Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire
  • omnibus

The NBA’s Black Power
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
02 Sep 2020
The NBA’s Black Power
The NBA’s Black Power / Photo: Milwaukee Bucks star and reigning MVP Giannis Antetokoumpos joined protests in Milwaukee, June 6, 2020.

Black NBA players, writes Ann Garrison, are just beginning to understand the power of the attention and admiration they command.

“All the basketball arenas owned by NBA teams will be turned into polling stations prior and up through the November 3 election.”

On August 26, the third day of the Republican Convention and two days after a Kenosha, Wisconsin cop fired seven bullets into the back of Jacob Blake, an unarmed Black man, the Milwaukee Bucks refused to play. Then the rest of the NBA players, at least 75% of whom are Black, chose to go on strike as well and the National Basketball Association halted the NBA playoffs. As Counterpunch’s Nat St. Clair noted on Twitter, they kicked the Republicans out of center court and into the parking lot.

Barack Obama and Michael Jordan then met with LeBron James and other high profile players and convinced them to get back to work after a few victories with management. Most notably, all the basketball arenas owned by NBA teams will be turned into polling stations prior and up through the November 3 election. Cynics say that Obama co-opted the NBA’s activism into a Democratic Party get-out-the-vote campaign, but LeBron James and other players had already formed a non-profit that is currently focused on defending African American voting rights. In the swing state of Florida, they had already offered $100,000 to pay the fines of convicted felons who’ve done their time but would otherwise be unable to vote.

“Cynics say that Obama co-opted the NBA’s activism.”

Who knows what the players might do next, as they realize the power of the attention and admiration they command? They may even make as much effort to end African American, LatinX, and student voter suppression that took place in this year's Democratic primaries, helping to make Joe Biden the Democrats' weak, so-called choice. 

(Yes, African American voters turned out heavily for Biden in South Carolina, and in Michigan, most notably in Detroit, and maybe that was enough to power Biden’s improbable Lazarus-like resurrection at the polls, but I doubt it and I’m not the only one. Either way let’s hope the players will battle voter suppression, which is above all African American voter suppression, in the primaries as well as the general election from hereon.)

They might also add “Black Homes Matter” to “Black Lives Matter,” as millions of disproportionately Black renters and homeowners face eviction not through any fault of their own but because oligarchy is using the coronavirus pandemic to further consolidate power and wealth, including real estate equity.

Maybe they’ll even take on Nike and the other sports apparel manufacturers for their notorious exploitation of sweatshop labor in Indonesia, Asia, Central America, or wherever the rate of exploitation is highest at any given time. Who else is Nike going to ask to endorse their snazzy sneakers?

Ann Garrison is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize  for her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes region. She can be reached at ann(at)anngarrison.com 

Please join the conversation on Black Agenda Report's Facebook page at http://facebook.com/blackagendareport

Or, you can comment by emailing us at [email protected]

Police brutality

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles. Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.

Trending

Elizabeth Warren Wants Green Bombs, not a Green New Deal
Parallels Between Black and Palestinian Struggles
Cory Booker Hates Public Schools
Bill Cosby Should Have Been Denounced by Black America Long Ago
The Black Wall Around Barack Obama: Who Does It Protect Him Against?
How Complacency, Complicity of Black Misleadership Class Led to Supreme Court Evisceration of the Voting Rights Act

Related Stories

Federal Judge Tackles Police Immunity Law
Marjorie Cohn
Federal Judge Tackles Police Immunity Law
26 August 2020
The Black judge listed the injustices of “qualified immunity,” which allows police and other government officials to escape liability for their law
The NYPD Is Withholding Evidence From Investigations Into Police Abuse
Eric Umansky and Mollie Simon
The NYPD Is Withholding Evidence From Investigations Into Police Abuse
19 August 2020
The NYPD has regularly failed to turn over key records and videos to police abuse investigators at New York’s Civilian Complaint Review Board.
LA’s Gang-Infested Police are Deadly – and Costly
Alene Tchekmedyian
LA’s Gang-Infested Police are Deadly – and Costly
12 August 2020
Uniformed thugs calling themselves Vikings, Regulators and Banditos prey on the city’s Black and brown civilians, and even brutalize their fellow c
Reviving the False Narrative on Police
Clarence Taylor
Reviving the False Narrative on Police
22 July 2020
The antidote to police lawlessness isn’t more training, or fancy equipment, but putting the community in charge of the cops.
The Torture Machine, Racism and Violence in Chicago
Jeff Haas and Dennis Cunningham
The Torture Machine, Racism and Violence in Chicago
19 February 2020
Chicago’s torture machine was both a real mechanism to produce confessions through pain, and a racist political instrument.
The US Surges Into A Police State While Media White Out Structural Racism
Netfa Freeman
The US Surges Into A Police State While Media White Out Structural Racism
08 January 2020
Trump wants to “surge” against urban Black and brown Americans in the same way that the US surged against Iraq and Afghanistan.
When Even The FBI Can’t Hold Police Accountable, How Can Anyone Else?
 Nida Khan
When Even The FBI Can’t Hold Police Accountable, How Can Anyone Else?
20 November 2019
A brutal New Jersey police chief who routinely spouted racist slurs and threats was fingered by his own officers, but exonerated in court.
Justice for Atatiana, Abolish Police Domestic Terrorism
Sikivu Hutchinson
Justice for Atatiana, Abolish Police Domestic Terrorism
16 October 2019
 Terror in blue: a white cop shoots through a window to kill a young Black woman playing video games with her nephew.
Detroit Targeted for Massive Facial Surveillance
Shea Howell
Detroit Targeted for Massive Facial Surveillance
17 July 2019
A Black elected police commissioner was manhandled at a public meeting for protesting a draconian facial recognition scheme.
Will Chicago Get a Memorial to Honor the Survivors of Police Torture?
Vaidya Gullapalli
Will Chicago Get a Memorial to Honor the Survivors of Police Torture?
26 June 2019
The memorial would be a stone monument with the names of those tortured by Burge and his officers and the dates they were tortured.

More Stories


  • About the Ray Wood 'Confession' 
    Zayid Muhammad
    About the Ray Wood 'Confession' 
    03 Mar 2021
    The Malcolm X Commemoration Committee speaks on Ray Wood’s deathbed 'non-confession' to crimes committed before and during the great leader’s assassination.
  • The Biden Administration Spent Black History Month Deporting Black Immigrants: Why Aren’t People in the Streets? 
    Tina Vásquez
    The Biden Administration Spent Black History Month Deporting Black Immigrants: Why Aren’t People in the Streets? 
    03 Mar 2021
    Black immigrants are among the most vulnerable and we always have a target on our back and it has been no different under Biden.
  • Freedom Rider: The Minimal Minimum Wage
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR senior columnist
    Freedom Rider: The Minimal Minimum Wage
    03 Mar 2021
    Most Democrats either don’t want a minimum wage increase or are too afraid of bucking their party’s donor class.
  • Joe Biden: The Expect Nothing Presidency
    Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
    Joe Biden: The Expect Nothing Presidency
    03 Mar 2021
    Biden’s brand of American exceptionalism has run up against the general crisis of the U.S. imperialist order.
  • MANIFESTO: “The Crime of Being Born Black on American Soil”: Claudia Jones’s Statement Before Being Sentenced, February 2, 1953
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    MANIFESTO: “The Crime of Being Born Black on American Soil”: Claudia Jones’s Statement Before Being Sentenced, February 2, 1953
    03 Mar 2021
    Claudia Jones’s arrests and eventual deportation were part of the expansion of the US government’s Cold War attacks on immigrants—Black immigrants included—who were affiliated with the Communist Pa
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us