Episode 205: Fan Activism

Brenda Elsey, Amira Rose Davis and Lindsay Gibbs start the show by revealing who they would like to boo. Then, they talk about fan activism, including the recent Manchester United protests at Old Trafford, fan-led petitions pushing the NWSL and who gets included and excluded from fandom. Next, they share a sneak peak of this week's interview -- an in-depth discussion between Lindsay and Howard Megdal (of The Next) about what to expect from the 2021 WNBA season. Then, they set aflame the worst things in sport this week on the Burn Pile, followed by shout outs to the Torchbearers making things brighter, including Yoreli Rincon, Colombia women’s national soccer player, one of the first to speak out about the police violence launched against protestors in recent weeks. They wrap up the show with what's good in their lives and what sports they are watching this week.

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.

Links

Open letter to the NWSL (open for signatures) https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdh0lmhuLiPHMnqsC3jCWqDIC3bny1iLm2iA32Y_FFqLYh3eA/viewform

Why the Chaotic Protest at Manchester United’s Stadium Was Good, Actually: https://newrepublic.com/article/162288/chaotic-protest-manchester-united-super-league-old-trafford

A Look Inside Atlanta United Fan Culture, As The Team Looks To Defend Its Title: https://www.wabe.org/atlanta-united-fan-culture

Transcript

Brenda: Welcome to this week of Burn It All Down. It's the feminist sports podcast you need. I am hosting this week, Brenda, and I am joined by Amira, Dr. Amira Rose Davis, and Ms. Lindsay Gibbs. How are you today? 

Lindsay: Fabulous.

Amira: You know, here.

Brenda: [laughter] Well, we're off to a raging start. This week we're going to talk about fans, fandom, fan protest activity, fan power – you know, all of the ways in which right now we're seeing fans mobilize to change the face of sport.

Amira: It's so interesting to think about who gets distanced from fandom and by what critiques, and then who gets embraced by it.

Brenda: Speaking of fans, this week the Yankees played the Houston Astros and they booed. The fans booed and booed, in reaction to the sign stealing scandal of 2017. And it really goes with our theme of fan protests, but it's certainly not the kind of protest that we usually like to get into. But if you had a chance, Linz, who would you boo?

Lindsay: Tom Brady. I don't really think that needs an explanation. It would be so fun to boo Tom Brady. I would just love it, and I hope to get the chance to do it. And I probably will because he's gonna be playing football forever.

Brenda: He shows no signs of stopping. So, I feel like you've got some security there, even given his advanced age – I say that as a fellow middle aged person, Tom. Amira, what about you?

Amira: I’m not into booing. I'm into cussing a lot and saying very specific things, but I don't know…There’s something about like a cacophonous boo that feels very strange. I dunno. Like, I usually like collective energy, but I think it's because there's part of me that also feels like really sad? I don't like, you know, it's not…I don't like Roger Goodell. We all know that. One of the biggest features of the NFL draft is that every time he goes to the mic, all night, everybody's booing him. And, and I'm like, haha, you know, they're getting Roger. And then probably like the third time, I'm like, damn, it must really fucking suck to just hear that anytime you even approach the mic, like, and then I started feeling empathetic. And so therefore I just…I don't know. I'm just like, it's the collectivity of the boo that is something that's harder for me to get down with – but I will cuss a motherfucker out in a heartbeat from the stands. So…

Lindsay: I have to say, after like a billion years in this podcast, not much that my co-hosts say surprises me. But hearing the most competitive person I've ever known in my life– [laughter]

Amira: I'm a wholesome competitor! [laughter] 

Lindsay: I don’t know if there is such a thing! [laughs]

Brenda: It's got to suck. I mean, getting booed has to suck. I mean, I think what you're saying is like, it's true. I mean, I've never been booed, I don't think, but certainly I felt like my students have inner-booed, you know, probably, at times. And like that's a terrible thought. 

Amira: But see, that's like a perfect example, Brenda. Like, I really liked the specificity of like a good cussing the fuck out, like cussing somebody out, because like say your students were all bullying you, right? I'm like, some of y'all are just adding in your boos to feel a part of it! [Brenda laughs] Like, cuss her out and give me a specific complaint. Please.

Brenda: What about a sign? Would you hold a sign that has a specific complaint to it? Have you ever…

Amira: I think signs are fine for other people. I personally have better things to do with my arms than holds a sign.

Lindsay: Wow, that sounds very dirty! I’m just gonna say, that’s the most– [laughter] 

Amira: I'm just saying, I don't know how it sounds dirty, but I'm going to a sporting event. Like, say I was in the Linc – I would rather be eating Chickie & Pete’s fries and their bomb ass, cheese sauce than holding a motherfucking sign! That hurts your arms.

Lindsay: You don’t have to hold it the whole game!

Amira: But you are then getting a workout in, and not even getting a Peloton blue dot credit for it. Like, no, I'm not about that life. I will just cuss, that's it, trust me. People know if I have negative energy to you, you've done something that really has messed me up. I'm not somebody who's going to hold my tongue. It's just that I'd rather do it that way instead of like writing a sign – and also, my handwriting is crap, so you probably couldn't read what was on my sign in the first place. 

Lindsay: That’s the real reason. [laughs]

Brenda: It’s the arts and crafts.

Amira: I like how this has just turned into like Amira interrogation about my levels of interaction as a fan.

Lindsay: You're a little defensive about it, is all. [laughs]

Brenda: I think what this is all showing is how sorely needed it is that we go to a live sporting event with one another, as soon as it's safe.

Amira: I don't know if y’all would like to do a live sporting event with me, but I'm down. [laughs]

Brenda: We will. We can do it. I'll take some fries. 

Reporter: European Super League may have eaten humble pie this week, but it's these Manchester United fans that are left with the bitter aftertaste.

Brenda: Last week, Manchester United fans – and one of our own, Amira, is a Manchester United fan – protested and forced a delay of game for the first time in Premier League’s…I don't know, at least the last five, six years. And for political reasons, maybe in its entirety, the protest came in the wake of the Super League debacle and focused on team owners, the Glazers, who took over in the early 2000s by throwing nearly a billion dollars at the club. And the way that they got the billion dollars for the club was mostly through loans, secured against the club’s own assets, 16 

Protester: 16 years of nothing. They haven't been to a game since April, 2019. They don't care. Empty words. He said we need to rebuild trust. There was no trust to begin with.

Protester: Of course it not enough. I understand this more. There needs to be systemic changes to the way the clubs around, across the whole country. It’s not just Manchester United, it's not just the Glazers. 

Protester: I’ve been following United since 1956. So, you can guess me age. It's about time that somebody spoke up about the parasites in this club.

Brenda:  We saw the tensions boil over last week, and particularly the threats to relegation, the feeling that a few clubs would make the whole system even more unfair than it already was. And so, the Glazers were forced, they are now going to hold a town hall meeting with the fans, and they admitted that they were ready to be open to partial fan ownership, which is what a lot of fans were calling for. And so I want to know, first of all, Amira, are you ready to become a part owner of Man U's club?

Amira: [laughs] I mean, that's, it's like a lot of work! [Lindsay laughs] Listen, I own literally like two shares of Disney and the amount of mail I get for like shareholder meetings is so overwhelming. [laughs] I don't think I'm cut out for that. But I mean, I do think that it's really important to note that if you were on social media this past week and you were watching the images from Old Trafford, and if you saw some of the signs or if you listened to…Especially if you were listening to the way Sky Sports was interpreting this, I think it's important to note that while the Super League is just the latest kind of iteration of this, what we saw here has been really a decade of discontent, especially around the Glazer family and their ownership of the club.

If you look closely at a lot of these pictures, you'll see many people holding green and yellow scarves and stickers and posters that say GLAZERS OUT, and that's because, you know, as Brenda pointed to, a lot of bullshit capitalist, nefarious kind of debt taking on when getting the club in the first place, that is making, really…I mean, I was baffled by this. I was like, it's so funny sometimes how like really, really, really rich things happen because you're like, how on earth would that work for anybody else? If I were buying something and I was like, actually, I don't actually have the money, so I'm just going to pretend to buy this, and then all the money I make from the lemonade stand is going to pay off…Like, it is wild when you actually think about it.

But I think that you can actually go back, you know, for the last decade and see many moments of this that didn't rise to the level of making a game delayed. But certainly, you know, you get little flare ups around certain moments. So, in 2014 after Man U failed to make any movement in the transfer window, you had another kind of moment of a lot of people rushing to protest the facilities, holding up signs. One sign said, “Time to choose sides, the fans or the Glazers,” and it was targeted at corporate sponsors like Nike, Budweiser, AIG. I think that that's really important to put in context, that this simmering discontent around ownership and the moves they make and the kind of original sin of how they came to own the team in the first place will continue to be fueled by these moments where it feels like here's yet another example that they're taking the club in the direction that's antithetical to what the fan base feels like is the origins and roots and the kind of center of Man U.

Brenda: Yeah. The first framing of it was really as vandals, right? So, you saw a lot of journalists kind of pose them as hooligans, or they had a particular frame that felt very antiquated and, you know, the audio clip that we had at the beginning of the segment, you can hear that that is not at all the case. They are articulating a very clear argument about how fans should be more involved and how they can get more involved in the decision-making and how obvious it was that the Glazers who, I don't know for many years, have not communicated anything with the fans at all. And I think what you also saw is that the reason that part of the reason that Super League collapsed was because Bundesliga wasn't going to join in the way that it wanted because Bayern and others that have a more fan/member-owned model knew that it couldn’t just make this unilateral decision. It can't just come in and say, oh, we're just going to sell, buy, change leagues, do whatever we want.

So, it kind of threw into relief the fact that different models are out there and that they certainly have fans getting a lot more representation. And we've seen that in places like Brazil, which is a hundred percent member owned, most of those clubs, and they form caucuses against owners that might be sexist, or that might be instituting policies they don't agree with or taking on sponsors. They have the whole movement among clubs of fan-to-fan base communication against Bolsonaro for example, which is like the fans for democracy in Brazil. And that's really particularly important when you get into moments like right now where the clubs really are the community center for COVID relief, where they are vaccination sites, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So it's interesting that…I think it's apparent to those fans that it's important.

Amira: Yeah. But the other thing to note, I think especially Bren, about how it unfolded, is that it was mediated on Sky Sports certainly through one thing, but because it coincided with this media blackout you also didn't have a lot of kind of voices framing the images as they came, in that you normally would have kind of tweeting and reporting from the ground or even the clubs interceding at all, because it overlapped with this boycott.

Brenda: So, one of the things that's interesting is that social media boycott was being held to draw awareness to fans – not so supportive and positive, but in fact fans’ racial and sexual abuse of athletes. And I don't even know if we can call them fans. People, terrible people on social media, that have really abused athletes in particular. One of the things that is being asked in England and in Europe is why this discussion doesn't go on in the US. And I've been specifically asked by people, is it a first amendment issue? We know it happens. Why? Why isn't it a hotter topic here in the US, the issue of social media abuse in sport?

Lindsay: I guess I haven't really thought about this in an American-centric lens. It's just kind of, you know, probably, I just know I’ve kind of been taught, like, just deal with it, right? Especially as a woman in sports who gets a lot of social media abuse, like, you just deal with it. And if it gets to be specific types of threats, sometimes you can escalate them. But I think, you know, there's this ongoing thing of…Especially for athletes, like, you're an athlete, you're in a privileged position. Part of what comes with that is just all of this hate, and it's not right. Of course I don't support it. But there certainly isn't the outrage towards it that…I mean, I don't see outrage towards it in really any sport I follow.

Like, I know in tennis, tennis is such a big betting sport for the day-to-day gamblers because there's tennis matches literally happening like every single day. So like, the super hardcore gamblers are gambling on these tiny tennis matches, right? Like in the middle of nowhere. And so sometimes literally the only DMs and the only messages that some of these tennis players will get is racial and sexist abuse from gamblers, you know, because they've lost money on the match. And these are people who don't have thousands of mentions to…You know, they don't have any positive things coming in. It's all negative, because nobody else, you know, the gamblers are sometimes the only people watching this. So, I don't know. I mean, it's definitely a problem. 

Amira: Yeah. And I think it speaks to this…When we talk about fans, there are so many categories of people under that umbrella of the word, right? I think that that's part of what makes it hard and, you know, the lack of reaction or mobilization around that abuse, I think here, like Lindsay said, is just kind of like, it comes with the territory, is what it is. But I also think that it's hard to think about fans mobilizing because I think that it's so ladened with rivalries or kind of trollish behavior, that's almost rewarded as an expression of fandom. But I think about it in this way of like even the broad brush strokes that we talk about. So for instance, there's a way that people always like say, oh, Patriots fans or New England fans in a way that is, like, made to box them in as this like one manifestation of blue collar white dudes from New England.

But that doesn't really leave room for me to build solidarity with like, how do I talk to other Black women fans of football, right, who have been racially abused in stadiums? You know, I was in Baltimore watching them talk about New England fans with broad strokes like that, when I'm like, the biggest racial abuse that I've ever experienced has been at a Ravens game, right? I don't feel part of a collective “we” of any of these fandoms. And so I think that for me that's also part of the friction of thinking about what mobilization looks like, but it also points to this bigger thing for me, which is like, actually to go back to the Man U conversation, part of it that came up was like this fight over who was the real fans.

You have of course the narrative on Sky that was like, can we even call these people fans who are protesting outside of Old Trafford? And it's so interesting to think about who gets distanced from fandom and by what critiques, and then who gets embraced by it. But this idea that of course there's Man U fans globally, which is like, you know, one of my favorite graphics that they put up on game days is when kickoff time is in all different time zones, right? But that means people interact too with it differently, and there's a lot of people on social media supporting the actions because they're like, yeah, we can't be there at Old Trafford, but we agree. And there was a lot of people who were like, those aren't real fans, real fans would want to see this match with Liverpool. Real fans would want them to play and not be distractions. And real fans would just be happy when the club is succeeding and not get in the way of that.

I think that that conversation too is really intriguing to me because it reminded me of something that happened earlier. I don't know if you remember this Bren, back like 10, 11 years ago, for instance, there was an incident where that green and yellow scarf, which has become the kind of symbol of Glazer Out, the old kind of club colors – this is back when Beckham was playing – and it was thrown onto the pitch and he wore it, and it became this moment where it was like, oh my god, are players going to side and get involved with these fan movements? Because that seems really threatening to the power that the ownership had, right? And so he's wearing this, and then all of a sudden it became, you know, they had to do clean up from it.

I remember Joel Glazer has this quote where he's talking about it and he's like, well, yeah, some fans might not like us, but that's just a small amount, and actually real fans love that we're winning and they're just happy to see us, you know, moving on, and they're just happy about that. But quietly behind the scenes they had to run this interference where they made Beckham have to go back out and say like, he's not involved with it. And players were prohibited from discussing the campaign and MUTV couldn't refer to it. And there was like, you know, moments where people were ejected from live MUTV events if they had on the green and yellow scarf. But I just think that in that moment one of the things we saw is not only this debate about who was a fan or a real fan or not a fan and what that looked like, but also the threat of players and fans uniting against ownership. 

Brenda: Yeah. That's something we don't see that often and is surprising and really powerful because like, for example, Barcelona should be…That should be clear. The players are unhappy. The fans are unhappy. There's gross mismanagement of the club. And yet you don't see it because there is this way of atomizing fans sometimes when it is a more global team, like a Man U or a Barcelona. So, it's interesting to see when it does happen. And you know, I've been struck by two in the response. I mean, I know that there's different fan groups that are being inspired by, you know, #NiUnaMenos or #MeToo or some of the feminist movements around the world. I know that they're inspired by Black Lives Matter.

I know that this is, you know, something that goes beyond national borders, and it's been kind of inspiring to see the different ways in which fan groups…So, we've seen direct action, we've seen protests. We've also seen people who usually aren't interested in sports look at it and get attached to certain cases that are so clearly matters of injustice. And so one of the things, you know, in the post-Larry Nassar period too is we've seen a lot of different organizations around the world, different women speaking out about their experiences and feeling very empowered and it feels kind of like they get more fan support than they've ever had because of this dynamic relationship between feminism and sport.

I was struck by, just a couple of months ago, the conviction of the South Korean coach, the Olympic short track speed skating gold medalist, Shim Suk-hee, accused her coach back in 2018 of assaulting her and abusing her since she was a child. And then with the support of fans she actually went back and upped the suit to include sexual assault because she actually felt supported. This was just a couple of months ago that this was settled, and in South Korea they had 250,000 people claiming to be fans and supporters and all of this. It was just really interesting to hear how it affected her personally and how it sort of pushed her to feel confident enough to do that. I mean, you know, it's not every day that you're able to gather 250,000 people behind you. So, it was fascinating. 

Amira: Well, it's super impressive, but also doesn't it also make you think about that intersection, make you think about Iran, right? Like the push to get women into stadiums there is another great example of that, where there is certainly a large portion of women who are really big fans and want to watch soccer matches be played. And there's also the ways it intersects with other women's rights and feminist movements in Iran who saw it as an issue of space and, you know, spaces to be and exist, and so might have become fans in the process. I think that we're seeing that similarly now with a lot of the trans legislations that are moving, because that's become a central battle about legislation that's trying to, you know, erase trans people from existence. There's many trans folks who are also intersecting with people who are fans and athletes, and I think that those intersections have absolutely proved very fruitful. 

Brenda: And a lot of times when we get to that point, when we start to see that point, fans and sometimes athletes can actually look to sponsors and look to like economic sort of sanctions, boycotts, whatever is going to pressure for change. And that can lead to its own sorts of tensions. Linz?

Lindsay: Yeah. I mean, I think obviously so much of my work is done reporting on women's sports and especially today I see women’s sports leagues grappling so much with, do we cater to the relatively – I use that in kind of quotes – but “niche” fan bases who are kind of our grassroots day one loyal supporters? Which in women's sports is typically a diverse market and a progressive market. Versus trying to go more mainstream and appeal more to a general audience and take whatever shortcuts they feel they need to get there. And, you know, I think we've seen over the past year this tension play out time and time again over with leagues really treating it as an either/or situation and not figuring out a way to do both. And this is nothing new.

The WNBA ignored its queer fans until 2014, believe it or not. It was the very first time the WNBA had like a league-wide pride celebration. And that was not that long ago, friends. That year, like, that was a big deal that year that Brittney Griner came out, you know? We've seen so much progress in just the past couple of years. We're now used to Breanna Stewart, the MVP, not even feeling the need to make public announcement and just starting to post with her girlfriend publicly on social media. And we have to realize, like, that's still relatively new in the evolution of the league. And obviously it's had a big queer fan base. They were the loyal fans, and in ’98 and '99, 2000 they tried to get the league to recognize them.

But the league instead felt that their marketing push had to be “dads, bring your daughters,” you know? We are a family friendly environment, and family friendly is not gay, you know, like that is not the same. Pretty much targeting suburban dads with their marketing. I think we've seen similar things happen in the National Women's Soccer League and NWHL who are both, of course, behind the WNBA in their development. NWSL has had a lot of growing pains as I think a nice way to put it this year, with a lot of anti-racist activism from its players and dealing with having a player, Quinn, come out as transgender. Quinn uses they/them pronouns, and Quinn has been misgendered multiple times on broadcast and the league needs to take a stand against that.

Similarly, Sarah Gorden, a Black player, complained about racist treatment that she and her fiance or boyfriend had when they were in Houston for Houston Dash game where security guards stopped him from coming down to see the players, whereas all the white families were gathering. She complained and the league responded by A) fining and hushing owners and executives from other teams who were tweeting in support of Sarah Gorden. So, they hushed them, and we know that was Sarah Spain and Alyse LaHue. Sarah Spain, a co-owner of the Chicago Red Stars, and Alyse LaHue, the GM of Gotham FC. And you know, just now this past week we had the league issue a statement saying they launched an investigation into this, that there's no disciplinary action, and that's it. Like, no other information provided.

A lot of players and fans have read this as gaslighting Sarah Gorden, and I think it's very frustrating. You have a huge part of your core fan base – this is the core fan base that was looking up streams when you had games taking place in outfields of baseball stadiums, right? Like, these are the supporters groups, these are the people who have given you a base to be able to grow to where you are now. And, you know, there's a lot of frustration. We’ll link Rachel, a Portland’s Thorns fan, and on Twitter has created a letter open letter to the NWSL for fans to sign if they are frustrated with the lack of action and transparency we've seen in the NWSL. I think that, you know, we're going to have to see. That’s another way that fans can make their discontent known, but it gets harder the bigger the league gets, you know?

Amira: Absolutely. And I think a lot of what you're pointing to, Linz, is the way that these sports leagues have often been central sites for marginalized sporting fans, like, who are marginalized in other spaces. And then as these leagues build, it feels like as they move from the margins to the core, they also push those same groups back to the margins as kind of fan bases. It's so interesting, especially as we're thinking through Sarah Gorden’s story and things like that, like, I couldn't help but think of the way that Black sports fans – especially I'm thinking Black NFL fans, right? – fans who never get kind of factored into the business plan from leagues or when there are sweeping generalizations made, who are always kind of…You know, they know they're marginalized, they know the league’s not checking for them. They know that their fandom is not considered important.

I think that especially, you know, we have a new issue coming out of the Journal of African-American History, which is a special issue dedicated to new directions in African-American sports history. There's a great essay in there by Seth Tannenbaum about the fight of Black fans to get into the stadiums in St. Louis, and like even to access the space. And I think that we've seen that especially globally when, like we mentioned with Iran, but I think that it's really interesting to think about fans who locate and understand their fandom to not kind of “count” in the way fandom counts in a business sense and to not be able to have that leverage. And so one of the things that I find fascinating, whether it's the open letter, right?

Or it's fans blocking the entrance of Old Trafford with a sign that says, “We decide when you play,” right? Like, how can people who otherwise feel marginalized and without leverage find ways to assert that? And I think that in many ways, you know, like you said, Lindsay, it's hard, especially as they grow bigger and as leagues are using kind of business logic that we know is not going to account for some of these other considerations.

Brenda: And just a cautionary tale would be a women's professional soccer, the WPS, the pre-NWSL, which failed in large part because it marketed the league towards soccer moms [laughs] and they figured those would be…And totally ignore the grassroots, especially in places like LA, the grassroots players that had been petitioning for this league, like, the amateur players that were interested in just hardcore going to every single game and already knew everything. And definitely ignoring…I mean, it's obvious, but it also my god, I mean, you want to use a business logic, you know, be better at business.

Amira: I mean, this is like when they put the games on Lifetime – it's like, who the fuck is in your boardroom? Why is anybody going to be like, I'm going to watch soccer and it's going to be on Lifetime?

Brenda: Well, the WPS for example, I mean, it just didn't even…It was called the LA Sol and they didn't have anything in Spanish! [laughs] Like, nothing at all. Latinos, nada! In this situation it's like, wow, it's taken them til today. I mean, Orlando did nothing with having Marta at the Orlando Pride forever with the Brazilian community. It's just like, wow. Out to lunch. 

Amira: It's a waste. But we're seeing this, Lindsay, also come to come into bear in like hockey spaces, right?

Lindsay: Yeah. I think hockey spaces are very interesting. We've really seen it this past year with the NWHL and the PWHPA, which are of course the two kind of women's hockey organizations that we have right now. And both of them have done some stuff with Barstool Sports and especially Erika Nardini’s podcasts, the CEO. She's been a big quote unquote “supporter" of women's hockey. And of course, Barstool Sports is known for racism, homophobia, sexism, and…Speaking of online abuse! Like, Barstool Sports fans are the epitome of that. And there's been a lot of blowback, but I know specifically that people within the league have had this mindset of any publicity is good publicity, like, we need this press, right?

We are a very small league and getting…They’re well behind…“Wail” – you can tell I’m from the South here! [laughs] They're well behind the WNBA and then NWSL as far as development and infrastructure, and they don't have an event as big as the women's world cup, say, to lean on. It's very interesting because I see their argument, but these leagues are going to have to make a decision about who they, you know…And women's sports has this wonderful opportunity, right? To build itself in a more inclusive way than men's sports has, with intentionality. We know that diversity needs…Diversity and inclusivity, the buzzwords, whatever, you know. Like what do they need, another buzzword? I'm sorry.

But you have to be intentional about it, right? It takes actual work. But you can do it, but it takes not taking the path that every single other league, all the men's leagues have taken. And unfortunately, I see a lot of times where women's leagues are not going in that direction. And here's another thing: we’re talking about these segments within the women's sports fan bases, which is important to talk about, but there's also the fact that any women's sports fans as a whole are still trying to prove that their money works, right? That their eyeballs and that their credit cards are valuable to marketers.

You have this whole thing where as a women's sports community people are saying like, “Tune into this Twitch stream, tune into this,” right? We need to be very intentional about what we're watching and what we're supporting, because we need to prove that the eyeballs are there. I want to shout out The Fan Project, which is a group that you can basically give access to your social media, to your social media data – which I know is a scary thing, but I know the people running it. The whole point is getting metrics to prove for people who are into women's sports, right? So, getting more engagement numbers directly for women's sports. Women's sports fans can use that, and they're trying to basically create the business proof. You don't even have to like go recruit all these new fans, right? Like, like utilize the ones you have first. I don't know, I'm worried that that step is going to continue to get skipped. 

Brenda: Amira?

Amira: Yeah. I mean, I think that if thinking about factions of fans, one of the places that it might be really instructive to look is – in my estimation, the best fans in the MLS, whatever that means – is Atlanta United. Even though they've just gone to full capacity, their stadium this past week. So that's a little scary, because it will be full. But one of the things that's really interesting about the fans of Atlanta United...If you have never seen a video on the Atlanta United fans, the soccer fans in Atlanta, please go Google it or something. But they actually have divided themselves into four factions to represent all of the different types of fans. And the factions have names, whether they're this kind of family friendly faction or they're kind of old school soccer fan factions. My favorite of course is the Footie Mob, which is like a whole bunch of Black Atlantians, Atlantians Atlantians – is that how you say it? Atlantian? 

Lindsay: I don’t think so, but–

Brenda: Atlantans? [laughter

Amira: Atlantans. A whole bunch of Black people from Atlanta, who wanted to make sure that Atlanta was absolutely represented in this kind of new MLS team coming in. And so the Footie Mob has absolutely lit. They do their own kind of thing in the lead up to the games and tailgating and stuff like that. And so, you know if you're going as like a family friendly thing, you know what faction you're going to hang out with. If you know you're like an old school soccer head, you have a faction. If you know that you're coming because you like the fan culture and this is the first time you're kind of into soccer, but you're bringing all of the kind of Atlanta-ness with you to it, you might rock with Footie Mob.

What I love about it is this quote from the person, from Jenkins, who runs the Footie Mob supporters group, who says, “Look, once you're inside the stadium, everyone's wearing the same jersey. You don't care who's sitting next to you when you win, you don't care who's sitting next to you when you lose. What seems like a separate thing outside is actually one cohesive thing that works pretty well together. It's like brothers and sisters – you have your spats, but it's small potatoes and very minor in the grand scheme of things.” And so it's really interesting how they have negotiated this space to contend for all these different things, but still kind of feel represented in their fandom.

And I think what's really interesting for us to think about is maybe if that cohesion or that sense of being able to recognize differences, but still cohesion around fan identity, might lead to more leverage to bring it back to, you know, the top of the segment that we were talking about, because one of the barriers that we've seen of course, to fan activism, is is that even though you all might be fans of the same team you could have very different interests in terms of what you want the team to do, what your politics are, how you support the players, how you show up in the stadium.

And so I think that that to me is why we don't see as much of it. It will be very interesting to see what fan activism looks like going forward. We have many models of it, and whether it's people trying to gain access into spaces or to get leagues to recognize they're already there, or to just challenge ownership who's doing nefarious shit and and being very non-communicative with their Super League dreams. I think that we're going to have ample opportunity to watch how fans move in the coming months, weeks, years, et cetera. 

Brenda: Well, and we'd be remiss not to mention on the Atlanta point and MLS that the Independent Supporters Council, which is the fan supporters groups of MLS, USL and the NWSL, is very progressive and it’s the only one in the US that is led by a woman, Bailey Brown, who's been on the show, and during the past three years they've had LGBTQ caucuses, they have had Black caucuses within these groups. I think you're so right that it really portends the best that that could happen and that we hope and expect for

Check out this week's interview where Lindsay talks with Howard Megdal of The Next about what we can expect this WNBA season, which is just about to kick off.

Lindsay: Tip off, we say, for basketball, Brenda, tip-off!

Brenda: Basketball heads are not known for their suave and nuanced humor. [laughter]

Howard Megdal: And so for James Wade, who has put together a really good team already, to be able to add Candace Parker sell her on it – nobody understands the way the puzzle pieces fit together more than Candace Parker, and so she sees it. She knows what she is and can be. And so for her to come to Chicago, it puts them in a position to win a title together. It's just perfect. My shortlist of teams that I expect to contend for the championship absolutely include Chicago.

Brenda: And now it's time for everyone’s…I don't know, favorite, least favorite, most passionate segment of the show, where we take everything that's been awful and terrible in sports, or as much as we can, and put it on a proverbial burn pile and burn it down. So, Linz, do you want to kick it off? 

Lindsay: So, we're getting close to the Olympics in Tokyo, the 2020 Olympics, which of course are happening in 2021, and just this week we found out number one that the IOC has reaffirmed its decision to ban any sport, any sort of political, social, or ideological protest. So, no Black Lives Matter shirts, no taking a knee, none of that stuff. But we've also had ongoing concerns about the health of these Olympics. I had really hoped by this point that the outlook would be getting better. But as we know with the COVID outbreak in India, that globally the coronavirus continues to spread. And in Japan they have only vaccinated 2% of their population so far, and they have extended a state of emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic. There is a petition that has over 200,000 people signing – nobody in Japan wants these Olympics to go on. The Tokyo Games are gonna require I think at least 500 more nurses, but yet their hospitals are overflowing with COVID patients. It's atrocious, kind of every single place you look, and it's less than 12 weeks is when the Olympics begins.

And I love the Olympics, we talk about this all the time, but they can't even have a torch relay! The torch relay hasn't been able to go on! These states can't even pull off a safe torch relay. How are they going to pull off the Olympics? I'm very frustrated. I'm very sad. I'm very mad about everyone who has contributed to making this pandemic longer and worse and more deadly than it ever needed to be, and I'm frustrated that we seem to have lost track of what sports should be, which is not a place to pretend that...Or to make things worse. I mean, this is going to be a superspreader event, so let's just burn it. I just want to burn the COVID, I want to burn going forth with these games. I want to burn…I just want to burn everything. Just burn.

All: Burn.

Brenda: This week, FIFPRO, which is the global men and women's players union for football, announced that a number of players had come to the FIFA ethics committee and they were representing them to complain about years of abuse from a particular coach in women's football and in girl's football, and that they had complained that the abuse had started as young as 14, that it involved all conceivable horribleness of sexual harassment, gender violence, et cetera. This is something that we've burned on the show many times. What I guess is so frustrating and makes me so angry is that I wrote about this for five years. I didn't come up with it. I didn't discover it. Other people were doing this, journalists in Argentina were doing this, and no one has done anything. No one has done anything! And now they're going to the FIFA ethics committee, which is in itself an organization or a committee that shouldn't be allowed to exist because they have no fucking ethics.

This needs to go to criminal court, obviously. The Argentine government and ministry for genders and women needs to take it up with the ministry of sport. These people need to go to jail. This isn’t...Football can't fix it. FIFA can't fix it. And the reason that these women and girls are going to these organizations, all types of organizations, is because nobody has been helping them. And this isn't difficult and this wasn't hidden and it wasn't secret. It's not a new burn. It's just the flaming pyre that reaches the fucking moon every time that you just add more and more and more to it. So, the Argentine football Federation, you're permanently on the burn pile, but it's just way beyond that. So it's just our weekly burn for them. Burn.

All: Burn.

Brenda: Amira: 

Amira: Yes. I want to talk about a tragedy in Puerto Rico. Last week, the body of Keishla Marlen Rodríguez was found after multiple days of searching and trying to figure out where she'd gone, looking into her disappearance. Almost immediately her lover, boxer Félix Verdejo Sánchez, also known as El Diamante, the Diamond, who had competed in the 2012 Olympics, was arrested and recently indicted for her death. He has allegedly tied her up, throwing her off a bridge and shot her on the way down on one of the most busiest bridges in Puerto Rico. And she was pregnant with their child. Her death comes at a moment where, as everybody was trying to figure out where her body was, another woman was murdered by her lover. In January the governor of Puerto Rico declared a state of emergency because femicide has been rising on the island, especially over the last few years. There's a great investigative report by Andrea González-Ramírez, who's been tracking the rise of femicide on the island since hurricane Maria.

One of the things she has found is that the intimate partner murder rate in Puerto Rico has spiked, nearly tripling, and right now is 1.77 out of a hundred thousand, which is more than double of the rest of the United States. It is absolutely concerning. This year alone there has been 21 femicides in Puerto Rico. Last year, six transgender women were murdered and there was an additional 60 intimate partner murders as well. This is absolutely a state of emergency, but we are already seeing signs that the commitment of funds to dealing with this in multiple ways is not going to be upheld despite the governor asking for $7 million under the state of emergency to address this. The financial oversight and management board or, you know, colonial government, is basically only agreed to allocate $200,000. That's less than 3% of that budget for next year towards a problem that is only getting worse.

There's not much more that I can say about this before getting really emotional, but obviously I don't really want to focus on Félix, even though obviously that's what I'm throwing on the burn pile. What I'm left with at the end of it is the voice of Keishla's mother who called Félix a murderer. But what she said stuck out to me. 

Keila Ortiz Rivera: Justicia para Keishla! Para todas las mujeres. Él no es un diamante, el diamante era mi hija!

Amira: “He is not the diamond. The diamond was my daughter.” And we are losing far too many diamonds on the island burn.

All: Burn.

Brenda: Well, after all of that burning, let's turn to a more inspirational moment to celebrate the torchbearers of the week, the people who are doing so much to change the sports that we love. Honorable mentions for torchbearer of the week, Lindsay?

Lindsay: Out leader of the week is Emma Hayes, the first female coach to reach the women's Champion League final in 12 years. That is ridiculous. It's also Chelsea's first women's Champion League final appearance. 

Brenda: Amira? 

Amira: The brilliant allyship of the week goes to Naomi Osaka, fresh off of winning the Laureus Sportswoman of the Year award, is continuing to pay it forward by opening tennis academies in Haiti and Los Angeles, especially geared to getting Black kids into the game of tennis. We see you, Naomi.

Lindsay: Our lovebirds of the week are basketball stars Breanna Stuart and Marta Xargay – I hope I got that right – who are engaged! So, congratulations to them, and excited to watch them ball out this summer. 

Amira: Our new hire of the week is Kevin Merida, the long-time editor of The Undefeated, is moving to the LA Times, where he's been named executive editor in chief. This is a big step and we are all very appreciative for what The Undefeated has done under his reign there, and happy trails bossman, but I'm excited to see what you do next.

Lindsay: Our champs of the week: the Portland Thorns, who won the NWSL Challenge Cup over Gotham FC in penalty kicks. Adrianna Franch made a ridiculously amazing save! [cheers] It was so good. So, congratulations to Portland, congratulations to Gotham FC for great tournament. And now the NWSL regular season begins. 

Brenda: Okay. And can I get a drum roll please?

[drumroll]

The torchbearer of the week goes to Yoreli Rincón, who is a player for the Colombia women's national soccer team, football team, who has spoken out and repeatedly encouraged fellow athletes to speak out about the police brutality that has occurred to the peaceful protesters in Colombia, who are protesting a new law, a new reform that would hurt the poorest of Colombians, that has been introduced by president Duque – and now rescinded, because of the power of those protests. In the process, many have been disappeared. There are dozens of deaths and many questions go unanswered. It is hard for athletes to speak out in this way, especially women's athletes like Yoreli that do not have, you know, very secure jobs already. And she's done so, and it's been informative and gracious. Yoreli Rincón, you are the torchbearer of the week. And in dark times, we like to discuss what's good in our world, even if it's sometimes difficult. Lindsay?

Lindsay: Yeah, well, I'm two weeks past my vax, my second vax, and I do have to say I'm spending my first Saturday night recording, Burn It All Down, so! [laughter]

Brenda: Which is just what you'd want to do!

Lindsay: Which is exactly what I had planned for hot vax girl summer. So, this is perfect. [laughs] So glad that this is when we scheduled recording this week. No, but that's good. I just found out that it seems like they might be close to moving the three-point line for women's basketball, college women's basketball, to the normal three point line. So, that's really random, but I just saw the news. So that's good. [laughter] It's been a pet peeve of mine. Overall, I'm just, I'm feeling better. If you've been following my journey you know it has been a very bad 2021 so far for me mentally, but I'm on the right track, friends. So, let's do this. I’m getting ready for summer, where I will do things other than record a podcast. [laughs]

Amira: Well…

Lindsay: I mean, I didn't say “instead of”! Just, in addition to… [laughs] 

Amira: I'm really happy because I finished grading at 4:00 AM on Friday night and I didn't assign any papers. They did creative final projects. Let me tell you, I was blown away. Obviously their podcasts were hilarious. But also I got a hilarious memes. I got such clever TikToks. One kid composed a song. One student made me a Drunk History. It was the funniest thing I've ever watched! It was genius. And then I was really blown away because one of my students made a painting based off a primary source we had read from Fannie Lou Hamer that is amazing. And now I'm like, also, like, can I get that though? [laughs] So that was absolutely what's good. So much better than grading 60 papers, was just watching really dope creative expressions.

I am also on my way down to DC to see my friend and mentor Marcia Chatelain who...Her and her husband have recently adopted a little cute baby boy. And Michael's doing maternity, happy mother's day family pictures, newborn pics with them. And then I get to meet him! So I'm very excited to see them and celebrate a first mother's day in the kind of collective community with people who gave me so much over the years. So, I’m really excited for that. And then lastly my recovery’s moving along, I've been able to do a little bit more each day. I'm walking up and down the stairs, like a motherfucking boss! Just so everybody knows. And I think this week I'll be cleared to do low impact exercise, including stationary bike rides, low impact level, and other things like that. So, I'm very excited to be cleared for even low impact, boring ass exercise. But that is very, very good in my world. 

Brenda: Aww, all of those are so good. I'm not going to comment on the 90 papers that still await me then – I mean, I guess I just did, but I'm happy for you, Amira.

Amira: Thank you. Thank you. Oh, wait! I forgot something also really important. Courtney Williams and her girlfriend Tay’s YouTube videos are...First of all, they have their own channel now. They're the best things. And let me tell you, they only have three videos, but the first two are an hour and a half each, and I spent all of my Friday night with my favorite Roots bowl, decompressing from the semester by diving very deep into their relationship and watching the best content. You can’t convince me there's better content on the web. The best content of them in their YouTube videos 

Lindsay: Like, you’ve got to be ready for hot mess, like, hot ass mess, okay? It is a journey, and you just kind of got to let go.

Amira: It’s a journey. There is unauthorized trips to Turkey. There are fights. There are threesomes. There are…

Lindsay: Any piece of like, modest soccer mom in you, you know, that might be buried deep, deep, deep, deep, deep down? You gotta let her go. You gotta let it go to watch this, but it's worth it. It's very good. It's worth it.

Amira: It's the best thing. 

Brenda: My what’s good is another podcast. I am not a huge podcast listener, but the genre has grown on me, audio journalism, and there's a new WNYC series called La Brega, which is in Spanish and English and it's dedicated to understanding Puerto Rico, and it is phenomenal. And I cry, and I can't wait to use it in the classroom. It's just, I think it's just so fucking great. So I don't think people in the contiguous United States outside of Puerto Rico, I don't think people outside of Puerto Rico ever spend enough time on its history ever, ever, ever. It belongs in every US history course, but I also have no intention as a Latin Americanist to give it up. So, that's all there is about that. It's fantastic. It's really making me happy. I even pulled weeds to it. So, if that tells you anything about how good it is…

Lindsay: That's what podcasts are good for – chores. [Brenda laughs] I hope you are getting some chores off your list while listening to us.

Brenda: Yeah. Please let us know. Please write to us and tell us what shit are you getting done while I'm listening to Burn It All Down?

This week, we are looking forward to several sporting events. First up, the WNBA season launches on Friday. Also, Chelsea versus Barcelona in the women's Champions League final takes place May 16th, and Amira?

Amira: Yeah, the women's college tourney is going into…By the time this airs, it will be in the final four, on…?

Brenda: In the near future. And you should all look for it. 

Amira: So watch it! 

Brenda: That's it for this episode of Burn It All Down. Now more than ever, be sure to burn on but not out. This episode was produced by the wizard, Tressa Versteeg, and Shelby Weldon extraordinaire does our website and social media. You can listen to and subscribe to Burn It All Down wherever you get your podcasts. We're also on Facebook and Instagram @burnitalldownpod. We're on Twitter @burnitdownpod. Check out our website, burnitalldownpod.com, for previous episodes, transcripts, and links to our show notes. From there you can email us directly or go to our Patreon. Amira, do you want to say anything about merch?

Amira: I said it last week, but I'll tell you again, that we've launched our new storefront on bonfire.com. The name is super damn fitting. [Brenda laughs] So head over to bonfire.com/store/burn-it-all-down and check out…If you don't want to remember that, obviously you can just go to our website and click on merch or social media links, and there you will see all five of our designs, all five of our logos on a range of things, including baseball tees and football teas, crew neck sweatshirts, and hoodies. I have on good authority that we're going to have fitted soon; hats and beanies, doggie onesies, but there's also mugs and totes and the things that you've come to love on our merch store. And let me just tell you, there is a bigger range of colors and there's also a lot of options for kids. So, I would say if you need to re-up and get new BIAD merch, definitely check it out.

And the really exciting thing about this is that we have started to partner with various organizations, so part of our proceeds from merchandise will be going to allied organizations who are those Torchbearers doing the work that we love to see. For the next month or two we are going to be giving partial proceeds from the merchandise to AAJA the Asian-American journalist association’s sports task force, and then also with Athlete Ally, and continue the work of making sports inclusive for everyone. And so you can rock BIAD gear while supporting organizations who are doing the work that we love to see in sports. bonfire.com/store/burn-it-all-down for new BIAD merch. 

Brenda: Well done, Amira. Thank you. And thanks as always to our patrons for your support, we're sending you all the gratitude and love all the time.