing all this while holding an event that would’ve added extensive air travel to the world. So we’re not going backwards any, we’re just trying to make these mega million dollar events have less of an impact.
I was noting that Stephen Ross, the Miami Dolphins owner, has talked a lot about their stadium and building this Dolphins stadium so that it can withstand any of the sea changes and hurricanes and all of this stuff. He’s talked about how crucial it is for sports to get involved in stopping climate change, and yet he has hosted a fundraiser for Trump and donated to Trump’s inauguration, and you just can’t have both. It just really makes me wonder…We’ve been having all these protests, trying to get these owners to really buy into ending systemic racism using the power that they have, and it’s like, what if they also used this power to really focus on changing the environment? On voting in politicians, on supporting politicians who believe in climate change, on holding their fellow billionaires accountable for the policies of their organizations. You can see by all do for their one stadium to make it more eco-friendly, that they do have the resources when they care about it, but when it’s not about their bottom line they suddenly vote for their tax break. Bren?
Brenda: I just want to…And I know this is an obvious point, but I think it should be in here somewhere. Historically we know that this problem has been caused by the global north and it goes back to industrialization. Still, even the largest carbon emissions are coming from China, the United States, India and Russia, with Russia only being about half of the United States as a sort of distant fourth. Then to have them not take as much responsibility as the place has impacted, much less the amount of responsibility they actually have…Its just so frustrating. Chile has had a hole in the ozone layer since like 1970, and in certain parts you’ve had to wear this extreme sunblock. It just feels like the places that are emitting, at least in the United States and the northeast, are the places that haven’t been as impacted. To continue to see the global north do this kind of shit just feels so unfair.
Lindsay: Amira?
Amira: Yeah. I think it’s important to talk about how these “natural” disasters and climate change are compounded, exacerbated by environmental racism. Too often the lack of protection, infrastructure or relief exacerbates the harm, it disproportionately affects under-resourced minority populations, from Katrina to Flint to Maria. Just a few weeks ago when Laura blew through Lake Charles in the Gulf Coast…If you’re not familiar with it, I was born in Beaumont, Texas, about an hour west of Lake Charles. The Gulf Coast stretches Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas. It’s not only weathered many storms; they’re the site of many harmful oil refineries, often jokingly called the “Cancer Coast” because of the high number of cancers, asthma, and other medical cases due to toxins in the air. In Texas they have six of the most toxic oil refineries that emit benzene, which is a component of crude oil, gasoline, cigarette smoke. It’s invisible, it’s deadly. It elevates cancer rates, respiratory disease and developmental delays in infants.
When Hurricane Harvey hit two years ago those refineries leaked around 28,000 pounds of benzene gas into the air, and that’s probably a low estimate because, guess what? The oil industry gets to self-report on these things. Yet these same spaces, these Gulf Coast communities, have vibrant youth sports cultures, particularly football. At least Texas, and Mississippi. This is the backdrop that they play against. Even now in Lake Charles with the pandemic on the rise schools are literally missing roofs and bleachers, gyms have been blown apart because of the storm, and yet at least one school official this past week said, “If anything, the storm and the pandemic means we should fight harder to play this fall because it is hopeful.” It’s reminiscent of that Olympic official who was like, “The flames of the Olympic torch is gonna starve out the virus.” Hope is not actually a balm for these toxins. It doesn’t work like that.
Here’s the thing – the kids who do have talent, who do make it out, sports is too often seen as the only way out of a lot of these neighborhoods and areas, so families do send their kids into the fray with that hope. They also hope, like, just hold your breath a little bit more. You know that this is the environment we’re playing on, but this is the way out. Here’s the thing: for those kids who do make it out, who have that talent, who make it, we see that they become some of the biggest donators back into the area, from Claressa Shields passing out water in Flint to Puerto Rican athletes who raised enormous funds in the wake of Maria. They end up doing the work of the failed state. So when we’re talking about climate change and we’re talking about a pandemic that is a respiratory illness and we know it’s a global problem, and Brenda just so eloquently implicated, rightfully, the global north within this problem, but right here in our backyards we are having longstanding effects of the damage already being done. Kids are playing games amongst this backdrop, and it’s heartbreaking.
Brenda: Given the year that 2020 was, on episode 178 Amira, Jessica, Shireen and myself, decided to focus on our favorite, most happiest, joyous sports stories of all time. Amira reviewed the hilarious McDonalds 1984 nightmare, Jessica relived the 1996 women’s basketball team, I explained how I ended up nursing in front of Pelé, and Shireen tell us a charming story about soccer grannies from South Africa.
Jessica: Okay, let’s tell each other some happy stories this week. I think we're gonna go in chronological order so, Amira, you are up first.
Amira: Okay, I’m really excited about this because I get to talk about one of my favorite random facts ever. I’m gonna talk about McDonalds and the 1984 Olympics. It’s a situation I find specifically very hilarious, it brings me great joy thinking about it. I only can hope that it will do the same for you. So, with the 1984 Olympics coming to Los Angeles, McDonalds joined in with the rise in corporate sponsors and came up with a fun marketing plan.
Amira: That’s right. The plan was a scratch-off ticket that came with every order. Each scratch-off ticket had an event on it, and the medals corresponded with that. So, if the US won gold you got a free Big Mac, silver was french fries, bronze was a Coca Cola. So, you see? Exciting. When the US wins, you win. Now, here’s where things went very, very wrong…Or, very, very right, depending on if you were McDonalds or everybody else. Basically, McDonalds based their predictions on the 1976 Olympics when the US had come in 3rd in medal count behind the Soviet Union and the East Germans. Yep, many of you will see where this is going at this point! After 1980 when the US boycotted the Olympics the communist countries, they didn’t show up to LA. So the US medal count shot all the way up. In ’76 they had 94 medals, like, roughly 34 gold, right? 94 in total. In 1984 they took home 83 gold medals, 61 silver medals, and 30 bronze medals – a total medal count of 174 medals, leading to a complete and utter McDonalds meltdown. Headlines bemoaned the lack of food to fulfill all of the scratch off tickets that won. “Where is the Big Mac?” It was a complete Big Mac shortage, fries were sold out. The tales of folks who were like, “I love the LA Olympics because I’m literally surviving off of McDonalds for a month.” [Jessica laughs] It became a running joke. You might recall this joke even eventually making it to The Simpsons when they parodied this when Krusty offers a similar competition. Here’s the end of the episode where Krusty’s owner has completely lost it because of his shortage:
Amira: [Jessica laughing] That was Homer Simpson taking the odds, and why not? Everything was a winner. So, while McDonalds has moved away from consumer deals like that they remained a sponsor staple in the Olympic Village where athletes talked about how much they love McDonalds food, but if you recall at 2016 they had to limit the number of free Big Macs and McNuggets provided because the athletes were eating them out of house and home in the Olympic Village. McDonalds told the athletes that they could only order up to 20 items for free each day, which gives you a little window of how much McDonalds was being consumed in the Olympic village. In 2018, after a 41 year partnership with the IOC, McDonalds actually has ended their corporate sponsorship of the Olympic Games. So I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what they cook up next.
Jessica: Oh, this is working. That made me very happy! Brenda, you remember this?
Brenda: Oh, I do. I remember this and I had many a free thing. I eventually would go on…I love McDonalds so much, I would eventually go on 6 years later to get an early work permit on my 15th birthday and begin to work at McDonalds where I got free food, and within 6 months was a vegetarian. [laughter] This McDonalds game was a highly…1984 was just such a year for me. I was 9, the Detroit Tigers won the World Series, there was the Olympics, and that McDonalds game…I don’t know, but my life span is probably shortened because of it. [Jessica laughs]
Shireen: I remember that even though I wasn’t eligible for any of it because we were inundated with American advertising. So I got all of this and then you had all the Canadians that were so jealous…You guys kept winning! We never got any of that.
Amira: I just love how you guys are like, “I remember this!” and I wasn’t born for another 4 years! [laughing]
Brenda: Only you think that’s funny.
Jessica: Yeah. [laughs]
Brenda: Only you think that’s funny. I’m gonna focus on the story.
Amira: [laughing] I do think it’s funny!
Jessica: Okay, well I also have an Olympic story; mine’s personal. So, my mom Mary and her wife Sue, they used to live in Atlanta in 1996. For anyone from Atlanta, they lived in Candler Park, they were near Little Five Points right by the old…I think Charis Bookstore has now moved but it used to be right there. They were right in it, and so we went to the Olympics in 1996 and it was so much fun. We saw volleyball, we saw some gymnastics, we went and saw track and field in the stadium, and then we saw some basketball. It’s funny because I was 15, 16. I was a teenager and I only remember so much about it, which is kind of strange. I was pretty old for this moment. But I remember specifically there were huge crowds, just the overwhelming feeling of the place. But really I remember the basketball. This was really exciting; 1996, the US women’s team, they had won bronze in ’92 and so for the first time…So, the US decided they needed to be better, and for the first time the team was composed of the best post-collegiate basketball players, selected more than a year before the games. They played 52 international games leading in to the Olympics, they won all 52, so the hype was huge.
The players are people that we know so well, they’re legends, right? Sheryl Swoopes, Dawn Staley, Rebecca Lobo and – my favorite – Ms. Lisa Leslie. I was a teenager, I was so tall, I was probably inching towards my 6 feet. I’m 6 feet tall now, I might have been 6 feet then. I had too much limb, I was like, arm and leg. I wrote about this once and what I said about it was that I was in that awkward body that I didn’t yet know how to wear. But then I got to go to the Olympics and I saw these women play and they looked like me and I looked like them and it’s like I don’t even know how to describe in words how affirming that was for me. I got to go and see this. I talked to my mom, Mary, and her wife, Sue, yesterday, and here's their memory of this bit of it, starting with Sue:
Sue: Part of the most fun was that we were able to bring you, JR, Jessica Ray, just to see the joy on your face, and also to see all the people looking at you because you were so tall and they thought maybe you’re an Olympic player.
Mary: Yeah, because you were 16 years old and you were already really really tall.
Jessica: So, we went to some early round action, and it didn’t even matter to me that we were sitting in the nosebleeds.
Mary: The basketball was played in the Georgia Dome. I think we set up really really high, I think in one of those pictures that I sent to you yesterday, I think that was the women’s basketball game. You can see how far up we were.
Jessica: [laughs] I love their voices so much. This was a huge watershed moment in women’s basketball as well. The American Basketball League, the ABL, and the WNBA started out of the popularity of this winning USA women’s basketball team and their success. It just holds such an important place in my heart. But to maximize the feeling of happiness – I hope this is true for everyone else, because this is my mom – I wanna end this with my mom talking about what it was like for her to experience the Olympics in 1996 in Atlanta where she lived.
Mary: I think the thing that I was so amazed about at the Olympics was that we were actually at the Olympics, you know? That’s where…I couldn’t hardly fathom it, because I never thought I’d go to an Olympics. Then when we found out it was going to Atlanta I thought, oh my gosh, I can’t believe we’re gonna get to go to an Olympics. Then all the people and just all the excitement, it was like just the adrenaline flowed. I loved it. I loved everything about it.
Jessica: I love how she says, [with a southern accent] “luuuved.” Ugh, it’s so good. [laughs] It’s so adorable. So yeah, that is my story that I think of to make myself happy.
Shireen: Jessica Ray. That was lovely.
Brenda: Jay Ray! [Shireen giggles]
Jessica: Now everyone knows, the secret is out. My parents often call me JR.
Amira: I love that. I love that joy. You know, my cousins are in Atlanta and when I think of that…They were quite close to the bombing, but now I have a really positive image of the Atlanta Olympics to replace that and that makes me very happy.
Jessica: Bren, you also have a personal story.
Brenda: I do. Once u upon a time, in April of 2014, Pelé and I made each other cry. So, I had been studying soccer for a long time already by then; my book was out, I had gotten tenure, I thought things were gonna be good in my life. The president of the university decided he wanted to have a major soccer conference, and I wasn’t given a choice, and I didn’t wanna do it, and in the same week I found out that I was pregnant. It was a surprise, and of course I’m happy now but at that time it did not fill me with unmitigated joy and hope. [laughs] I was conflicted and worried, and then this soccer conference came up and there ended up being four days of it, 170 presenters from many many countries. It was very much on me. It was almost the 2014 World Cup in Brazil and I was super critical of it, I was critical of the money that it took to build it, the repression and the increased private security forces, the changing of municipal laws, repression of Afro-Brazilian communities around Rio, São Paulo. I was really conflicted, and I was conflicted about Pelé.
So I was jaded, I was at this jaded moment, you know, where I had to deal with this legend coming. It’s so funny to think about it. I wasn’t excited at all. I had just a complete sense of dread and anxiety. I was so overworked, I just could hardly get it together. So the moment actually comes, and imagine – I’ve written about this person A LOT, and so I am nursing my daughter and I'm trying to tell people like Grant Wahl like, oh, down the hall and to the left…While I’m nursing this baby. [laughs] And 170 other people. I don't know how many people attended. There's a clinic for girls, you know, the whole thing and whole time I’ve got this baby, and every time I have to do something, Julieta…Like, can someone hold my baby?! [laughter] She didn't want to be with anybody, and then there's the other two kids. Luna had an allergic reaction to amoxicillin, had to go to the hospital in between. I’m just like...So, okay, you get it. So it comes to the ceremony, and I had really worked on my speech. I had bad Portuguese but I gave it a shot.
Brenda: I thought I came up with something that was at least somewhat poignant. The way that Pelé and his generation played the game held a mirror not up to the actual world perhaps but the aspirations that many millions of fans held. The international conference we’ve had here has given us an opportunity to reflect on how football gives us insight about class inequality, social injustice, gender, courage, solidarity, the human condition; and Brazil as all nations has lived with deep divisions and contests over their soccer legacy, but it also gives us pause, I think. What would the world look like if more national identities were founded on creative brilliance, grace, and engagement with the world, win or lose?
So I looked over, and Pelé’s tearing up, right? I get through the Portuguese part, and then he’s full on tearing up. Okay, then the degree is awarded and we go backstage and he just gives me this big hug, and I’m just crying because it’s over, it’s done, I don’t have to do any more. I went on to write just recently a piece where I was super proud because I got to kind of reexamine his legacy, and I feel so lucky and it was so special how every time I write about him I’m just sort of beaming all the time like hey, thanks, buddy.
Jessica: Yeah, Brenda’s beaming right now. You all can’t see it, but I can see across the Zoom, the beaming. That was beautiful, Bren.
Amira: Not many people can say they both kicked Sepp Blatter and nursed in front of Pelé. [laughter] Brenda Elsey, one of a kind!
Shireen: And for everybody else, I met Brenda in 2015 at a conference but for the longest time the entire standard of a soccer conference was this one. I was really sad that I met you after, because the first question anybody asks in this world is, “Did you go to that conference at Hofstra?” is the first thing, because she set the bar so high globally – while nursing a baby. So, hat’s off.
Brenda: I just think it’s like, maybe with this election and these happy stories and stuff, I love thinking about the un-jading, like, how do you lose a little bit of cynicism again? Because it’s really necessary.
Jessica: Alright Shireen, bring us home.
Shireen: Vakhegula Vakhegula! The soccer grannies from South Africa. When Jessica put this in the document I knew exactly what I was gonna talk about, because when I think of football and I think of global football I think of grannies from South Africa. This is my happy story, this is what I want to be. I want to be a granny one day who does this. This is an absolutely beautiful story about women between the ages of 55-84 in South Africa in a specific region, Limpopo. I heard about it by accident, and I heard about it about 10 years ago, 2010, I came across this article. So basically let me give the background. This group was founded by community activist Rebecca Ntsanwisi, AKA “Mama Beka,” from Limpopo. She’s a community organizer, she’s an advocate and philanthropist, and she campaigns for women in South Africa in order to bring attention to their plights for safety, security, and economic independence. Now, Mama Beka was diagnosed with cancer in 2003, and one of the things that made her happy was football. So, she started the group of women in her area to help them and help them engage in a healthy, active lifestyle.
Because we know the first thing to go for women who carry so much on their shoulders all the time – work, family, mental health of everybody – they put themselves last, and sometimes the first thing to go is what people consider extra, is self-care. For her, for Mama Beka, football was self-care. So she got these grandmas started. Now, what I love about this is y’all are like, well, 55-84 is a huge, huge age range. Some of these women did not have any knowledge beyond their normal consumption of football and cheering and supporting and fanning, so it was really flipping the script on what we think footballers can be, and particularly in that region of South Africa, what footballers look like. Because when you think of a footballer from South Africa you don’t think of a Black granny. But guess what, y’all? You should! So, one of the greatest things about this is Mama Beka’s goal and her vision coming out of this which was to start a World Cup for the elderly, or an African grannies’ cup.
I had been following this story and the African grannies actually traveled to the 2018 World Cup in Russia, and they got to be a…I mean, the word is ‘mascot,’ that’s how they refer to the people that walk the players onto the field. So, one of the qualifying matches, they actually did this. So I was like, okay, this is good. I mean, unfortunately some of the core team had passed away by 2018 but generally the squad was there, I think there were 14 of them that went. What I didn’t know, and if I knew this fact about the 2019 Women’s World Cup in France I would have made Jessica go – they actually traveled to France and played against a French women’s team of elderly women, Les Mamies foot, it's called. I did not know this, otherwise I certainly would have gone from Reims in that car that we rented and gone somewhere else to watch these grandmas. So, these Mamies were playing…I tried to find out what happened in the match and I wasn’t able to do so. If any of you have any information at all about the Vakhegulas, the Vakhegulas of South Africa and what happened, please let me know! I can’t find any follow up information.
What I hope to see moving forward is this joy. I love the idea of breaking down ideas of what normalcy is, like, what is normalcy even? If you seek joy you get joy, you get joy from football, you get joy from random things in sport that you are connected to. We can’t help what we fall in love with, and I fell in love with this entire story. A documentary was created about this and it was shown in Doc NYC film festival. It was beautifully received.
Shireen: So the sounds of joy, the sounds of the women and, you know, they go to the side of the pitch and you see in the clip that they’re taking off their shirts and they’re wearing colorful bras and they’re putting on their kits and lacing up their boots, it’s riveting. So hats off to the grandmas, the soccer grandmas of South Africa. So if you’re out there, you’re going to play in the park – take your grandma with you!
Jessica: Shireen, I have all the faith in the world that you will be a soccer playing granny one day. [Shireen laughing] There’s no doubt in my mind about that, in fact.
Brenda: Well, that’s a wrap for our segments for this year. We wanna thank you all for listening and remind you that you can find Burn It All Down anywhere really you get your podcasts – Apple Podcasts, Spotify Stitcher, Google Play. You can find us on Facebook and Instagram @burnitalldownpod and on Twitter @burnitdownpod. You can email us at burnitalldownpod@gmail.com and check out our website, burnitalldownpod.com where you can find previous episodes, transcripts, and links to our Patreon. Speaking of our Patreon, we would like to thank our patrons for their generous support for this year. We really appreciate your support. I don’t know how many times we can say that and say it in the exact same way, but it's true, it remains true. So, on behalf of the entire crew: burn on, and not out.