Episode 187: The Best of Burn It All Down 2020, Part 2
To ring in the New Year, we're re-airing some of the best moments from BIAD 2020. In this episode, Shireen revisits three of the team's most memorable interviews. First, from Episode 158, Amira speaks with community organizer and athlete Alison Mariella Désir about Ahmaud Arbery and the whiteness of the running community. [1:46] Then, from Episode 166, Lindsay interviews activist Rebecca Nagle on Native mascotry [26:00] And finally, from Episode 171, Jessica talks with Kristin Duquette [42:09] and Lacey Henderson on COVID and disability in sport. [1:02:15]
This episode was produced by Tressa Versteeg. Shelby Weldon is our social media and website specialist. Burn It All Down is part of the Blue Wire podcast network.
Transcript
Shireen: Hello flamethrowers, Shireen here. Happy new year! Well friends, we did it. We made it out of that burning dumpster fire that was the year 2020 towards a positive and fantastic 2021, which I hope has begun with joy and justice and in health. Here at Burn It All Down we traditionally offer you a best of series during the holidays and if you missed our last episode we brought you three of our favorite discussion segments that aired in 2020. In that same spirit, today we’ll be bringing you three of our favorite interviews from this year. We will be starting with Amira’s interview with community organizer and athlete Alison Désir who spoke about the murder of Ahmaud Arbery and the whiteness of the running community. This was in episode 158. Then we’ll re-release an interview that Lindsay had with Rebecca Nagle on Native mascotry, from episode 166. Then we’ll wrap it all up with Jessica’s interview with Kristin Duquette and Lacey Henderson from from the week of episode 170, on COVID and disability in sport.
We value and are so grateful to all of our guests for coming on in 2020 and sharing their experiences, having really important and impactful conversations with us. And flamethrowers, we certainly couldn’t have done it without you. We are so grateful for your continued support, and we look forward to bringing you more important and necessary work in 2021. Alison Désir joined Burn It All Down in May to discuss the murder of Ahmaud Arbery and to talk about her experiences as a Black runner. Alison can also be heard in her interview with Lauren Fleshman in September 2020 to talk about Womxn Run the Vote. You’re welcome to check that out in our catalogue, which are listed all on our website. Before any further ado, here’s Amira’s interview with Alison Désir.
Amira: Today I’m joined by Alison Mariella Désir, who’s the founder of Harlem Run, among many other things. She is a mental health advocate, an athlete, community organizer, and she might be one of the best people to talk about and try to process the killing of Ahmaud Arbery. She wrote a wonderful piece about the whiteness in the running world for Outside magazine, I recommend everyone run out and read that piece. Today we’re gonna chat about the inherent whiteness of running and the running community and the ripple effects and ramifications of the latest shooting of unarmed Black people. So, Alison, thank you so much. Welcome to Burn It All Down.
Alison: Thank you so much. I wanna say, we have an additional special guest, my son who’ll be chiming in, but it really is an honor to be speaking with you.
Amira: I wanna start first and foremost just saying, how are you? I know you celebrated your first Mother’s Day this weekend, and what a heavy weekend it is.
Alison: Yeah, so this weekend I made a point to not really be on my phone, not really be on social media. But the thing about it is it’s so emotional in and of itself, the murder of yet another unarmed Black man, and then there were two additional murders at least, on Friday, right? This is unending. Then on top of that now I’m so happy my piece is being read, but it puts this extra responsibility where I’m getting emails from well-meaning white folks telling me they bought the book and they’re so excited, and I’m like…Okay, welcome to step zero. You know?
Amira: Right.
Alison: I’m glad, like…People are thanking me, I’m like, you’re welcome. It’s just a lot of energy, and there’s this duality I feel where on the one hand I’m enraged, I’m angry, I’m emotional, but then there’s also very much the teacher side of me and the mental health advocate and the wanting to work on this, so that’s a duality that Black and brown folks, marginalized folks feel. So, feeling all the things.
Amira: Yeah, certainly. And that’s the thing, I’m really glad you brought this up. Me and Shireen talk about this a lot, we say bitches be laboring. [laughs] The amount of emotional labor that it takes to do this kind of work…And so when I read your piece I applauded it, I was happy to see it, I shared it widely of course, and I also was like, whew, what an undertaking. Because like you said, it immediately puts this burden, right, on you, or well-meaning white people and then also the sifting through the awfulness that comes with being a truth-teller in this capacity. So, I did want to return to this piece. The piece we’re talking about, Ahmaud Arbery and Whiteness in the Running World, this is so necessary. It’s so necessary. Can you talk a little bit about what compelled you…You write about it in the piece, but when we’re looking at that running community what compelled you to pen this?
Alison: It’s funny, I was talking to my partner, my husband, about how I wrote this piece and, not to be all grandiose, but I was thinking about Da Vinci talking about Michelangelo, how he made the piece…I can’t even remember…The statue of David. He talked about how he wasn’t building statues but he was sort of revealing the form. The form always existed, he was just inspired to reveal it. And that’s sort of how it felt like when I was penning this. I sat down and Molly from Outside magazine told me I had this opportunity, she said that if you need a week to do it, let me know. I sat down and it just sort of poured out all at once. It sort of just flowed out of me. I think it’s something that we are always, like, bitches be laboring.
Amira: Right.
Alison: It’s just always on our minds. From so many events where I find that I’m the token on the panel or I find that I look around and there’s very few people who look like me that there’s always conversations I’m having with Black and brown folks that we seem to be having experiences totally unknown to white folks. I just felt like I had to write something, and I wanted to do it in a way that…I’ve been in a lot of school, I have two masters degrees, all my schooling’s from Columbia, I was like, I know I need to write this in a way that can break through. So I knew that I had to humanize myself, I knew that I needed to tell the story in a way that wouldn’t be too agressive but would be poignant and move folks to action, and I’m really excited that that’s the case, but again, this is just the start.
Amira: Certainly. One of the things that you pick up on there is that one of the grand myths that cultivated this running community is that running is this great equalizer and that everybody can take to the pavement or the grass or the sprawling hills and together run, and kind of unify around that love for endurance running and community formation. Part of what you’re doing is exposing this for what many people already know and feel is a completely grand narrative that just doesn’t feel applicable for marginalized people within that community. What’s it like to be part of a running community as a Black woman, as a marginalized person, and how can this moment reveal some of those cracks in that foundation of that community?
Alison: Yeah, excellent question. I think it goes back to that duality, right? I had another conversation recently with one of the founders from FloTrack, which – I never thought that I would have the opportunity to be on that platform, because that is also a very white space. But he was asking me things like, generally runners say that it’s such a mental release and it’s a beautiful feeling to go running, does that mean you don’t feel that? And I was like, the thing is, I feel that, and I feel a sense of terror, right? This is the duality that we deal with, that we know that running is a beautiful thing and in fact I came to running for my mental health, but at the same time I know that when I’m on the run I’m subject to forces that are completely beyond my control and that the legal system isn’t even there to back me, right? I think this is not just true of my experience, this is true of trans folks, this is true of the LGBT community. I think because anti-racism is an active thing, like, it’s not enough to just say “I’m not racist” right?
Amira: Right.
Alison: It is an active every day thing that you have to participate in, and that kind of consciousness is really only in the minds of folks like us.
Amira: Right. Exactly. I think that you raise this point about how there’s been this kind of new movement around runner’s safety, and a lot of that we’ve seen kind of mobilization around safety for women runners and safety in terms of where you can run, but I think that you touch on the negotiations that people have to make who are marginalized in that space. COVID has really changed the game in a lot of ways, but people have still been able to run, but then it becomes a negotiation, like, does this face mask make me look more threatening?
Alison: Exactly.
Amira: I had a colleague who runs with a jogging stroller and he was like, so, if I wear a face mask I’m more threatening, but I have a stroller, so am I less threatening? What is that complex negotiation you have to do to constantly, you know–
Alison: That high-level math.
Amira: Exactly! The high-level mathematics of Blackness, like, what is that right calculation that will make sure you get home safely?
Alison: It’s so true. I think about me making that choice for myself, am I gonna go out and wear a mask? I think to myself, okay, well, my neighborhood is relatively “safe.” I do have privilege myself, right? I have an education, so maybe I can talk myself out of whatever the person would wanna do with me, you know? These are very real things that we think about and I've been disappointed in the coverage of running. Running very much had a boom people have been talking about, but people haven’t been talking about the way that intersectionalism plays into this and the way that folks are impacted differently.
Amira: You start the piece in a way that immediately resonated with me, because you narrate what it’s like to now think of these questions which I know you’ve been thinking about for some time. But the urgency perhaps, the way it resonates now with you having a son…I am the mom of two Black boys, and I have a Black girl as well who I’m equally as concerned about. But that immediately hit my heart, because I think one of the things that that also raised for me, and I wanna shout out soon-to-be-Dr. Sam White, who’s a part of the running community and she works on Black girlhood and physical culture. She always talks about youth culture in a way that really has put it on my radar more. I was thinking about this when, just reading that first paragraph of your piece, because I think about what does this mean not just for Black men and Black women but for Black girls and Black boys, especially when we know that Black childhood is very constrained because Black girls and Black boys are seen as adult far earlier than their white counterparts. Tamir Rice was constantly described as “a man” despite being 12 years old. So when we’re thinking about the running community and we’re thinking about how that trickles down to youth spaces as well, it struck a chord. I felt myself kind of gasping for air thinking about doing that calculation. My sons are adorable and really cute – when do they cross that line to be a threat?
Alison: Yeah. When I look at my son and I think about the ways that I want to set him up for success and the ways that I want to introduce him into the outdoors and the ways that I wanna give him access to things that I didn’t have until I was older. But there’s also in the back of my mind, to what extent am I setting him up to feel too comfortable, right? Because there’s the idea that…So, another young Black man was killed this weekend when he was speeding, right? He was doing something stupid, the police were pursing him. In the end he was shot multiple times and at the end of the video, apparently – I didn’t watch – you can hear one of the cops laughing and saying, “There’s not gonna be an open casket,” right?
Amira: Ugh.
Alison: Did this kid do something stupid? Yes. He was 20, 21, right? The amount of stupid things people do…But white people, white men have a boyhood that extends until their 40s and 50s, honestly.
Amira: Hell yeah, exactly.
Alison: Right? And so god forbid I make my son feel so confident that he’s in a trail and he doesn’t avert his eyes, or god forbid he wants to have a relationship with a white woman, or a white man, you know what I mean? I think about how I have to prepare him to be confident and owning spaces, and then also really understand that you’re shrinking yourself as a means of survival.
Amira: Right.
Alison: There are multiple moments when you can be an activist, but I need you alive, you know? It’s just…It’s terrifying.
Amira: It’s awful. I think about that Facebook group that popped up in support of the men who killed Ahmaud, and one of the lines says, “He didn’t comply with simple commands.” I think you just struck on something that resonates so deeply, how do we teach our children, our Black kids, to take up space? And to be full citizens and to be fully human, and recognize them as fully human knowing that there’s moments of life or death that depends on their ability to shrink themselves into a kind of second class citizenship?
Alison: Exactly.
Amira: The fact that if they’re confronted with two white men who roll up on them with rifles, that “complying” even though they have no authority is the difference between perhaps getting home at night or not…I don’t have words for what that makes you do as a parent, you know?
Alison: And you know, with this piece, what I was trying to convey also is that this is just our everyday reality on a simple run, right? Yet people wanna make this running seem as it’s not political, our identity doesn’t matter, when…I mean, look at the Olympics. The whole thing is political, right?
Amira: Right.
Alison: Look at Caster Semenya, she’s trying to compete and people wanna get in her pants, right? It’s just such a fallacy, and so I was trying to break it down, like, can’t you see that literally every day this is a fear and the way that my identities intersect – I have a fear because I’m a woman, I have a fear because I’m a Black woman, I have a fear because I’m a Black mother.
Amira: Yeah.
Alison: Yeah. It really is beyond comprehension to have to live like this.
Amira: Certainly. And you know, I think that what it does mentally, and this is something…I wanna go back to that point you made about releases you can get from running. On the one hand you have that anxiety over safety, you have the general anxiety of being a Black mother, you have postpartum, right? You have all these things that are weighing on your mental health, and then you have running that’s supposed to be a space that helps with that, and in many ways it does. Do you feel like…How do you negotiate a space that’s supposed to be a space of release that also comes with its own tugs on your mental health, and is there a way for people listening and people muddling through this themselves, do you have any kind of tips or techniques or suggestions for people protecting their mental health while managing these anxieties and still looking towards running as an outlet?
Alison: Yeah, wow. What a big question, right? But it’s definitely part of my everyday reality. I think that one thing for me personally, this is not the case for everybody, but for me personally this sort of double consciousness, if I can borrow that phrase, is always there for me, this sense of fear. But I will say what helps me is being present, and I also thank my son for this mindfulness that I’ve developed because…And even in this moment I’m talking to you as I’m watching my son tear up the floor. My son allows me, when I think all about the terrible possibilities and all the systems that I wanna bring down, then my son will poop or he’ll smile or he’ll tumble [laughs] and so I’m very much brought back to this present moment, and that’s really how I’m able to enjoy the run, right? Because I’m able to think about my breath in this moment, I’m able to focus on what I’m seeing, right? Many times connecting with your senses, like, what am I seeing, what am I feeling, feeling grounded, all of those things allow you to come back to the present. That’s really what I can offer in this moment, that’s really what’s helping me. Also knowing that we’re so confined to our apartments, and rightfully so because of the pandemic, and green spaces just getting outside really does have a positive effect. It’s back to those calculations, to what extent can I put myself out there today, and maybe it doesn’t work for you every day but I think mindfulness and staying present to the extent that you can is really what I can offer.
Amira: Yeah. And I think the other thing that you have demonstrated through your career is finding community within the community, and so I wanna big up Harlem Run, especially, I mean, I know it’s hard right now, I can’t imagine fostering this running community, particularly in Harlem in the time when New York has been so decimated by COVID, but you know, can you just speak for a second to carving out your own communal spaces within the running community?
Alison: Yeah, I’m glad you said carving out because the thing is I didn’t find it. I came into running, I found community and I found some folks who were really great and helped me through the first marathon, but I knew that I wanted to create my own space that was rooted in vulnerability and mental health acceptance and in Black and brown folks, and I think that…We haven’t been able to run together, we’ve got a lot of virtual stuff going on, but one thing in particular that has been so fun and so sweet to see is that some of us in leadership have started running to each other’s apartments and leaving signs outside for each other or waving from windows, and so it’s sort of like this novel way of being like, I see you, you’re important to me, you’re still my neighbor in the midst of this. But truly the text and the love, particularly around Mother’s Day, after this response…If it weren’t for Harlem Run and Run 4 All Women and these other communities I created, I would feel completely alone.
Amira: Yeah.
Alison: So it’s possible to find folks within this very white space who are likeminded and if the work…This is not our burden to teach white folks.
Amira: Right.
Alison: Some of us will choose to do that but my no means is that, like, we all should do this. We’re just trying to survive on top of it all, right? So find your people, and find safety.
Amira: Love that. The last thing I wanna talk to you about is that you certainly picked up the burden of teaching – you give book recommendations and everything. For people who did #RunWithMaud, who did their 2.23 miles, you know, I think for me I found it really cathartic, certainly, but I watched how it spread and it hit the running community. I’m part of the Peloton community and there’s a lot of support there. What is the next thing, right? It’s one thing to run 2.23 miles and make a hashtag, but if you’re a white person within this community that doesn’t replace actively being anti-racist.
Alison: Exactly, exactly. And that’s why I made these three recommendations because I was like, the thing that I don’t want to happen is exactly that. I did the hashtag, I did the run, like, okay, I feel good about myself until the next thing happens. So I think the next step is the really unsexy step of doing the work, and the work for me including reading the books that I mentioned but really the reading is in service of your own self-development work, your own racial identity development. I think this is critical that many people don't talk about, that it is possible to have a white racial identity that is not tied to white supremacy, right? White people don’t learn about whiteness, because whiteness is the default.
Amira: Yeah.
Alison: I can’t imagine what it is to be a white person, but it must be something like, “I’m white, everything is in service to me, whether you know it or not.”
Amira: Yeah.
Alison: You don’t think about where you’re really from, like, I’m white, I’m American, this is my space, I could go there, I could do this, right? And I don’t want to make this sound silly, I’m just trying to imagine. When you develop an identity…White racial identity development, which is actually something that I’m gonna talk about in my Meaning Thru Movement tour, is a process by which you look at yourself, look at your privilege, look at the ways that you’re benefiting unnecessarily, look at the ways you’re privileged in the media and in every single space, and how can you love yourself and love where you come from without having to be the standard, without having these entitlements. I think that requires active work. If you’re in the running industry and there’s a bunch of white CEOs all in a room together, maybe you look around and you wonder where are the other folks, like, if it’s all white people you should all be committed to anti-racism but certainly there must be other diverse voices that are missing in this room, and how can you make it so that those voices are in the room? How can you amplify those voices? The work is, like I said, it’s unsexy. You gotta read, you gotta start understanding what these words mean, because I have to say, even the least formally educated, the person that doesn’t have the degrees like I have, a person of color understands how race works in this country.
Amira: Right.
Alison: And the same cannot be said for white folks. So yeah, do the work. Do the reading. Ask yourself questions. People often say that they’re nervous to make mistakes, they don’t wanna say the wrong thing, but guess what, you’re already saying the wrong thing. At least say the wrong thing in service of progress, you know? And that’s really where I’m at. For right now I feel compelled to continue to have these conversations and offer resources, but when I don’t: don’t talk to me. [laughs] You know? There’s a lot of us out there and the burden is on the white folks.
Amira: Yeah. And I think that this is a slog fest, it’s a process, it’s not…Like you said, for the next time, because we know there will be one.
Alison: And it’s not gonna be like revelations right and left and you’re getting chills all the time, like, it’s really a slow process and it doesn’t feel good, because you’re questioning yourself. I always say this because I think it makes people feel more uncomfortable…I don’t know why, it’s just a thing that I do. I can be taken to task for my ableism, right, for my transphobia, which is also like white supremacy, transphobia is built into the fabric of the world, right? I can and should be taken to task for that, and that is work that I must do. So if I with my marginalized identities can do that work then white folks certainly can, and it’s not gonna be pleasant.
Amira: Right. And it shouldn’t be, right? Unlearning – if it feels good while you’re doing it then it’s probably not doing the work it needs to.
Alison: Yeah, exactly.
Amira: Well, I really appreciate the time and the effort that you’re putting in, and I so appreciate you taking up this space and creating and cultivating that space for others, and really charging the running community like so many other communities to figure that shit out, you know? I think of the words that Aja wrote about you, the last stanza of this poem, “I move,
I am a movement, focused and fierce, I smile. I laugh, I lift and carry sistersI am most free running for freedom.” And that at the end of the day I feel like is it. We’re trying to break free.
Alison: Yes.
Amira: We’re trying to be in a space where you can go running, you can take Kouri out for a run and not do such a complex math.
Alison: Exactly, exactly. 10pm, in a sports bra…
Amira: Right.
Alison: We will have made some progress.
Amira: Exactly. And so I’ve said this before, and I think of Sweet Honey in the Rock a lot, and Ella Baker, and “We Who Believe in Freedom Cannot Rest,” and lucky you’re an endurance athlete, because the road is long. I thank you so much for the race you’re running and for those who you’re bringing along and elevating with you, and of course for taking your time and doing this work and sharing it with Burn It All Down.
Alison: And I wanna thank you for your platform because I often look to you all for what is relevant, what’s important, what should I be tuned into, and yeah, it takes all of us. So thank you very much.
Shireen: Next up we have Lindsay’s interview with Rebecca Nagle about the Washington Football Team. Rebecca Nagle is a citizen of Cherokee Nation and one of the creators of the Washington Redhawks campaign. This interview initially was aired in 2017 but because of the momentous change in sports addressing anti-Indigeneity we felt it was really important to underline where that work comes from, where those changes come from and how they’re made and by what processes. We’re very careful at Burn It All Down to ensure that those who do the work get that credit and are amplified, which is why we’re re-sharing this interview with Indigenous activist Rebecca Nagle
Lindsay: Hello everyone, I am here with Rebecca Nagle. She is an organizer with the Redhawks campaign and a citizen of Cherokee nation. If you’ve been online at all this past week you might have seen a news story that the Washington NFL team was changing its name to the Washington Redhawks. That announcement spread mid-week and very quickly was picked up by some very viral sources. It came out that that was of course not the actual case, unfortunately, that Dan Snyder did not change his heart overnight. But Rebecca was one of the people who helped create this campaign, because it was actually a group of activists who were trying to spread the word about, I believe, how easy a name change would be [laughs] and how it could be actually not as complicated as we’re making it. Rebecca, thank you so much for joining us.
Rebecca: Yeah. Thank you for having me.
Lindsay: So, let’s just start. Where in the world did this idea come from?
Rebecca: Yeah, you know, I had been thinking about spoofing the Washington football team for a while. I had done a couple of other internet-based culture jams before and I thought that the team would make a really good target. So, I approached a woman named Jordan Daniels who’s the co-founder of the Rising Hearts Coalition, which is a group of Native advocates that do grassroots organizing in DC. And yeah, I wanted to see if they would be interested in doing it and they said yes. And then, we started working on it in about August, so it’s been in the works for a few months now.
Lindsay: That’s so exciting. I mean, it was so realistic and it wasn’t one of those moments for me where it was just…Of course, because I cover politics and sports, so everyone keeps sending me the articles over and over again, and of course I realized pretty quickly that it had to be a very well done spoof. But it was amazing how quickly it caught on. Were you expecting that? What do you attribute that to?
Rebecca: I was expecting it to get some media play. You know, that was our goal. But as far and as wide as it went, we definitely weren’t expecting, and so it exceeded our expectations. I think that the response really proves the point that we’re trying to put forth with the culture jam is that changing the name would be easy, popular, and powerful. I mean, people were really excited about it. People were really moved, and so, at this point, there’s really no reason other than stubborn racism why at this point the team’s not changing the team.
Lindsay: You held a couple of rallies this week. I believe one was today, this is Sunday, before the Washington game at FedEx Field. There was also one at RFK Stadium. What was the point of those rallies, and I guess, what was the atmosphere? Did you encounter any…Was there anyone against you? Did you have any feedback, any resistance?
Rebecca: Yeah. So, we were at…I just got home actually from the stadium today. So, we had a Go Redhawks pep rally. We had banners, we had t-shirts, we had speakers and a drum group. So, it was a really good day. And we had some hecklers. We had some people who yelled different things at us. I would say, especially for folks who have been doing these demonstrations at the stadium over the years, it was actually a less hostile environment than usual. And also, there were a lot of fans who came up and were like, “What is this? What is this about?” And we were able to have a lot of conversations with people who said, “I would get behind the name change. I see what you’re saying.” And so, yeah, I think a lot of people are really ready for it. I think that there will always be those die-hard fans who will be mad if there is any change. And I think that if you look social justice issues, particularly racial justice issues, there are some people who will always protest racial progress in this country, which isn’t a good reason to not do it.
Lindsay: Right. Yeah. We don’t have to get to a 100% consensus here to move–
Rebecca: On with people’s basic human dignity.
Lindsay: [laughs] Right. Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen, so we just got to keep moving forward anyways. What are those conversations like? Take me through it – and I think that this is something that a lot of people who agree, “Yes, the name can be changed. It should be changed. Yes, I see why this is racist.” But when they are caught in those conversations with people who are ardent fans, ardently against it, they kind of don’t know exactly what to say. How do you handle those conversations?
Rebecca: Yeah, it was interesting. We were talking with somebody who was selling merch. At first he’s really mad that we were there because we were setting up close to where he was selling merch, and by the end of it we actually gave him a Redhawks tee shirt and we’re talking. Yeah. Another person came over and brought his family over. So, there was some educating about the origin of the word, which a lot of times people don’t know the full origin. So, it actually comes from…While the US army did a lot of the wholesale slaughter of Indigenous people, a lot of the murderers were actually settlers. And so, just individual settlers that would go out and kill Native women and children, and the colonial governments would incentivize that by giving people money for scalps and there are actually different prices for male scalps and women scalps and the scalps of children. And so, settlers would go out and would murder Native people and then bring the scalps back to the government in exchange for cash. So that’s literally where the term comes from.
Lindsay: I’ve heard that description so many times. It never ceases to make me go, “How are we still having this conversation then?” Do you know what I mean? How is just you saying that, those two sentences, how is that not the end of all of this?
Rebecca: Yeah. This week we spent a lot of time being mentored and talking to a longtime activist on this issue, Suzan Harjo, who’s been fighting racist mascots since the ’60s. One thing she said in our conversation this week was, “I haven’t heard the new argument in defense of racist mascots since 1962.” And I don’t think that there are good reasons to keep the name and a lot of reasons for it to change.
Lindsay: It can feel these days like we’re moving backwards as a country for pretty obvious reasons, but overall there are some positive changes still happening thanks to grassroots activism and thanks to people. Lately we’ve seen that coincide with athletics a lot. We’ve seen the Black Lives Matter movement really take off and thanks to Colin Kaepernick we’ve seen athletes really find their voice and speak up on a bigger stage. Do you think that that current political movement within sports is going to help the racist mascot’s cause to kind of become more mainstream again?
Rebecca: I hope so. I mean, I think that when people were kneeling during the football games, it wasn’t brought up a lot in the media I watched. But I also think that the media lost the point of the original protest of the players, which was to talk about police brutality. A lot of the media that I saw was talking about Trump and Trump’s backlash. “What does the Star Spangled Banner mean and what does our national anthem?” So, I think even the initial issue that players were putting forward around police were killing unarmed Black people got lost in the media frenzy, and so, I think, yeah, I didn’t see that issue come up. But I think in general, and in a broader way, I think our country is having an identity crisis right now.
There’s this huge backlash from White people who feel threatened by the advances that people of color have had. At the same time, we’re seeing a lot of racist symbols, like confederate monuments, starting to fall, and people really starting to question that history. And so, while there’s been this awakening of white supremacy, I think there has, at the same time, been a counterbalance of a reckoning with what some of these symbols mean. And so, we’re in an interesting moment. And I think that the mascot debate is really relevant to that, of how are we teaching our kids about these issues, how are we talking to them about the history of this country? And for better or worse, a lot of people get their information from pop culture and mascots is a huge way that people learn about who Native people are. Whether or not they would say that out loud, I think, it’s a definitely a really big part of people’s subconscious.
Lindsay: Yeah. And there was recently an article…I can’t even remember the exact situation why it was, but there was a racial slur. The n-word had been used by, I think, an NFL player on the Washington team, and the headlines about it would not bleep out the Washington’s team name, wouldn’t bleep out the n-word. And it was like, how are we doing this? Why do you think that it’s become so okay to continue to use these racist mascots? Lots of time you’ll have the Indians where the logo itself is very racist, but the names aren’t in itself a racial slur, like with the Washington NFL team. How is that just gone overlooked? Why hasn’t that reckoning come?
Rebecca: I mean, I think that one of the biggest hurdles that we face as Native people in terms of gaining equality in the United States is invisibility. And I think a lot of people in the US think that either Native people don’t really exist anymore or they’re just so few of us, and there’s a handful of us that live on a reservation somewhere in a really rural area, we’re not seen as contemporary, vibrant people. We’re not seen as living in the DMV. People don’t realize that the tribe whose land the stadium is on is still an active tribe and they’re still practicing their ceremonies and their own self-governance. I think it’s the self-reinforcing thing because it’s like, well, if people aren’t around and they don’t exist and they are not real, then why would you need to stand up for their rights? And I think the maroon cartoon of a disembodied head on the side of a football helmet really reinforces those ideas that we’re not real people. You’re not going to stand up for the rights of a cartoon.
Lindsay: Right. There’s so much great grassroots activism going on within the Native community. How can those outside of the community help and help amplify that work? And are there any specific works that you would like to draw attention to that maybe people aren’t aware of?
Rebecca: Yeah. I think that getting involved with whatever organizations in your area. And so, looking up, it might be a tribal organization, it might be an urban Indian house center, but really starting by trying to build relationships with whatever Native community is where you’re at. And then, I think also it’s really important for folks to include us in their issues. So, when people are talking about the environment, Indigenous communities are at the front line. When people are talking about global warming, our communities are at the front line of resource extraction and almost every issue in the US. So, a lot of times, we’re just completely left out.
Like, I was watching the news and I was watching this episode about police shootings. It was talking about how we talk a lot of times police fatalities, but there hasn’t been a lot of statistics on people who have been shot by the police and survived. And so, they showed statistics by race and they completely left out Native Americans when we have really high rates of police violence. And so, I think that visibility issue is key. And so, yeah, I think non-Native people building relationships. And then, also self-educating. I think most people in the US, what you know, is what you learned in your high school history class. And what you’ve learned through the media, which is not only not enough information but also incorrect information. There’s just a lot of reeducating that people need to do in this country to be able to understand Native identity and Native rights to be able to effectively advocate for it.
Lindsay: Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for joining us, and congratulations on the success of the campaign, which even solicited a response from the Washington NFL team itself. Of course, the response was, “How dare you think we might be decent people? We are never changing this name.” [laughter] But it was a response nonetheless. Where can people follow the work you’re doing going forward?
Rebecca: Yeah. So, people can follow the Rising Hearts Coalition on Facebook and Twitter. People can also root for the updated Washington Redhawks team. Also, under that name on Facebook and Twitter.
Lindsay: Love that. Thank you so much.
Rebecca: Thank you.
Shireen: Wrapping up part one of the best of interviews is Jessica’s interview with Kristin Duquette and Lacey Henderson, speaking on COVID and disability in sport Kristin Duquette is a disability advocate and former Team USA swimmer, and Lacey Henderson is a current Paralympian and host of the podcast Picked Last in Gym Class. They spoke about their own athletic journeys, disability in sports, and of course COVID-19.
Jessica: Okay, first, tell me who you are and what you do.
Kristin: Hi, thanks so much for having me on. I’m Kristin Duquette…Don’t know where to begin, because I feel like I have lived about five different lives at this point.
Jessica: Kristin Duquette is a former Team USA swimmer for the Paralympic league. She’s a former Obama appointee who now works in the federal government. She’s also a student at the Naval Postgraduate School for Homeland Defense and Security.
Kristin: And definitely a disability rights advocate, nationwide and internationally.
Jessica: Well that does sound like five lifetimes, that’s very impressive. If you feel comfortable with this, can you tell us a little bit about your disability and what it means to have a progressive disability and the impact of that on your life?
Kristin: Yeah, totally. So, I grew up non-disabled, meaning I didn’t show any symptoms of any kind of disability at all. At the time when I was a kid I was doing about six different sports.
Jessica: Oh, wow.
Kristin: Yeah, wanted to be an Olympic swimmer, I wanted to be Natalie Coughlin.
Reporter: Coughlin’s got the lead there. Medeiros and Bootsma chasing…And it’s gonna be Natalie Coughlin!
Kristin: And I loved backstroke. What started to happen was I couldn’t keep up with my friends. I remember at a swim meet doing a flip turn at the wall and when I flipped I looked on either side in the middle of the flip turn and I couldn’t see anyone around me. I was like, wow, I’m totally killing it here. I think I was, what, like 7 or 8. I was a very competitive person, and that hasn’t changed. But I touched the wall and saw no one else is in the pool because I was that slow, and everyone was clapping. My shoulder blades were starting to stick out, and it’s called scapular winging. I was starting to trip over my feet, and I remember when I was about 7, 8, 9, being like, “Kristin, why can’t you do this?” Just run home faster, or just kick a little harder. What is going on?
I got a genetic test and a bunch of tests when I was 8 and on the week of my 9th birthday I was diagnosed with facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy, which is a specific kind of muscular dystrophy. It’s genetic, it’s non-life-threatening for the majority of people. Growing up was not fun. I definitely went through my phases of depression and struggling of trying to fit in, just like all kids growing up. But the more I was growing up also different aspects of my body were just degrading at the same time. So while I was maturing intellectually and socially, physical parts of my body were going in the opposite direction.
Jessica: What did this mean for your sports career?
Kristin: I wasn’t aware of disabled sports, I was’t aware of Paralympics or anything like that. I just quit all sports, and I took up music. I just threw myself into academics. I used to be manager of different sports teams and I despised it. I just wanted to also be out on the field. It was only when I was in high school I re-taught myself how to swim. I wanted to do something on my own body’s merit and I wanted to be with my friends.
Jessica: Can you tell me what you mean when you re-taught yourself how to swim? What did that look like? How do you explain that to someone who is able-bodied, how to re-learn a skill like that?
Kristin: Yeah, I mean, essentially I look six years off and I remember sitting down and being like, okay, I mentally remember how to do it regardless of if you’re in a different phase of a body, you mentally still remember how to do it. Like, I still remember how to run even though my legs could not do that. But you can imagine that, right? So a lot of different visualization with memory, and I was just like, let’s see what we can do. I remember looking up different YouTube videos of technique of Michael Phelps, Ryan Lochte, just very high-stake races that I would actually take to the pool and pretend it was like the final countdown, but it was really with like a senior citizen swimming next to me and they didn’t know that it was the final countdown. So I used a lot of imagination, but just getting back into the water was so beautiful in the sense that I had no one around, I just fell in love with something all over again that gave me so much freedom and joy in a world that I really didn’t feel like I belonged in a lot of senses. Also, I was getting that endorphin high and the chemical releases that I hadn’t had in years. But the end goal was to be on my high school swim team, and I knew that no one else was disabled at all. So I said to myself, and I don’t know where this came from, but I said if I could swim 600 laps – and the pool was maybe 10, 11 yards, it wasn’t a 25m or anything like that – I said if I could swim 600 laps in that pool in one day I can at least show this high school coach that I love the water. I’m not gonna be making points, but hopefully I can add something to the team. So I made a journal, I did a bunch of workouts, I logged it all, and I eventually did that goal a year later. I emailed her and she was like, “I have no clue who you are.” I can’t imagine now…I was fifteen, like, getting an email from a 15 year old, like, look, I did this and I swam this but I can’t win points for your team, can I be on your team? She said, “I don’t know who you are but you definitely show determination and a passion for this. I would love if you were on our team that you also trained for the Paralympics.” So that’s how I actually learned about the Paralympics and started.
Jessica: That’s so interesting. So you hadn’t seen, growing up, you hadn’t seen disabled athletes?
Kristin: No. So actually, a funny story that I like to say is when I wasn’t competing and I wasn’t swimming – I think I was about 13 at the time – I remember watching the 2004 Olympic Games and just watching all the races that were happening in Greece and I remember thinking, my god, if I had another shot at swimming and racing, god, I would just give it my all. Six years later in 2010 I competed at that same venue as the captain of Team USA.
Jessica: You had set…Am I correct on this? You have set American Paralympic records?
Kristin: American records, yes.
Jessica: Yeah! What does that feel like? What does that feel like to set a record like that?
Kristin: It’s pretty cool, I’m not gonna lie! [laughs]
Jessica: So in the middle of all this, you go to college. We’re talking about your college years.
Kristin: Yeah.
Jessica: You go to Wheaton. Can you tell us the story of trying to swim while you’re at Wheaton?
Kristin: Yeah. I met up with a swim coach beforehand, you know, I was 17, 18; he was like, “I’ve trained with other Paralympic swimmers.” I’m like, yeah, this is awesome, so I went there. Just being a disabled person in general, you have to be your advocate at all times, and I was growing into speaking up for myself in those ways because growing up I felt so much shame for looking and operating so differently from everyone else around me. I had a comment one time from my coach of, like, “Oh, you said you need help doing X, Y, Z? Does your mom help you put your competition suit on too?” Things like that. I didn’t know how to respond, I didn’t understand the context, and I didn’t feel included at all. Some of the swimmers were nice, but I definitely was not included. I was told multiple times that I was too intent on training for something that I really wanted.
What eventually happened was I was actually at a training in San Diego, California with one of the Team USA coaches and I got an email in August from the coach of all the reasons why I should no longer be on the swim team, and they were gonna have tryouts this year and I could try out but it was very likely I wouldn’t make it and I could still swim at the pool if I wanted to but the chances of me being actually on the swim team now were not gonna happen. It was eight bullet points and some of them were, “You take away from your teammates’ concentration before their events because you ask for help to get out of the pool,” – obviously, because these pools don’t have ADA compliance of lifts, so I do have to get pulled out. I physically can’t pull myself out of a pool. It related a lot to asking for help in a lot of things that I legitimately needed help with. Again, I felt kind of a ton of shame, I felt like I was a burden, and I hated it, and I didn’t know where else to go. I transferred to Trinity because it was close to home and I did that within two weeks of the semester of my sophomore year and I filed a complaint with the Department of Education of that instance at Wheaton college with the swim coach.
Jessica: That was with the office of civil rights?
Kristin: Yes.
Jessica: What happened with it?
Kristin: You know, I think maybe about a year or two later I got a letter, but I don’t think anything really came of it. I know a lot of people said, you know, “Kristin, you should sue the school.” I quite frankly just didn’t have it in me. I just felt so much shame, I didn’t want to rehash so much of that.
Jessica: So, you had the goal of going to the 2012 Paralympics in London. When did you find out that that was not gonna happen?
Kristin: The 2012 US Paralympic trials were in North Dakota. So, I’m a backstroker and I remember since I was in a lower class less events were going to be available in the London Games. It was for an event that was not my event, and I did the 50 free, I saw my time; I was like, yeah, this isn’t gonna work. I knew that, but what they did is after the swim meet they ask you to go into a room and they announce the team and I knew I didn’t make it, but I still went because a lot of my friends were going to make it. I’ll never forget that conflicting moment of feeling like my heart was swept on the floor and stomped on at the same time feeling really happy for my friends that are crying because they made a dream that they wanted while my dream was crushed. It did take a while to not feel depressed and to know that there’s so much else to do outside of competing in swimming. After London 2012 I remember talking with my college advisor on what my thesis would be and we wanted to tie in so much of my personal experience, and I thought about and eventually wrote about whether disability rights are viewed as human rights in a UN context in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, specifically article 30.5, which is the right to sport.
Jessica: Yeah, and you went to the UN, correct? In 2016, to talk about this. Can you give us…What is like your elevator pitch for your argument? What were you arguing in your thesis?
Kristin: Wow, I’m really put on the spot! [laughs]
Jessica: That’s fine, we can, like–
Kristin: No, I’ll try! I mean, I put enough work into it, and it was a very expensive education, so…Essentially the argument is that it’s valid and it needs to happen. But the disability community on an international level, it’s the biggest minority population in the world, it’s drastically under-represented, and the majority of a lot of governments are still very much focusing on basic human rights for people that are disabled, because its needed, but at the same time I wanna push it. As my coaches in the past have said, I am a pit bull. I wanna push it to all of the other levels of recreation, of sport, of media, of sexual reproduction rights, and it’s gonna take all of us, not those that are just disabled to do that.
Jessica: A good friend of mine is an organizer, and she always says that hope is a discipline, you gotta work at that, you know? That that’s not something you can just hold all the time. Is access to sport a human right?
Kristin: I would categorize sport as culture, and access to culture is a human right. I would constitute that obviously as a secondary human right compared to food, water, shelter; I would 100% see it more as also an access because non-disabled people have access to that, and so we need equal access.
Jessica: So, the pandemic has been affecting all kinds of athletes, from amateur to professional, and we’ve seen that. But in what ways do you think disabled athletes are uniquely affected?
Kristin: Yeah, so one thing that we do have going for ourselves is the ability to adapt. We’re always adapting to different situations, we’re always adapting to getting more injuries, we’re more susceptible to physical things that come in our way, and obviously systems too. So I think the biggest thing is we’re already creative, we have a leg up in that sense. I also think that at the same time depending on the disability itself, there’s only kind of a window for a lot of disabilities, that you really peak, and a lot of that is contingent on time and where you are in your body to max it out. But also, you know, on top of that, a lot of disabled athletes are also immunocompromised. If I was immunocompromised and also a Paralympic swimmer still training, would I run the risk of using the pool I would always use? There’s a lot of elements that aren’t working in your favor when you’re already physically compromised in some way.
Jessica: I have a couple more questions.
Kristin: Go for it.
Jessica: If that’s okay.
Kristin: Yeah yeah yeah! I’m in quarantine, I’m not going anywhere! [laughter]
Jessica: Fair, fair. So I know that disabled athletes’ access to sports is a huge topic, but are there 2 or 3 maybe basic things that need to change or could change in order to make sport more accessible? Or I guess, if you were in charge of the world, Kristin, what would be the first thing that you would change around disabled sports?
Kristin: Oh gosh. [laughs] Would people want me to have that power? I would increase the ability for disabled athletes to have collegiate scholarships, and I quite frankly would rework the NCAA system to also include disabled athletes, because that–
Jessica: I actually never thought about the fact that it doesn’t!
Kristin: It doesn’t, unless you have a particular type of disability that you are still able to contribute within the NCAA point system.
Jessica: Huh.
Kristin: So, I would love if it was integrated. That can be a bit controversial, of able-bodied and disabled athletes competing on the same teams. There’s a lot of discussion on that, or would you just have disabled teams compete against each other? But we need to integrate that. We also need to have the same amount of coverage for the Paralympics as the Olympics. They need more scholarships, they need more sponsorships. Disabled athletes also need the same amount of care and attention when it comes to mental health, too.
Jessica: So here’s my fun COVID question: what are you doing to pass the time these days? Have you picked up a hobby, are you binge-watching anything?
Kristin: Oh gosh. I really got into painting my nails, because I would usually never do that because I wouldn’t have the time. Definitely…Oh, this is what I’ve been doing: I have gone down rabbit holes on TikTok of skincare and the Free Britney movement. I’m definitely pro-Britney movement! [laughs]
Jessica: That’s great. That's great. I love her. Her Instagram is a thing of beauty.
Kristin: Yeah! [laughs]
Jessica: Well thank you so much for being on Burn It All Down, Kristin. This has been wonderful.
Kristin: Thank you for having me. Such a pleasure.
Jessica: You can follow Kristin on Instagram @kirstin__duquette and on Twitter @KristinDuquette. And now, let’s turn to our second guest.
Lacey: My name is Lacey Henderson. I am a Paralympian. I do long jump professionally for US Paralympics. I dabble in the 100m as well, and I lost my leg above the knee to childhood cancer. I had a cancer called synovial sarcoma and then kind of was an athlete with a prosthetic leg growing up – I cheered competitively in high school and then I cheered in college and then I kind of in a weird roundabout way found track and field as I was finishing my undergrad, so it’s been a great way to kind of use your disability to get a job and pay the bills.
Jessica: [laughs] Will you take me…I’d like to talk about your first race. Could you tell me about that?
Lacey: I’ll tell the embarrassing–
Jessica: Okay.
Lacey: When I have time I tell, like, the glory story, but it was not. It was the opposite of that.
Jessica: Okay.
Lacey: So…[laughs]
Jessica: Tell me the non-glory story.
Lacey: I had basically started pole vaulting…My dad and I went to Olympic trials for pole vault; he and I are really competitive and we’ll just talk trash, like, that’s my actual true talent is trash-talking. [laughs] So, one day we were just talking about who was the better athlete and somehow he was like, “Lacey, you couldn’t pole vault two feet. You’re not fast enough, you’re not strong enough, you just wouldn’t be able to do it.” At 21, you can’t tell me nothin’. I know it all, and only my family that comes from a pole vault background would be able to have a pole vault pit and poles just ready, like, [laughter] just on demand.
Jessica: Sure.
Lacey: So the next day I jumped; I jumped six feet. But basically I really got into the feeling, like, I knew that my cheer career was gonna end and I just wanted to still feel like I could do flips and fly. So I got a running leg, I started competing just like indoor kind of all-comer track meets and I got asked to do my first 100m race. So, I’m from Denver, and my dad is a well-known track name for at least a while, probably not now…Yeah, time keeps going. But we’re lined up at the line and I know the announcers from cheerleading – I used to judge cheer competitions as well – and so they were just trolling the hell out of me, like, “Lacey Henderson, daughter of legend TJ Henderson, all-star cheerleader…” blah blah blah. And of course, again, me, 21, I’m like, “Yasss, that’s me! I’m the best!” [Jessica laughing]
So, we line up – it’s a unified race, so they have all ages and different levels of disability. The person I’m lined up to is this younger boy and he…I’m a right leg amputee, he’s a left leg amputee. We get set, the gun goes off, and our prosthetic blades clip each other and so I go down immediately to the ground. I just remember laying face-planted on the track. For a second I was like, man, they really had to do that whole introduction! [laughs] And I hear one of the coaches, who’s coincidentally a congenital amputee, I just hear him be like, “Lacey, get up. Lacey, get up, get up. You have to finish. Get up.” I get up, I finish the race. But they actually let me come back the following day and I’m able to race again and I qualify for London. So, the second part of the story is usually what I tell people when I wanna be impressive, but that’s what actually happened. [laughter]
Jessica: Wow, that’s amazing. So, you have been to the Paralympics; you went to Rio in 2016, you competed in the 100m dash and then the long jump where you placed 8th–
Lacey: Yeah.
Jessica: –which is fantastic. So, tell me when you started thinking about the 2020 Tokyo Games.
Lacey: First of all, that was very nice of you to say I finished 8th which is fantastic.
Jessica: It IS fantastic! [laughs]
Lacey: Yeah, I mean, I made finals, which is crazy, because I think when you get to a certain level and just athletes in general you’re so hard on yourself, you’re like, “Don’t say that, I don’t wanna hear it.” But it is true, I made finals. It was not the best meet of my life, but I did make finals. People did not make finals, I have to remind myself. Thank you for that, thank you for that reminder.
Jessica: You're welcome.
Lacey: So, I wasn’t satisfied, clearly, with me Rio performance, and I was like, alright, we’ll get ‘em next time. So that was pretty much what planted the seed. I knew I was scratching the surface of my skillset, and I was like, alright, if we do another four years it’s gonna be poppin’ off.
Jessica: Okay, so when did it start to enter your mind that they may postpone the 2020 Games?
Lacey: I think maybe January-February, my mom started being like, “Oh, this COVID is really bad.” And I still was traveling for work, I still was traveling for training. I was living in Austin and I moved to Denver because I was having issues with facilities. In Denver I have a little bit better resources, we were gonna finish the year with the home team and maybe finish the career in Denver where it all started, it was gonna be a very beautiful metaphor. I start going to my tracks, and they’re locked up – not like normal locked up like one padlock, triple padlocked up. You’re like, well, this is gonna be a little bit more difficult to be able to find a sand pit if I can’t get to a track. But I was used to getting kicked out of facilities, like, for being a track athlete at the professional level, honestly, we get no love except for Olympic years, and even then they’re like, “Get off the track. You’re not supposed to be here.”
Jessica: Is it because you’re using high school and college facilities?
Lacey: Yeah. If you’re an alumni or it’s your school it’s usually a lot easier, but conveniently I went to a school where they don’t have a track team.
Jessica: Okay.
Lacey: But probably late February there starts being a little bit more inconsistencies with tracks being available, and then I would say mid-March it starts dawning on you that you’re like, there’s no way that they can do this. There’s no way they can do this. If I may be frank…Okay, let me just preface this by saying I have been lucky enough to be an athlete for my adult life, so I don’t really know a lot about business, I don’t really know a lot about budgets, but with that being said USA was definitely on team make-this-happen. We had a couple of calls from USOPC for a few kind of emergency-type situations because there was athletes on these calls like swimmers and water polo athletes like, “Well, I’m going into the ocean to try to train,” or, “I’m going into lakes to try to train because I can’t get to the pool.”
I have international competitors and I have really strong competitors from Italy and Spain and they were locked in their houses, and it just seemed…I remember at one point I said on a call, I was like, “This seems like the opposite of integrity.” The idea of sports is so beautiful and so wonderful and harmonic but the business side of sport is like, oh, we spent a lot of money on this and we need to do everything we can to make this work. So, a lot of people were kind of freaking out. Track meets for us were just dropping left and right. You have to qualify in order to go to trials, and trials you have to qualify for the team to go to Tokyo. Everything was postponed for a while, postponed, postponed. Then when Tokyo got postponed it was like, alright, we’re just gonna re-do this year next year.
Jessica: Can you tell me what that’s like? I’m an anxious person…Maybe this is too basic a question but how did you manage it? How did you feel?
Lacey: First of all, let me say I have a fantastic sports psychologist.
Jessica: Good.
Lacey: I was texting him a lot! [laughs]
Jessica: Good.
Lacey: We had a couple of FaceTime calls. And honestly when they announced it officially I felt relief. It was becoming so stressful to try to fight to find a track that’s open, try to fight to find gyms that were open, which…They were all closed. It was like, this is real. They finally made the decision, and you can finally regroup and reprogram for the upcoming year.
Jessica: So you felt relief. I’m wondering if there was anything you did that you normally wouldn’t have done because you were training? Did you go, like, eat a bunch of ice cream?
Lacey: I like wine. I’ll say that. [laughter] I’m a gal that likes a nice glass of wine. Not really, I mean, you see jokes about people day-drinking at 11am which I do think is funny, but I still try to maintain some type of routine. That was one thing that I learned a long time ago with track, that having something that resembles routine kind of helps your brain not just feel like it’s just in complete desperation. Which…Some days it worked, some days it didn’t, and that’s okay. I kind of tried to do things that I don’t normally do, so I was doing little video yoga classes and trying to run distance around the blocks of my neighborhood – I’m not cut out for that I learned pretty quickly, but the yoga videos were pretty fun. I just tried to do things that were relaxing and not track-specific.
Jessica: So what does training look like for you right now then? Is it running around your neighborhood? How are you getting ready?
Lacey: So, the plan is basically now I’m doing some light training, still on the track, I’m really maximizing my equipment which needed…God, it needed help. But my prosthetic is nice now, like, I have it set up so it’s getting real nice for 2020, which is great.
Jessica: Can you tell me what that means? Maximize your equipment?
Lacey: Yeah, it’s so funny. There’s rules and regulations – I get asked this a lot – there’s rules and regulations mostly for the bilateral amputees, but for the unilateral amputees you’ll start seeing trends, basically, of the alignment on a lot of the prosthetics. A lot of the time the foot looks really far behind so your weight line from your hip down to your toe is almost at a triple extension angle. Basically, when your foot is hitting the ground you’re almost in a terminal stance type phase. So it was really just getting the alignment down; I was on running blades that were way too stiff, I wasn’t getting good compression last year. We actually had issues with shipping because most of my feet come from Austria. So I had some old ones that were just way too stiff, so thank goodness my prosthetist – that’s the term for that clinical profession – but my prosthetist is very smart, he’s really good at physics. So we just shaved off the sides and we were able to get the compression that we needed for now. We’ve definitely learned to be resourceful in an unprecedented time. But we’ll start preseason training, which is heavy volume stuff, in October.
Jessica: Before we talk big picture stuff around disabled athletes, I wanted to ask: did the postponement affect any other parts of your life? I assume you had post-Paralympic plans.
Lacey: Absolutely.
Jessica: Any of those been put on hold? What are you doing about that part of your life?
Lacey: It’s been on hold and it’s changed, which I think is a good thing. I had a lot of speaking events lined up this year so also my bank account was–
Jessica: Sure, yep, yep!
Lacey: –a little bit more frowny faces. But you know, I’ll do a Zoom, whatever. [laughs] But my plan was retiring after Tokyo and I was ready to kind of pick up stuff for my own podcast and pick up stuff for my career outside of sport and actually I was really just burning out. 2018, 2019, I was training by myself, I was having all these leg problems, and I was like, I just need to get through to Tokyo, just need to get through to Tokyo. That’s not a great motivator, [laughs] but I guess it was good enough at the time. This year being able to take the time to see, “Do I like track? Yes, I do like track. Oh, here are all the things that my leg needed that I’ve been putting off, putting off, and now we’re fixing them.” I feel like maybe I could go to 2024. I think it’s just been kind of a weird but good reset. USOPC offers schooling, you can do online school, so I’m getting my master’s degree right now, which is kind of cool.
Jessica: In what?
Lacey: MBA.
Jessica: Awesome!
Lacey: It was cool. It was available! I didn’t really think about it, but I panicked. I was like, “What am I gonna do with all my time!” And then it turned out I was just not organizing my time very well, but a lot of that was constant exhaustion, fighting your prosthetic. So, I don’t know, I’m still competitive and I’m still able to make teams and it still is fun and serving me so then, you know, why not.
Jessica: Okay, so not retiring. Interesting.
Lacey: No, not this time. Not this go around!
Jessica: Alright. So, obviously the pandemic is affecting athletes of all stripes at this point. In what ways do you think disabled athletes are being uniquely affected by the pandemic? What kind of conversations with other disabled athletes…What have those conversations been like? What are you hearing from your friends that are Paralympians?
Lacey: Okay…Sorry, I just heard a lawnmower go off. I don’t think you can hear it. Okay.
Jessica: That’s so funny – my husband just mowed the lawn and I was like, “You better finish at 1pm!” [laughs] So I feel you.
Lacey: I was at a call yesterday and I swear to god my neighbor was trolling me. I’m like, come on! Okay. So, first I think I was like, “Disabled athletes: we’re adaptable! We’re the masters at adapting!” I mean, I think while that’s true there’s also so many risks that I feel like is going to be interesting in how it’s covered and taken care of. My personal belief is, you know, a world post-COVID is going to still be very much affected by it, so having 10,000 athletes in one dining hall at one time is gonna be creative, to say the least, regardless of ability or not. For me, I’m lucky enough that I’m an ambulatory athlete where I’m just kind of like, all I need is a leg, you know? That’s it. For athletes I think a lot about like the seated athletes, like a lot of higher-spine injury athletes, like the bocce athletes, any type of quad athlete that’s gonna need assistance transferring from their chair to their throwing chair.
It’s gonna be interesting, and it will definitely be more heavily affected than the non-disabled athletes for sure – which isn’t to say that non-disabled athletes…I think that there’s this mindset where people think that the disabled athletes, like, we run more risks…Which I guess we do, but there’s plenty of non-disabled athletes with extenuating circumstances that could be affected by COVID. Just because you’re an athlete doesn’t mean that you have a steel immune system. There’s also the fact that for track and field, at least in the US, at lot of our officials are just the exact age demographic of the people most affected by this. So, hopefully…I have full faith that there’s people much smarter than me making plans for those circumstances because everybody has a right to play and, you know, these different categories of athletes should still be able to do their sport, and I know that they’re still training. Hopefully the powers that be have plans put in place for that.
Jessica: One thing I’ve been thinking about with COVID is we’re hearing about…Obviously a lot of people have died, but a lot of people have gotten it and gotten better but had disability on the other side of it, these long-haulers. We’re gonna have a significant number of new disabled people specifically from this pandemic that we’re living in right now. I’m wondering what your message would be to those people that wanna be athletic and how should people within sports be preparing for this?
Lacey: That’s a great question actually. I would say, first of all I guess to everybody: you learn quickly that no one disability is created equal. I think what we’re learning now with COVID is no one person responds to a disease or a treatment as equally as somebody else. The cool thing about sports is that there are people, especially now with the Paralympic movement growing, there are people put in place that are equipped to present sport to you and make it accessible to you no matter what your circumstances – your physical circumstance, I should be honest, because, let me tell you: being disabled’s one of the most expensive things I’ve done. [laughs]
Jessica: Yeah, of course.
Lacey: You know, I didn’t sign up for it but that’s just the way the cookie crumbles. So, without the risk of getting too political hopefully after this too we find better ways to serve the disabled community because even before COVID we were the largest minority in the world and it’s just gonna keep growing. For people recovering from COVID that are gonna acquire prolonged or permanent issues, you just learn to make your disability a part of your routine. I think the biggest misconception is that people with disabilities wake up super duper inspired and jazzed to just take on the world and prove everybody wrong. You’re like, nah man, I’m just trying to go to the grocery store today! [laughs] Like, the disableds: we’re just like you! The biggest thing I guess for disability, especially in the US, is you have to learn to advocate for yourself because no one else is doing it right now.
Jessica: Hm. So, I know that disabled athletes’ access to sport is a huge topic. Are there 2 or 3 things that need to change or could change to make sport more accessible? Like, if Lacey was in charge of the world and got to change 2 or 3 things that would suddenly make sport more accessible for disabled communities. What would that be for you?
Lacey: Yeah. Honestly, I would do a lot more cohesive and unified sports. I was lucky enough to train in Phoenix alongside Olympians and it was a utopia-type experience for training. Like, we had able-bodied, we had disabled athletes, we had everybody. That proved to me that everybody can grow and everybody can get better regardless of the people you surround yourself with. I think right now, the US have gotten very comfortable with the NCAA system providing sport development for athletes becoming adults, which is great, but not great for everybody because not everybody can be an NCAA athlete and score points for that team. I think our country could do a lot better job of just better sport development programs, we can do more local sport development programs, and make them unified, make them for everybody. Because the crazy thing about disabled sport and non-disabled sport is that its the same sport. [Jessica laughs] Like in track and field, it’s the same event, same distance. The equipment may look different but at the end of the day it is the same event. Badminton’s the same way, I learned that last year! Don’t know a lot about badminton but holy shmokes, what an incredible sport! They train with their able-bodied counterparts because it’s the same sport! I think people in the disability community, sometimes we get wrapped up in it too where things need to be separated or made specific for you, made specific for your disability, made specific for people with different disabilities, and sometimes you just need to jump in and play. That was, I think, the biggest thing that I learned growing up. Even though I was in disability denial, like, “I’m not disabled, I just have one leg!” [laughs] But that was the best thing that served me, was that you have that camaraderie, you’re able to make friends in the same sport you do, and I think that’s important because in our communities, in our closest communities, typically if you are a person with a disability you’re the only person in your community with a disability. So to try to do a sport consistently you need to have groups that are going to help you achieve your sport regardless of who else participates in it.
Jessica: So, can you tell us a little bit about obviously what’s next for training for Tokyo next year, but what else are you doing?
Lacey: Yeah, so right now I’m finishing my MBA. I just bought a house, which is exciting. We have a house! I’m doing a lot of raking and, like…[laughs]
Jessica: Yeah, there’s always something with a house.
Lacey: There’s always something. It’s actually a little overwhelming. But other than that, yeah, Tokyo’s the plan. We’d like to travel…My boyfriend’s grandma lives in Italy and my family in Italy so we always like to go back and at least hang out. I kind of feel like you can get away for a second.
Jessica: That’s where I want to go when this is over. I’m learning Italian. [laughs]
Lacey: Nice!
Jessica: Well, it's real loose. It’s like once a week.
Lacey: Hey, but you know, they appreciate the effort regardless.
Jessica: Yeah.
Lacey: I speak Spanish but I’ll do it with like an Italian accent. It’s amazing how far you can get.
Jessica: It’s pretty close! Yeah yeah yeah.
Lacey: You pick up some words. But yeah, I guess besides training and school we’re still planning on doing season two of Picked Last For Gym Class, for my podcast. I interview people who basically talk about the stories of struggles before success and it's about 50/50 disabled people/non-disabled people. So I would love to just keep working a little bit more on the creative podcasting side. I’ve had a lot of fun. But yeah, I think more than anything this year’s been a reminder, and I was reminded the last Olympic year too that you’re never just an athlete, you’re never just a person with a disability, you’re never just a mom, you’re never just whatever. We can be so many things and there’s space for all of it and it’s been a weird but good year to be reminded of that.
Jessica: Thank you Lacey Henderson for being on Burn It All Down.
Lacey: Thank you.
Jessica: You can follow Lacey Henderson on Instagram.
Lacey: My name’s laceyisyourfriend there. I have a Twitter, @lacesyourfriend – I ran out of characters for that. [laughs]
Jessica: Her website is laceyjhenderson.com. Her podcast is called Picked Last In Gym Class. That’s it for me, Jessica Luther.