Episode 188: The Dream, The WNBA, And The Election Of Rev. Raphael Warnock
After a week that included a Trump-incited insurrection at the U.S. Capitol as well as the election of two Democrats from Georgia to the Senate, the whole crew gets together. Jessica, Amira, Brenda, Lindsay, and Shireen discuss this current moment of athlete activism, with a focus on the Atlanta Dream, the WNBA, and the election of Rev. Raphael Warnock to the U.S. Senate. Of course, you’ll hear the first Burn Pile of 2021. And you’ll meet this week’s Torchbearers, starring Marta and Toni Pressley, and learn what’s good in our lives.
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.
Links
FA will not discipline Arsenal Women trio for Dubai trip in tier 4: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/jan/06/fa-will-not-discipline-arsenal-women-trio-for-dubai-trip
Edinson Cavani: Conmebol defend Manchester United striker over offensive Instagram post: https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league/manchester-united/edinson-cavani-instragram-post-conmebol-b1782705.html
Boston Red Sox hire Bianca Smith, first Black woman to coach professional baseball: https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/30656231/boston-red-sox-hire-bianca-smith-first-black-woman-coach-professional-baseball
Court grants injunction in Title IX case, blocks University of Iowa from dropping women's swim team: https://www.hawkcentral.com/story/sports/college/iowa/swimming-diving/2020/12/22/title-ix-court-blocks-university-iowa-dropping-swim-program/3959084001
Match officials for the FIFA Club World Cup Qatar 2020™ appointed: https://www.fifa.com/clubworldcup/news/officials-for-the-fifa-club-world-cup-qatar-2020tm-appointed
A Women’s Boxing Team Grows in Gaza: https://www.thenation.com/article/society/womens-boxing-gaza
Marta’s getting married!!! https://www.allforxi.com/2021/1/4/22213193/marta-toni-pressley-getting-married
Transcript
Jessica: Hello, and welcome to Burn It All Down, the feminist sports podcast you need. I’m Jessica, and on this week's show I'm joined by the whole crew: Brenda, Shireen, Amira, and Lindsay. It’s been a hell of a week. We’re recording this on Sunday, January 10th – four days after a Trump-incited insurrection at the US Capitol in Washington, DC. But it was also the week that two Democrats won senate seats in Georgia, a historically conservative state for a whole host of reasons but especially because of racism and voter suppression. So, on this week's show we’re gonna talk once again about the intersection of sports and politics, and this current moment of athlete activism, with most of our focus on the Atlanta Dream, the WNBA, and the election of Reverend Raphael Warnock to the US Senate.
Amira: Yes, sing all the praises and do all of that, but do it in a way that is grounded in humanity, that isn’t making them objects of magic…
Jessica: Then we’ll burn things that deserve to be burned, highlight the torchbearers who are giving us hope during this dark time, let you know what's good in our worlds, and tell you what we’re watching this week. But first, before we get into all of that: it is 2021! Happy(?) new year! [laughs] I feel like it’s a question at this point. But I thought we’d start off…Do you all do resolutions? Do you have any for this year? Shireen.
Shireen: I have decided in this fabulous my birthday month to rest, and what I’ve always been doing is take a break, take a breather. I’ve decided to fully commit to rest time, whatever that looks like for me in the moment. I don’t like walking, but I need fresh air, so whatever, whatever that looks like. Just…
Jessica: Sitting outside? [laughs]
Shireen: Sitting outside, just breathing. [Brenda laughs] Paint by numbers, I’m a big fan now. So, stuff like that. Just taking time to rest physically, emotionally, mentally.
Jessica: That sounds lovely. Lindsay?
Lindsay: I wanna be bold this year. I feel like I spent a lot of this last year in my head and I launched a business and this year I wanna be braver and bolder and keep doing things that make me uncomfortable and pushing through that discomfort. I don’t know if that’s a resolution but it’s kind of just my theme for this year.
Jessica: That’s awesome. Amira?
Amira: Yeah, I don’t know if I really think about resolutions now, mostly because my brain thinks of years like the academic one, so my real new year is late August.
Jessica: Sure.
Amira: But I do try to do a reset each semester, and I’m not just talking about the three new planners plus a digital planner that I buy because I think it will make me magically more organized. But to reset my intentions, and I know this semester has a lot going on in it for me, so my guiding intention of this mid-year reset is having grace for myself, because things are stressful enough without beating yourself up on top of it.
Jessica: Yeah, kindness for yourself, that’s such an ongoing goal. I feel that. Brenda?
Brenda: Normally I make resolutions but this year everything seems really hard.
Jessica: Yes.
Brenda: I feel like just getting by is enough of an accomplishment so I’m not gonna…I don’t wanna set the bar too high. Kind of on top of that, getting by for me means deciding to be in a good mood most of the time, like, just making that decision. Sometimes I just wake up and I’m like, you’re just gonna be in a good mood, bitch. [Jessica laughs] Like, that’s just what’s gonna happen. You know? You’re not gonna wait for good stuff to happen today, because–
Jessica: Who knows.
Brenda: It likely won’t.
Jessica: Yeah, yeah.
Brenda: So, yeah, exactly.
Jessica: I like all of yours, and I want to just take them all. I have a really concrete one. In the last few years I have been doing a baking thing, a thing I want to do that year for baking. This year I want to get better and more comfortable with pie. That’s my one big resolution. So, I recently bought Erin McDowell’s The Book On Pie: Everything You Need to Know to Bake Perfect Pies. So, Erin, she better come through for me. [laughs] So, we’ll see. Follow me on Instagram if you wanna see how that goes.
News anchor: WNBA players have been wearing shirts to protest an Atlanta Dream co-owner.
Anchor 2: Players on the Chicago Sky, Phoenix Mercury and Dream wearing ‘VOTE WARNOCK’ shirts on Tuesday night in support of voting against the Dream’s co-owner, Senator Kelly Loeffler.
Anchor 3: Our latest poll shows Democratic newcomer, Reverend Raphael Warnock, leading over Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler.
Anchor 4: We now make a projection in one of the two Georgia senate runoffs. CNN will now project that Democrat Raphael Warnock is elected to the US Senate.
Jessica: On Tuesday, Georgia went to the polls for two Senate runoffs and ended up electing two Democrats, John Ossoff and Reverend Raphael Warnock, flipping the Senate to the Democrats. Warnock’s name is one we’ve said a lot on Burn It All Down because he was running against Kelly Loeffler, a Trump-supporting Republican who has co-owned the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream since 2010. I went back and I checked, and Lindsay was the first person to mention Loeffler on Burn It All Down when she threw her on the burn pile back in December of 2019 on episode 136 saying, and I quote Lindsay Gibbs, “every single thing I learn about her is more infuriating than the last.” But Loeffler showed up in plenty of discussions this summer after she went after the WNBA’s support of Black Lives Matter and #SayHerName. In response to that the Dream and the rest of the league, the players, decided to put their support behind Warnock and did so without ever mentioning Loeffler’s name.
At the end of July Warnock was polling at only 9% with Loeffler at 26% – and even a different Democrat at 14%. On August 4th the Dream and the Phoenix Mercury wore shirts that read, ‘VOTE WARNOCK’ before their nationally televised match on ESPN. Two days later, Warnock’s camp contacted LaChina Robinson and told her, “Since players from the @WNBA wore their "VOTE WARNOCK" shirts on Tuesday, the campaign raised over $185k online, added over 3,500 new grassroots donors & grew his twitter followers by 3,500.” The players continued to back him right up through his election on Tuesday. I think it’s safe to say we’ve never seen this kind of collective organizing in sports in the United States…And it worked! But this is a bigger story than sports, and one that goes much further back than just this summer. Amira?
Amira: Yeah, absolutely. This is a story for me that’s fueled by the tenacity of Black women, and the WNBA joined with and became an extension of a Black organizing tradition that together fueled this win. We are obviously a sports podcast, so we will be talking more about the W in this segment, but I really wanted to take a moment to acknowledge these grassroots, and please permit me a minute to underscore the significance of this win. We’re talking about the state of Georgia, where like so many southern states Black folks have only really had the ability to vote for 55 years. In the 1960s Black voter registration in this state was held in the single digits due to state-sanctioned terror and suppression.
Black organizers, led by Black women such as Annell Ponder, risked life and limb, endured beatings and bombings, to try to register people to vote and push for the Voting Rights Act of 1965. After this act was gutted in 2016, Latosha Brown and Cliff Albright founded Black Voters Matter, traveling by bus in the south to turn out the vote and combat voter suppression on the ground. When, in 2018 after voter suppression cost Stacey Abrams the gubernatorial election, Abrams dedicated her energy to this same cause, joining forces with Black Voters Matter, with the New Georgia Project, and together it’s where these organizers helped to register over 800,000 Black voters in just the past two years. And can I just say, I’m so happy that Burn It All Down and many of you flamethrowers joined with us and participated in the Womxn Run the Vote relay in September that helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars to support their efforts.
Because on election day over 1 million Black voters helped turn Georgia blue, and on Tuesday night they increased their turnout over that to secure the Senate in electing Reverend Warnock, who became only the 11th Black senator ever. EVER in this country! And the first Black Democrat elected from the south. I almost don’t have words to talk about how special this is. Reverend Warnock himself is emblematic of Georgia – he's a Morehouse man, he’s a preacher at Ebenezer Baptist, which is the same pulpit King preached from. It’s such a significant place in the city. And Warnock, helping people to gather there and mourn and protest on the killing of Rayshard Brooks back in June or facilitating the late Senator John Lewis’s homegoing over the summer as well – and my word, thinking about Senator Lewis and CT Vivian, Georgia titans lost this past year, who must be joyous together looking at this occasion. Here’s Latosha Brown telling NPR a little bit more of why Warnock is so important and what his victory represents.
Latosha Brown: I am extremely excited about him winning because of what he represents. He represents Black Southerners that against the odds, that in a space that has been the home for the Confederacy, the space that has been the root for white supremacy and white nationalists, that where the Southern strategy was born, that there is a new Southern strategy that is being implemented, that is being fueled and engineered by people of color, and Black folks are on the vanguard.
Amira: So, yeah, it’s pretty damn special, and to have the WNBA be such a significant part of this story, to be interfacing and joining with these historic Black institutions, with this history, with this organizing tradition, it’s pretty special and I think absolutely right that Black folks – especially Black women from the WNBA to Latosha to Stacey and all of the organizers – are absolutely the vanguard.
Jessica: Thank you, Amira. The Dream doing this and following the lead of the organizers on the ground, especially Stacey Abrams, is particularly sweet. Lindsay, please tell us about that.
Lindsay: Yeah, there are a couple of connections that I wrote about in Power Plays that to me just symbolize how the Dream weren’t just kind of swooping in, they're kind of an integral part of Atlanta. First of all, Stacey Abrams along with former WNBA commissioner Lisa Borders were actually integral in getting the WNBA franchise into Atlanta in the first place.
Jessica: Amazing!
Lindsay: Which I just think is incredible synergy in the Power Plays last week. I found a news article and I literally squealed when I saw Stacey Abrams being quoted in this article from 2008 about the significance of bringing the Dream to Atlanta. Then there’s also the symmetry of the Dream being named after Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech, and then of course Warnock being the senior pastor at the church where Martin Luther King was a pastor as well. There was some synergy here and it’s powerful. But Amira’s totally right, that these grassroots organizers on the ground are the true heroes of this story.
Jessica: Shireen, you have a dream for Raphael Warnock, yes?
Shireen: I do. Actually, the first thing I thought was I would really love for Senator Warnock to be sworn in wearing an orange WNBA hoodie, which is like–
Lindsay: YES!
Shireen: –the hottest piece of clothing item. I’m no Anna Wintour, but seriously, everybody’s gotta have one of those.
Jessica: Yeah. I love the idea, just imagining that one. But I wanna go from here, and Shireen, I wanna think more broadly about this for a few minutes, about what we saw from the WNBA this summer and this electoral success for Warnock. What was your big takeaway here?
Shireen: Well, one of the things that I think I’ve been ranting about for years is just sort of this idea within sports media – and particularly held by gatekeepers – that sports is not political and there’s no space for writing about it in a political manner, etc, etc. Which I think is a bunch of bollocks. But I think one of the things that’s really key here is the way that we write about it, the way that it’s written, and I’m really glad, Jess, you went back to look at the way it’s being done. Notably our very own Lindsay Gibbs was one of the first to actually talk about it. I think this is really important, because we’re seeing a trend in sports media, and albeit being published too quickly of people refuting this, and trying to create those bridges and strengthen those gaps actually, about what sports can be. It’s a refusal and a rejection of the real and the very raw and the very now. I hate that. Even recently, a Canadian columnist who’s an absolutely pitiful person just wrote something about it again to reiterate and it’s…No. I’m sorry, I reject that. I also feel that in addition to the athlete activism and the strong Black women, that I hope that sports media is paying attention in the right ways.
Jessica: …Sorry, it’s snowing, I have to get my shit together.
Shireen: I knew it was snowing when you looked out the window! I’m like…That face!
Jessica: Gross, though. I’m not going out there.
Shireen: Do you wanna run outside and feel it on your face?
Jessica: No, no. No, it’s wet. [Shireen laughs] It’s so pretty though.
Shireen: It’s beautiful, Jess! Do you have mittens and a hat?
Jessica: Okay, sorry everyone. Alright, I totally agree, Shireen. We should bury that fiction like six feet under the ground finally, please. I feel like that’s lesson #1. Amira, you have another lesson for us, and also kind of maybe a word of caution about this?
Amira: Absolutely, which deals with other fictions – mostly Black women as superhero fanfic that tends to be the kind of pendulum swing from what Shireen’s talking about, but regurgitates quite quickly after these moments. You already see it with Stacey Abrams, and I’m worried that the WNBA and the Atlanta Dream specifically might fall into this same thing. What I’m talking about here is this kind of treatment where all of a sudden for like a day and a half on Twitter it's like, “Thank a Black woman in your life! Hug a Black woman! Black women are superheroes, they’re magic!” You know, I saw too many memes of Stacey Abrams fighting Thanos in Endgame, and I saw too, it was like, “People would rather write fanfic about Stacey Abrams and Thanos than actually thinking and investing in the Black women like her in their own networks.”
I think that yes, sing all the praises and do all of that, but do it in a way that is grounded in humanity, that isn’t making them objects of magic and that relies on them to do the work and that comes with sustained support and a sustained investment, a sustained engagement and listening from these organizers to the league and everything in between, and the Black women in your life who you're talking over to talk about this mythical creation you’ve made in your head is the other kind of thing to guard against. It’s kind of like looking both ways and having that caution and I think sometimes overexcitement can toe that line and so it would be great if we just reeled it back a little.
Jessica: Yeah, I saw someone say, like, “There’s a Stacey Abrams in your PTA and you’re not listening to her.”
Amira: Absolutely.
Jessica: Lindsay, we can learn something here from the Dream in this way, right? They weren't just saviors who swooped in, right?
Lindsay: Yeah, I mean, they plugged into the activist groups on the ground. Of course as athletes they're getting a certain level of attention, but they’re leveraging that to help these groups on the ground that are doing the work as Amira said. In my conversation with Elizabeth Williams, which will come out on Thursday with Elizabeth Williams of the Dream, we talk a little bit about just exactly what Amira was saying. I think it's that you hold up these people as heroes almost to absolve yourself of doing anything, right? Saying like, “When is a Stacey Abrams gonna come in and save North Carolina?” Well, what are YOU doing to save North Carolina, you know? What are you doing? Things like that. So, I do have to give the Dream players credit for plugging into the groups on the ground doing the work and also for not abandoning this campaign or this cause the second the WNBA season was over.
As we all know, a lot of these players went abroad or in all corners of the world, but Elizabeth Williams has continued to do PSA; you’ve had Tiffany Hayes who didn’t play this summer registering voters in the gym she owns in Atlanta; you’ve had of course Renee Montgomery, who also took this summer off from the Dream and the WNBA, doing work on the ground everywhere. You’ve had WNBA workers become poll workers, you’ve had Breanna Stewart having Warnock on her podcast just in the last couple of weeks to try and do a last push. So, the WNBA players have continued – particularly those in Atlanta, I think – I’ve been very impressed at how they've continued to stay engaged in this campaign. It wasn’t just this one photo op.
Jessica: Okay, so sports are political. Do the work collectively with those on the ground, the already established networks. Also, I think we can learn from what the WNBA did about the importance of unionization and collective labor action. I mean, this seems incredibly important. Linz, am I right that the WNBA itself has a model for how to act collectively here?
Lindsay: Yeah, I mean, look – this is also about the power of labor, right? [laughs] And organizing. We’ve talked about this on the show before, but the WNBA unionized right out the gate when the league was founded. I think it was the second year, in 1999, when it formed a union. That means that this union has had decades now to continue to build and to continue to solidify, to work on communication structures within each other. We really saw this start to pay off in the activism space in 2016 when the players wore Black Lives Matter shirts and the league fined them. There was a player rep for each team – and there was always a player rep for each team, but you started to see these communication structures join, right? From the players association to the players reps to the team, and this way of communication that I think helped solidify things then when they were working on their collective bargaining agreement and trying to get that togehter.
There was so much talk during that, and that really helped them not only with communication but with problem solving and with realizing that everybody’s not gonna be on the same page all the time, and figuring out how to deal with that. Figuring out how to have these hard conversations, figuring out how to have space for everyone. This is tough work! The ins and outs, day to day…Not everybody was on the same page right out of the gate with this, and the reason they were able to do that is because they’ve been doing that work amongst themselves for years, and I think you see in other leagues when they try to overnight arrange something like this and you see they’re not successful, so the WNBA was ready for this moment because of all the work they had done beforehand.
Jessica: Bren, I love listening to you talk about unionization in general. Can you tell us what the benefits of the unions are within sport, and maybe what it would be like if sports was partnering with a larger labor movement?
Brenda: Right. So, it’s always annoyed me that unionization efforts in sports are so fractured, that in an ideal world the NBA and the WNBA would have the same union so that the women could use the power of the men’s sport like they’ve started to do in global football. So, the benefits of unionization should be that you use the power of your labor to protect the most vulnerable among you. Unfortunately that’s not always the way it works, particularly when you have agents and you have sponsors and you have a lot of forces working against that. I would love for sports to kind of teach people more generally about labor unions, which in the United States in a very very concerted was has been purposefully forgotten. I mean, union rates are way down. I think it’s about 10% right now, down from about 20% in the 1980s, down from about 40% in the 1950s.
Jessica: Oh, wow.
Brenda: That’s no accident, right? That’s neoliberalism at work in the United States. So, most people just absolutely don’t even understand what a union does. You’ve seen right to work states and all of this legislation pass that almost makes it illegal to be in a union in the south. That’s absolutely related to being able to exercise your political rights. So, you have political rights and then you have social rights, which are different kind of concepts there, and what a union does is give you access to being able to demand other kinds of rights on the basis that you have this power of banded labor together.
Amira: Yeah, I think it’s really important to also underscore that unions in and of themselves are…It has to be with the right causes and with the right things, because one of the one functioning, powerful unions that we do have in this country is the police union. The police unions are incredibly harmful, and so I think that the points Brenda make are so important to think about unions, but I would also allow us to think about how unions and organized labor within unions are wielded, the power is wielded.
Brenda: Well, and that is what we call a public sector union, and actually African American rates of belonging to public sector unions are much higher – including the police. So yeah, there's a lot of questions about this, and I think given the way that athlete activism has gone and what you’ve all talked about, there’s a great opportunity for them to kind of show what a progressive union looks like. Of course, the UAW was searingly racist and imperialist in the 1950s, and so part of making a good union is not being coopted by the bosses – and that's what’s happened, and that’s why there’s a disintegration of the entire structure.
Jessica: That's interesting because it’s also, like what Amira was saying…Thank you, that was just so good. I feel like I learned so much in that few minutes. But working collectively really only has merits if you’re going towards something useful, right? Amira, I mean, there are clearly limits to athlete activism. One wonders what would’ve happened if the Hawks and the Dream had been together and how that would’ve limited, maybe, [laughs] what we would’ve seen actually from the players.
Amira: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think Tuesday for me showed both the possibility and limits of athletic activism. Like, in the morning we obviously had this model from the WNBA; by the afternoon we were facing an insurrection, and the NBA had to figure out what to do. At first the Celtics said they might not play and then they came out and decided to play. They released a joint statement saying that they were troubled and they didn’t really want to play but they ultimately decided it would maybe be good to give some people entertainment. You saw people kneel, you saw the Raptors and the Suns do a kumbaya-intertwined-arms circle. In the face of insurrection it to me just underscored the absolute limits of these kind of performative things. It didn’t ease anybody’s mind to watch a basketball game, because who could do that in the middle of an insurrection? Holding arms and linking…Maybe you guys feel more together, but it’s a performative thing.
I think for me it was so interesting because on of the big things that I kept seeing an image of was the continued currency of Kaepernick as a stand-in symbolic image for the last four years of athletic activism. It was specifically being juxtaposed with the seditious acts of these rioters to talk about what forms of protest and response and things like that, and I think the symbolism and the symbolic importance of athletic activism obviously still has currency – that’s what that meme of Kaepernick points to, is that there’s still clear currency with athletic activism. There’s still the platform, because we got breaking news alerts every time these NBA teams did something. But they weren’t doing anything, actually, and I think to me that’s the tension.
How can you continue to push past that symbolic currency? Well, the WNBA has certainly given a blueprint, but it also seems that one of the things we have dealt with and seen over the year is not necessarily the rise of athletic activism but the rise of performative athletic activism. I think trying to parse through that as we move forward is gonna be essential.
Jessica: Yeah, and it’s an interesting time to be talking about all this because as we’re going into 2021 we’re gonna see this, right? It’s gonna continue, and we’re about to have a huge platform this summer which is the Olympics, right? Which we know and we’ve talked about on the show a lot as a place where this happens, where we see sports and politics come together. So, I’m wondering about this upcoming year and sort of where we are going with this. Brenda, do you have hopes for activism from athletes this year – and maybe beyond that?
Brenda: Yeah. I mean, again, I’d like to see all of this energy and dynamism translate into real structures and changing structures. That can be enduring and ongoing. Labor unions for me are still a prime vehicle to get out of two-party thinking, you know? Let them woo you. Let these politicians woo you. We’re gonna see a real center-right government and that’s better than fascism, but… [laughs]
Shireen: Actual, literal fascism?
Brenda: Actual, literal fascism. [Shireen laughs] We’re just barely escaping that. Like, ugh. So, I’d like to see that. I’d love to see the Dream go hard on the DREAM Act – Atlanta has a ton of undocumented immigrants that could really be great voters. Hmm! Hmm!
Jessica: Yeah, I think about that like in Houston or Dallas…There’s a lot of space there for a lot of great activism. This has been, it’s fair to say, a very US-centric discussion of politics and athletes, which makes sense I think especially with this week and everything we saw. But what does it look like, Shireen, if we look in a more broad way, a more international way, at athlete activism at this point in time?
Shireen: Well we’ve certainly spoken about the history of sports activism globally on this show and in different ways – whether it's striking, whether it’s labor solidarity – but there’s ways that we have also featured Black, Indigenous, and racialized groups everywhere. But it’s going to continue seeing as the US recently eased a ban on peaceful protest at the Olympics where previously it was not that, but if we do step away from this American model I think we have to keep in mind what the idea of freedom of expression is. I mean, how that is termed and defined in the global south is incredibly different, if it exists at all. So, the way that athletes would be able to protest, let's say in Turkey or Iran, is completely different than what they would be doing…And I think we need to ease our expectations as well, because we can’t approach something like this at a global event and have this expectation or this idea that everyone’s expression…Everyone’s resistance and disruption just doesn’t look the same, and it is not the same.
I think we have to keep that in mind, bearing the parameters of what they’re able to do safely. Just for example we’ve talked about women in stadiums in Iran here – they can’t be public at all, so, it doesn’t mean that Iranian athletes don’t support their movements, they’re just not able to do so publicly without retribution in their home country. I think this is something we really need to keep in mind as we appreciate and amplify athlete activism.
Jessica: Yeah, that is such an important point. Thank you, Shireen. Amira?
Amira: Yeah, I just wanted to highlight, as Shireen brings up those points, to remind you that I spoke to Tianna Bartoletta on episode 169, who has talked about the organizing efforts that she’s done with global track and field athletes, which kind of gestures to the point that Brenda was talking about, about figuring out a way for unionization to cross over and make connections. So, I’ll be really interested at the Olympics too to see how global track and field athletes from multiple countries are continuing to organize and interface togehter, and if that formalizes into a more durable, global union effort from all these kind of fragmented national ones.
Jessica: This week’s interview, which drops on Thursday, could not be more timely. Lindsay talks to Elizabeth Williams of the Atlanta Dream, about why WNBA players endorsed Senator-elect Raphael Warnock last summer, what the players’ group chat looked like when the Senate flipped, and how she felt watching last week’s events unfold while playing abroad in Turkey.
Elizabeth Williams: Yeah, there’s one teammate I talk to more than most when it comes to political stuff, and so Wednesday morning when I walked in, I had a big smile on my face and she was like, “Is this because of all that political stuff you’re always posting?” I was like, yeah, Warnock won! This is huge! Then the next morning [laughs] I walked in and we looked at each other and I was like, well, this is the other side of all of this. So, it’s really wild, and it's scary, you know? It just shouldn’t happen. I think it’s a reality check for a lot of people.
Jessica: Now it’s time for everyone’s favorite segment that we like to call the burn pile where we pile up all the things we’ve hated this week in sports and set them aflame. Shireen, what are you burning?
Shireen: We all know how much I love the FA Women’s Super League in the UK. What I’m really upset about right now…And just in case people forgot, WE’RE STILL IN A PANDEMIC! Basically, Arsenal women, Manchester United women, a certain amount of players from each team…From what we know thus far it was actually Kate McCabe from Arsenal women’s side – that I love, normally – they went off to Dubai! They went off to Dubai, which was created as travel quarter between the UK…They went to Dubai for a happy Christmas celebration. Not because their family was their, but they wanted a holiday. Now, what ended up happening was two of the players from the Everton trio, which is not fully been released, but we have suspicions – DM me later! – to find out who it was that brought COVID back to the UK. Amazing, right? What ended up happening was matches at West Ham and Aston Villa actually had to be postponed, and this is a whole bunch of bullshit because, like I said, we’re in a pandemic.
I was furious about this because there are players who are not seeing their families and are staying at home, and now the matches have to be cancelled. Just yesterday the Guardian reported that Casey Stoney, Manchester United manager, actually came forward and apologized, and she is henceforth the first manager to actually take accountability for this. She says it was a huge grave error in judgement and she actually allowed her players to do this, and she’s just like, well, wait a minute, I do apologize and this was my bad – and I do appreciate Casey Stoney doing this, but I’m sorry, these are grown-ass women! Stay the fuck at home. I hadn’t said this publicly before but my son tested COVID positive in December and it was incredibly stressful. We don't go anywhere, we barely see family and friends. To do this, to have these women as role models that are on the one hand…I get that you make mistakes, but mistakes like this are egregious. I’m sorry, I need y’all to own it and I need y’all to do the fuck better. Burn.
All: Burn.
Jessica: That was a really good first burn of 2021. I gotta say, you really brought it there, Shireen. [Brenda laughs] Alright, Brenda, what is on your burn pile?
Brenda: Deep breath. Okay. After scoring a late goal for Manchester United over Southampton on November 29th, Edinson Cavani – a football player now for Manchester United, longtime PSG – received congratulations from his friend Pablo Fernández, who has gone his entire life by the nickname Negrito. He congratulated Cavani via Instagram, to which Cavani used the nickname. I don’t really wanna say it again. Social media responded swiftly, and Cavani took the post down immediately and apologized profusely. The English FA – quite notoriously racist – gave Cavani one of the harshest punishments that we’ve seen for an individual player: a three match ban and a $125,000 fine. Ask yourself where that money goes.
Cavani was supported by a video statement provided to the commission that has investigated this by Pablo Fernández, who stated his lifelong nickname was that and he took no offense. The commission was also showed copies of private WhatsApp messages between Fernández and Cavani, which illustrated his own use of the term, and that basically Cavani knew him by no other name. Okay. We don’t need to agree with that logic. [laughs] The Uruguayan national Academy of Letters called the decision “ignorant” and CONMEBOL and the South American governing body has lodged a complaint against the English FA. So, at the end of the day racial justice advocates in Latin America who have long struggled with this for decades while tackling head-on police brutality, employment discrimination, etc; they now have to deal with this, you know? It’s just making their fight harder.
So, with the British bulldogs in the china shop their work becomes that much harder. Cavani didn’t argue the sanction, and if it generates more discussion and change I think that’s great and wonderful, and in recognition of historic anti-Blackness let’s not use that term anymore to call our loved ones. I think we can all agree on that. But the English FA should take a hard look in the mirror – you might’ve invented football, but Cavani’s perfected it, and it's not a global language. It’s a polyglot. It’s not your game, stop making it more difficult for grassroots advocates to do their work by being arrogant and obnoxious – or use Spanish and learn the language correctly if you’re gonna make those arguments. So I wanna burn everybody involved basically, metaphorically, [laughs] with this entire shitshow, especially for complicating the work of racial justice in Latin America. Burn.
All: Burn.
Jessica: Every year I’m annoyed at the people who get upset at college football players who decide to sit out of bowl games – bowl games which are essentially exhibition games for coaches, universities and conferences to make more money. Choosing to preserve the health of one’s body over and above a game that doesn’t ultimately matter is a good one, in my opinion, and I believed that before we were in a global pandemic. The college football season was ridiculous during COVID, an incredibly cynical money-making scheme that was extra dangerous for all involved. Also, I imagine, a mentally taxing thing to be a part of, especially as a player. Lots of people on social media including those in sports media were so angry when Boston College's team – supported by their coach! – decided to skip the bowl game altogether. I think they had a losing record of 5-6 and people were still like, “How dare you not play in a bowl game?!”
Pitt soon followed and then lots of individual players, just as we saw when this season initially started up. This eventually prompted Gerald McCoy, and NFL veteran, to tweet, “Man what’s up with all these kids opting out of their bowl games? I understand before the season but your last bowl game? You’ve grinned all this time wit your brothers and you say on the last game naw I’m done. Idk who’s advising these kids but it’s wack to me!!” I’ll let Arian Foster, who retired in 2016 from the NFL, end this burn pile with his response to McCoy. Quote, “kids are starting to realize it’s a business and their body is the product. ncaa has brainwashed fans and players that winning one for the gipper is admirable. it isn’t. fuck them, take care of ya self, youngins.” Stop policing the decisions of these non-unionized, unpaid, exploited players – especially during a pandemic, but mainly in general. Burn.
All: Burn.
Jessica: Lindsay, what are you burning?
Lindsay: So, last week, the day after the Georgia special election, there was an armed insurrection of the Capitol building incited by President Donald Trump. People died. It could have been a lot worse. These were white supremacists, full stop, who were trying to murder leaders of the government, and our president got on camera and said that he loved them and that he understood them. About 12 hours after Trump’s address two golfers, Annika Sorenstam and Gary Player, arrived at the White House – they were the first people to meet with Trump after the insurrection – to receive their presidential medal of freedom.
I really and truly have no words for how abominable it is to show up at the White House for this ceremonial, really fucking meaningless award, the day after the coup. I just don't have any words. Sorenstam was an idol of mine growing up, golf was one of the first sports I got into, and she was a legend on the LPGA tour. She played against the men at some points and was really one of the first female athlete trailblazers I got to know when I was younger, and to see this is absolutely positively mind-bogglingly infuriating.
Her Twitter account has been silent since January 5th. The last tweets she sent are quote tweets thanking people for congratulating her for getting the medal of freedom – nothing since then. There have also been no public photos released of this day, no reporters were allowed in. It was done in silence, or as Christine Brennan wrote in USA Today, it was done in shame. If you can’t get your presidential medal of freedom, if you're too ashamed to tweet about it or have pictures released or to have reporters there, then maybe you shouldn’t fucking accept it! [laughs] Just don’t go! Don’t validate this man with your presence. It’s a fucking medal, it doesn't matter! But you by showing up are validating him, you are validating his power, you are validating his ego, and you are validating his administration.
I can’t even…I know there’s so much to get mad about and so much more serious stuff to get mad about, but I just don’t understand how you show up to receive that medal on January 6th. I guess all I can do is throw it on the burn pile. Burn.
All: Burn.
Jessica: Alright, Amira, what do you wanna torch?
Amira: So, I was gonna burn the UT Chattanooga who called Stacey Abrams ‘Fat Albert’ and other disgusting things in public Facebook posts, but he's been fired. Ha! So, the school handled that for me. So instead I’m gonna turn my attention back to the burn pile’s favorite football coach, who in a short time has been such a frequent guest to our burn pile. I’m talking about Tommy fucking Tuberville, who has just been elected to the Senate, and voted to object to the electors in Arizona and Pennsylvania – a failed, desperate effort to overturn the will of the people in a free and fair election. He voted this way after witnessing the insurrection, when even Kelly Loeffler changed her damn vote. We shouldn’t be surprised though, because he parrots Trump’s every word – and not just his words, his actions – like fundraising for an “election defense fund,” probably because he watched Trump rake in $170 million in just November alone this way. But Tuberville’s donation link to said election defense fund is actually a donation to his own campaign [laughs] that was already over by the time he sent this link out.
What's more, it seems like he was Trump and Giuliani’s go-to person as they were trying to use these rallies and riots as delaying tactics to thwart democracy. Trump called him earlier, at the wrong number, which is how we know they spoke because he called Senator Mike Lee instead, who walked with the phone to give it to his colleague. Because they’re idiots and seemingly can't get the number right, we also know this because Giuliani tried to call Tuberville, instead called Mike Lee, and left a message that we have the audio of.
Rudy Giuliani: Senator Tuberville – or, I should say, Coach Tuberville – this is Rudy Giuliani, the president’s lawyer. I’m calling you because I want to discuss with you how they’re trying to rush this hearing…
Amira: And there you can hear Rudy asking Tommy Tuberville to help them delay, delay, delay, by objecting to electors in 10 different seats. This was at the same time as the insurrection was unfolding, as people were losing their lives, as the lives of capitol staffers were in danger, as the lives of government workers were in danger. As amusing as the tweets are that say hey, “look, Tommy Tuberville got sworn in and already the capitol’s defense is falling apart,” it’s very serious.
The executive branch, Trump with the aid of folks like Tuberville, incited a riot. They refused to call in help to secure the capitol, they tried to use the time to get willing senators like Tuberville to delay certifications of a duly elected president, in order to prevent a peaceful transfer of power. This is a literal attempt at a coup. Lindsay’s absolutely right about the stakes and the danger, and in the middle of this insurrection the fact that Tommy Tuberville had already proven himself such a reliable participant in the thwarting of democracy, I mean…Shit, we knew he was gonna be bad, but supporting and helping to facilitate an attempted coup? What a damn mess. Burn.
All: Burn.
Jessica: Hasn’t he been on the job for like a week?
Amira: Yes, yes, yes, he has. [Lindsay laughing]
Jessica: Now to highlight people carrying the torch and changing sports culture. Amira, who is our glass ceiling shatterer of the week?
Amira: The Boston Red Sox have hired Bianca Smith to be a minor league coach, making Smith the first Black woman to coach in professional baseball. She has worked as the assistant coach and hitting coordinator at Carroll University in Wisconsin since 2018, and she will be based at the Red Sox’s player development facility in Fort Myers, Florida, working primarily with position players. Congratulations to you, Bianca.
Jessica: Lindsay, please tell us about our You Tried It of the week!
Lindsay: Four female swimmers at Iowa have won a preliminary injunction against their school, saving their swim team and all women's sports from being cut during the 2021-2022 school year. The judge’s written order orders the university to maintain all its women's intercollegiate athletics teams until a full trial can be held on the merits of the case, and to continue to provide these teams with full funding and staffing.
Jessica: I have our trio of the week: FIFA Referees Committee has named Club World Cup Qatar 2020 officials, and three women – Edina Alves Batista, Esther Staubli, and Claudia Umpierrez – are part of that squad. Shireen, who is our We Love To See It of the week?
Shireen: We’re very excited to learn about a new women’s and girl’s boxing program in Gaza, Palestine, that has as many as 45 female boxers, ranging from ages 7 to 21. Reema Abu Rahma, a 22-year-old boxer on the team, told Dave Zirin at the Nation, “I love boxing because it’s a beautiful, wonderful hobby, and also for self-defense, and it helps to release negative energy.” She hopes “to compete in an international competition and to become an international player and raise the name of Palestine internationally.”
Jessica: Can I get a drumroll, please?
[drumroll]
Alright, Brenda, who are our torchbearers of the week?
Brenda: Brazilian soccer legend Marta and her Orlando Pride teammate, Toni Pressley, announced their engagement this past week. Marta has never publicly disclosed in all these years, so it’s a very big deal in Brazil and in all of our hearts that Marta’s getting married!
Shireen: Marta, please invite Burn It All Down to your wedding, thanks.
Brenda: Please, PLEASE!
Jessica: Alright, what is good y’all? Shireen, what is good with you in 2021?
Shireen: Cobra Kai came out, I’m very excited about that. I also wanted to say, IT’S MY BIRTHDAY MONTH! In case you didn’t know, [Brenda cheers] which I know you knew, and I need to remind–
Amira: That is brand new information. Thank you so much. [Shireen laughing]
Jessica: And since none of you can see us, Shireen is literally wearing a little party tiara, like, it says the word ‘party’ on it. She’s been wearing it for this whole recording.
Shireen: In purple glitter! Because I love it. I also saw Bridgerton, and I have so many thoughts, but I’ve just been tweeting about the rebellion coming up, trying to take the period piece queenship away from Kiera Knightley. Not gonna have that shit! I do believe I have Ms. Jessica Luther’s full support on this?
Jessica: You do.
Shireen: I’m also gonna say – my teammates already know this because I tell them everything – I roasted a duck yesterday, and it was the shit. It was the best fucking thing. If you haven’t roasted a duck, please roast a duck. It was just beautiful. Brenda’s trying not to gag. It was just lovely. I’ve never done my own Peking duck before and my best friend Eren came over – we had to postpone the dinner for obvious reasons, my family had to isolate in quarantine – so this was sort of like our Christmas dinner and I wore my new sequined red pants. They’re beautiful. You all in this group will be getting a photo, but they were exquisite. So, sequined pants, roasted duck, Cobra Kai, and my birthday.
Jessica: Brenda?
Brenda: So, I guess it starts with something that’s bad for me, which is student evaluations in a Zoom semester, which were not the kindest to ya girl out here. Mm-hmm. But it led me down this path which was really good, which was remembering that my very favorite all time high school teacher, Mr. Fox, William Fox – who’s out there somewhere in South Carolina, hopefully enjoying his retirement – a lot of people didn’t like him, and I loved him. That also made me rewatch some of To Sir, With Love with Sidney Poitier, which makes me cry every time, and then I thought, well, this did have an upside. So what’s good in my week is going down the Sidney Poitier rabbit hole, I guess. And Mr. Fox – hi, Mr. Fox!
Jessica: Aw, I love that. So, yeah, I really enjoyed Bridgerton, and if anyone wants to talk about it I’m happy to do that. I also loved Cobra Kai season 3, so I second that from Shireen. I will say, for Christmas Aaron bought me an air fryer and it’s too big for our kitchen. We have a very small kitchen, so I was feeling a lot of feeling about having another appliance that I had to find space for, but I love this thing! It makes the best bacon ever, tater tots out of the freezer are so good. I’ve made chicken fingers, I made yeast donuts, I roasted Brussels sprouts in that sucker. Last weekend I did roasted potatoes and onion and pepper for a breakfast hash, and it did it in 15 minutes. It was perfect! So I’m pretty much in love with this thing…Oh yeah, I made some meatballs this week, did em up in the air fryer. That thing is magic, so I’m not quite as annoyed as I was when I first opened it and saw how big it was. So, my air fryer has been good to me. Lindsay, what about you?
Lindsay: Whew, I actually wrote this before all of Wednesday got together, but I’m gonna bring it because rethinking about it made me laugh, which was when we found that Warnock won he was on The View the next morning, Wednesday morning, so before everything, and there was this meme going around on Zoom, like, all of the co-hosts for The View beaming, and then right under Raphael Warnock who’s also beaming is Meghan McCain who’s just [laughter] making the biggest frowny face and bitch face! [laughing] She was just so pressed. I don’t know why it made me laugh so much, but it just really did. It was just like…Fuck you, Meghan McCain!
Jessica: Yeah, thinking of all the people like her that are frowny face–
Lindsay: Right! It just made me happy. Just everyone around her experiencing pure joy…You know, other than that I’m just still getting settled into the condo, getting back into work mode. I hung some pictures and that’s good, there's some things on my walls now. So yeah, I think for me what’s good is just continuing the process of being settled and I would say a good week to get back on track is not really a week where an insurrection happens, so I’m hoping that next week will be a little bit more productive. [laughs]
Jessica: Oh shit, you just jinxed the hell out of us, Lindsay!
Lindsay: Sorry, sorry.
Jessica: [laughs] Amira, what’s good with you?
Amira: Bridgerton, which I actually was able to escape into, mostly because of the Black actors.
Jessica: Multiple times.
Amira: Multiple times, I’ve watched it three times. I’ve read 7 out of the 8 books and formed a personal book club with Jessica, which is mostly texting her and 3 in the morning all my thoughts and research.
Jessica: It’s been lovely.
Amira: I have no interest in talking about it, no internet in the discourse, and the only people I ever care about besides Jessica in thinking about Bridgerton is Patricia Matthew, who has a great review in LA Review of Books – basically Black women who specialize in this area. Other than that it’s just been something that I can actually…It’s the one week of the year I can read fictional books, so I did a book a day during that week off. I have one more, which is annoying me already, so I’m…You know, insurrections are distracting. Also, I didn’t talk to you guys over the new year, but Peloton has an annual challenge which runs from January to December and they give you badges up to 10,000 minutes. Now, I obviously got my Peloton halfway through the year, but at the beginning of December I noticed I was only a couple hundred minutes from that mark and I finished the year with almost 12,000 minutes of exercise with that platform.
Lindsay: Oh my god.
Amira: So that was just a person achievement for me, and feel very proud of that.
Lindsay: That’s incredible.
Amira: And apparently I did 26 hours of yoga, which if you know me is wild because I detest yoga. I’m too ADHD. But Chelsea and her beautiful playlists, including the one playlist that I listen to every time white supremacy has me all the way fucked up – which, I’ve probably done that restorative yoga practice like 6 times – has gotten me to 26 hours over the last 6 months, which is wild.
Jessica: Wow. I’m just gonna add that it's snowing outside in Austin, Texas.
Lindsay: And I wanna add that Jess has now convinced me to now, whenever I earn more money again, to buy an air fryer, because I’ve been thinking about it and now you’ve made me. Subscribe to Power Plays so I can buy an air fryer, everyone!
Jessica: I do feel evangelical about it. [Lindsay laughs]
Brenda: Can you fry like a Mars bar in that thing?
Amira: You can do everything. Yeah. The kids did Oreos.
Jessica: I don’t know about Mars with the chocolate, because I feel like that might be…Brenda: Yeah, I’m wondering…
Jessica: Too messy?
Shireen: Amira, did they put it in batter when they fried it, or did they just put the Oreos in?
Amira: I don’t know what Samari does in the kitchen.
Brenda: I wonder what it would do with a Toaster Strudel.
Jessica: It would be great. I’ve made toast in there.
Shireen: I love that we’re talking about this, by the way.
Jessica: I know. This has been really long. [laughter] But yes, I’ve made straight-up toast in that thing.
Shireen: Okay.
Jessica: It’s amazing.
Shireen: I know that like in Ramadan everybody raves about it because it takes away the oil and the deep frying of the samosas that most South Asians and quite frankly so many Muslims have, like sambusa or whatever, as part of their Iftar. But I don't know…It’s not worth it for me to keep it just for that.
Brenda: Maybe you can put a duck in it, Shireen, like a small duck.
Shireen: Yes, yes I can.
Brenda: A baby duck, as long as you’re hurting me!
Shireen: I’m gonna make quails! [Brenda making injured noise] I’m gonna get my air fryer back I gave to my mom. You’re an enabler, Brenda!
Jessica: So, this week we are watching: men’s college ball, MBB and NBA, NFL Playoffs – I guess they’re still kind of going on. Cross your fingers, everything with COVID. That’s also true for women’s basketball but we care a lot more about it. If you also care about it, Thursday January 14th: #11 Oregon vs #7 Arizona at 7pm ET. Sunday we have two big games, that’s January 17th: #8 Texas A&M will take on #14 Mississippi State 1pm ET, and then the big one is #3 NC State vs #2 Louisville at 3pm ET that day. Then this week Brenda tells me they have a Brazil vs Argentina bonanza, is that correct, Brenda?
Brenda: Yes, we sure do. The best men’s club competition in the world takes place with the Copa Libertadores, Palmeiras vs River Plate on January 12th and Santos vs Boca Juniors on the 13th.
Jessica: And the NWSL draft is this week and WNBA free agency is coming. We’ll be paying attention to both. That's it for this episode of Burn It All Down. On behalf of all of us here: burn on, and not out. This episode was produced by Martin Kessler. Shelby Weldon does our website, episode transcripts and social media. Tressa Versteeg produces our interview episodes, which drop on Thursdays. You can find Burn It All Down on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. If you wanna subscribe to Burn It All Down you can do so on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play and TuneIn – all of the places.
For information about the show and links and transcripts for each episode check out our website, burnitalldownpod.com. From there you can email us directly or go shopping at our Teespring store. It’s the perfect time of year to pick up a hoodie or a blanket. As always, an evergreen thank you to our patrons for their support, it means the world. You can sign up to be a monthly sustaining donor to Burn It All Down at patreon.com/burnitalldown.