I am sometimes appalled by the cringe-worthy behavior of some athletes, but usually am impressed by the civic-mindedness of high-school, collegiate, and professional athletes. Case in point: the efforts of professional athletes this past year to fight voter suppression.
My diary today looks at one particular women’s basketball team, the Atlanta Dream. This team chose its name in honor of King’s “I have a dream” speech, considered to be one of the most moving speeches in America’s history.
This past year, the team decided to dedicate their season to “Say Her Name”, a movement to cause Americans to remember brutal police killing of blacks, in particular Breonna Taylor’s senseless slaying in her own bed. Athletes are often punished for taking such a stand: you need only look at Colin Kaepernick, losing his position in professional athletics for taking a knee in protest to police brutality against black citizens. What makes the team’s stance even more courageous is that their co-owner, Kelly Loeffler (yes, that Kelly Loeffler) has constantly and publicly lied about the nature of the Black Lives Matter movement, telling her audiences that the movement is divisive and violent. She went as far as to pose with a neo-Nazi during a campaign event, purporting to have no knowledge that the man happened to be a neo-Nazi supporter.
The entire Atlanta Dream team drafted a letter last summer to their ownership, stating their intentions to support Black Lives Matter publicly. In the letter, they never mentioned Loeffler’s name, although their aim was at her. Loeffler’s name was not mentioned to indicate the significance of—well—not Saying Her Name! The team then publicly endorsed Loeffler’s opponent Doug Collins in the Republican primary for the Senate. Later, during the run-off US senate election in Georgia, the team publicly supported the Reverend Raphael Warnock, who at the time had polling numbers in the single digits. Because of their publicity and efforts to help raise funding, Warnock’s popularity rose and he started to receive decent-sized cash donations to his campaign.
This is a wonderful group of young women, and a very sweet ending to the Georgia election for US Senate! Keep up the “good trouble”, Atlanta Dream! See more of this story at CNN.