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dave zirin
Don't Let Colin Kaepernick's Message Get Swamped by the Nike Swoosh
Nike's co-opting of Kaepernick's "resistance" may broaden its appeal, but his testimony shouldn't get lost in a sea of commerce
Sep 09, 2018
Colin Kaepernick's status as a global cultural icon of resistance has never seemed more secure. After two years of being seen as a symbol of radical dissent, and after one season of being shut out of the National Football League for daring to use the national anthem as a vehicle to protest police violence and racial inequity, he has reemerged this week with an explosive impact, as the face--and voice--of the 30th anniversary of Nike's "Just Do It" campaign.
The campaign is genius when it comes to commerce, but commodifying rebellion contains pitfalls about which Kaepernick and his legions of admirers should be aware.
There are black-and-white billboards that show his face and the simple slogan, "Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything" up in Times Square and San Francisco's Union Square. A slickly produced TV ad uses the quarterback's voice, speaking over a series of inspirational images of athletic achievement, ending with him saying the same phrase.
A video of the ad went viral as soon as it dropped last week, producing an incalculable amount of free advertising for Nike and proving that in our social media landscape, the opposite of love is not hate but indifference.
Every post of someone rejoicing over the campaign, saying they would buy more Nike gear to show their support, or burning their sneakers because they don't like Kaepernick, only further cements his in-your-face legend and implants in people's minds the ubiquitous swoosh. Nike took its support for rebellion a step further by buying airtime to debut the commercial during the NFL's Thursday night opening game, in the forum that is expressly trying to put Kaepernick and flag controversies behind it.
The campaign is genius when it comes to commerce, but commodifying rebellion contains pitfalls about which Kaepernick and his legions of admirers should be aware.
The corporation projecting Kaepernick's voice, after his studious avoidance of interviews and sound bites, has a decades-long record of taking rebel athletes, marketing their appeal, but stripping their rebellion of all content.
In the 1980s, Nike took a young filmmaker named Spike Lee and used his filmmaking prowess to project Michael Jordan's new line of Air Jordan sneakers. Nike told us that John McEnroe was a Rebel With a Cause, without ever telling us exactly what that cause happened to be. Nike gave us Tiger Woods as some kind of political trailblazer, even though the actual Tiger Woods wanted no part of the political responsibility that came with his politicized brand.
When you watch Kaepernick's Nike commercial, hear his voice and words, it is bracing. He has said so little recently, beyond the occasional tweet, even as President Trump and his minions used the Kaepernick protest--NFL players kneeling when "The Star Spangled Banner" was sung on game days--as a punching bag. While others appeared on CNN and the Sunday news shows to defend the right to protest, he remained silent, content to pursue a lawsuit against the NFL for collusion.
But now we are hearing him through Nike's corporate messaging, expressing words someone wrote--was it Kaepernick?--about believing in yourself, pursuing a passion. That's a beautiful message but not altogether different from what any athlete might say. There is nothing in the ad about police violence or systemic racism or any of the issues that animated Kaepernick's actions in the first place.
Nike is appealing to a restive, even radical youth market far more likely to see athletes like LeBron James, Serena Williams, and Kaepernick as heroes than villains. Nike calculates that it doesn't need older football fans who think Kaepernick is un-American. It knows it can profit on its stars' role in the zeitgeist, their edginess. But there is a pernicious motive behind the radical chic.
For decades, Nike has been criticized for corporate behavior that couldn't be more at odds with its idealist, rebellious messaging. It's not a company sacrificing for good.
For decades, Nike has been criticized for corporate behavior that couldn't be more at odds with its idealist, rebellious messaging. It's not a company sacrificing for good. A U.S. organization, United Students Against Sweatshops, has been a constant thorn in its side because of its labor practices in China and Southeast Asia. USAS tours workers from Nike factories on college campuses and organizes athletes to demand an end to sweatshops or their schools will break ties with the shoe behemoth.
Women who worked at Nike have described an internal sexist atmosphere that was "toxic." In April, the New York Times published an expose and high-profile executives exited.
Nike founder Phil Knight underwrites candidates from the very Republican Party that has been demonizing Colin Kaepernick.
In addition to delivering a stirring message, Nike is using the man and the voice, his charitable giving and admirable works as a fig leaf for its own malfeasance.
None of this is to criticize Kaepernick for taking Nike's money. He has every right to earn a living, especially since the NFL, whether it's collusion or not, hasn't allowed him to pursue his craft.
Nike's co-opting of Kaepernick's "resistance" may broaden its appeal, but his testimony shouldn't get lost in a sea of commerce. Otherwise, the message will get strangled by the same swoosh that's bringing Kaepernick's voice back to life.
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'Today We Did Some Good': The Diamondbacks Demonstration in DC
Aug 17, 2010
On Sunday in DC, I attended the seventeenth ballpark protest of the Arizona Diamondbacks during the 2011 baseball season. As in the other actions-in cities from Houston to San Francisco to Milwaukee-people chanted a loud and clear message to Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig: move the 2011 All-Star Game out of Arizona and make the state pay a price for enacting legislation that sacrifices immigrant families at the altar of election-year politics. But this demonstration was also deeply different from the sixteen others. It was a day of rain, risk-takers, racists and rancor. And it couldn't have been more terrific.
Nationals Security Guards Falls Chasing After Protestershttps://www.casualhoya.com/
First, the protest was publicly threatened by a pugnacious anti-immigrant organization called Help Save Maryland. This past week, I received a series of e-mails from people claiming to be connected to the group in which they threatened to "swamp" the Move the Game demonstration and drive immigrant rights supporters from the park. They also taunted that my writing on the subject had led to them being "overwhelmed with phone calls and volunteers." For the record, we had 100 people march during the two-hour protest. They had seven. The group was so irrelevant that they went unmentioned-from ESPN to politico.com - in the flurry of subsequent media coverage.
Second, the demonstration outside was combined with actions inside the park where four daring activists stormed the field with one out in the fifth inning, unfurling a banner calling for Selig to move the game. In what could morph into a youtube sensation, an overzealous security guard attempting to accost them did a less-than-graceful belly flop across the outfield. It might have been the most exciting moment at a Nats game this season. Rosa Lozano, who spent the evening in custody for taking the movement to the outfield grass, said to me after her release, "I did it because when history reflects this egregious time of civil and human rights violations I want to be able to have pride in saying that I didn't stand idly by and allow human beings to be treated like animals because of their immigration status." Also, as the four were being arrested, two separate banners with similar messages were draped over the outfield walls. These banner bandits daring to display a message that didn't say "Drink Budweiser" or "Buy Season Tickets" were banned from the ballpark for a year
One of them, Brian Ward, said to me afterward, "I find it funny how I am being banned from a stadium that I helped pay for with my tax dollars. I say if that is what it takes to get the All-Star Game moved, let's all do actions like we saw today and show that we are willing to do whatever it takes to move this game and overturn SB 1070."
Another banner bandit, Navid Nasr, described to me a scene in the crowd where "two fans to our left immediately became extremely hostile and attempted to rip the banner away from us. Then something kind of inspiring happened, two or three other fans leapt to our defense, physically put themselves between us and the belligerents and berated them, calling them assholes and telling them to leave us alone and that we weren't harming anyone and that we have the right to free speech."
Free speech at a publicly funded billion-dollar park! What a concept! That description of political polarization mirrored what picketers saw outside the park. Some fans were very supportive, even joining in with the chants and doing a couple of turns marching around in a circle, in full Nationals gear. Others yelled, and heckled with all the zeal of Sarah Palin at a book-burning. Two demanded to see the papers of a 17-year-old picketer, Nate Taitano, who happened by sheer and utter coincidence, to have brown skin. After the demonstration, the young man said to a gathered crowd, "I was born and raised right here in DC. I should be asking them where the hell they're from."
But most critically, thousands of flyers, detailing how people could contact Bud Selig and insist that he move the game, were passed out to open fans. By day's end, protesters were soaked, hoarse and happy. As Gary Nelson, a firefighter from Baltimore who drove an hour to be at the demonstration, said, "Evil flourishes when good people do nothing. Today we did some good."
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What's My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States
Aug 06, 2005
Moving into bookstores across the country is a fresh historical account of American progressive resistance and political struggle. Focusing on the United States over the last century, the book connects past struggles with contemporary injustices, and calls on readers to challenge the militarism, homophobia, racism and sexism, the greed, myths, freeloading, cover-ups, censorships, and consumer and taxpayer gouging that continue to tarnish our country. And believe it or not, this is a book about sports.
In "What's My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States," author Dave Zirin chronicles the social struggles that have played out on the athletic fields through essays, profiles and interviews with athlete-activists. He depicts the role of professional and amateur sports in the larger issues of politics, commercialism, bias and class. Breaking through what Zirin dubs the "Athletic Industrial Complex," "What's My Name, Fool?" (the title is a quote from Muhammed Ali, who courageously used his keen social conscience to fight black oppression and resist war in the '60's) encourages fans both to savor sports, and to inspire activists and athletes to speak out and challenge the dominant power brokers of sports and society.
As an increasingly profitable form of mass entertainment (professional sports are now the tenth largest industry in the United States, generating $220 billion in revenue every year), sports are used by the political and financial elite as a way to package, promote and sell their values and ideas.
Zirin explains that some fans have thrown in the towel on sports, concluding that "sports are little more than a brutal reflection of the savage inequalities that stream through our world." Worse, many sports reporters and editors are shills for the teams and leagues they're supposed to cover, failing to question the abuses, starting with talented high school players, and telling us to "grow up" and "just deal with it" while, as Zirin writes, ". . . eating free press box sushi while the rest of us are paying $9.00 for a hotdog."
But Zirin has neither sacrificed his ideals to be a sports fan, nor quit cheering to clear his conscience. To the contrary, he is a passionate sports fan and activist who fights for the integrity of sports while enjoying the comradery of rooting for teams, delighting in the breathtaking artistry of athletes, and admiring the intricate strategy of coaches and players that make spectator sports so appealing.
As Zirin explains: ". . . the very passion we invest in sports can transform it from a kind of mindless escape into a site of resistance. It can become an arena where the ideas of our society are not only presented but also challenged. Just as sports can reflect the dominant ideas of our society, they can also reflect struggle. The story of the women's movement is incomplete without mention of Billie Jean King's match against Bobby Riggs. The struggle for gay rights has to include a chapter on Martina Navratilova. When we think about the Black freedom struggle, we picture Jackie Robinson and Muhammad Ali in addition to Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. And, of course, when remembering the movement for Black Power, we can't help but visualize one of the most stirring sights of our sports century: Tommie Smith and John Carlos's black-gloved medal stand salute at the 1968 Olympics."
The detailed recounting of past events in "What's My Name, Fool?" is a living history serving as a backdrop for frustratingly comparable issues today, with an eye toward inducing future change on and off the playing field. Readers will not soon forget Zirin's wake-up call, and they will often refer to it when sports policies and behaviors upset them. We will look back on this book when fans, activists and athletes develop the determination to challenge the injustices of the sports industry and the avaricious world it embodies.
As David Meggysey, former NFL linebacker and author of "Out of Their League," concludes in the foreword to "What's My Name, Fool?": "How we do sport, how we play our games, is a window to see and a format through which to express that vision of a better world.
It takes someone like Dave Zirin to make those connections and critiques, and to make it clear that sport can be a powerful carrier of the best within us, which is respect for each other's humanity and life itself, human relationship and connection, and the joy of play with our fellow humans."
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