Brian Wakamo: Sports walkouts: Imagine what an Amazon strike could do

Via OtherWords.org

First, the Milwaukee Bucks refused to take the court in their playoff game against the Orlando Magic. Then other teams followed suit, leading to a three-day wildcat strike in the National Basketball Association.

The Bucks were protesting the police shooting of Jacob Blake in nearby Kenosha, Wis., but they helped ignite a wave of athletic activism for racial justice. Other leagues followed suit.

Players in the women’s NBA, who often lead athlete protests, joined the strike. Some Major League Baseball teams — including the Milwaukee Brewers — refused to play multiple games as well. So did Major League Soccer players.

And Naomi Osaka, two-time tennis Grand Slam winner, announced she would not play her semi-final match as a protest. She next appeared wearing a face mask with Breonna Taylor’s name on it.

It was a seismic moment in the history of sports.

We’ve seen players use their platform to advocate for social justice, going all the way back to Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali and Billie Jean King. And we’ve seen players strike for better collective bargaining agreements.

What’s new are these labor actions for social justice — especially across multiple sports and leagues. It’s unprecedented.

These shows of strength and solidarity had immediate consequences, including at the NBA offices, where around 100 employees struck in solidarity. Within a few days, NBA owners and players announced a raft of initiatives to improve voter access in NBA arenas and to invest in a joint social justice coalition among coaches, players, and owners.

As these athletes have shown, striking does not need to be reserved exclusively for higher wages or a better contract. NBA players have a strong players union and an incredibly well negotiated collective bargaining agreement, but they knew they had the power to amplify a national conversation about police violence. It’s inspiring that they chose to use it.

It’s also an inspiring story about the power of all workers.

Few workers are as well paid as professional athletes, and most have more to lose from running afoul of their employers. But there’s a lesson here for them, too: Workers make the company run, not the CEOs and owners. Withholding that work can force immense changes.

After all, if a handful of athletes refusing to play can yield such immediate results, imagine what would happen if long-suffering, underpaid Amazon or Wal-Mart workers — or both — pulled off a national strike. They could virtually shut down the economy and win the fair treatment they’ve been demanding for years.

That’s what postal workers did in a 1970 postal strike, which completely halted all mail deliveries, even as President Nixon attempted to use the National Guard to deliver the mail. Nixon failed miserably, and postal workers won collective-bargaining rights, higher wages and the four postal unions we have today.

As for those well-paid athletes? I hope they’ll force their employers to take tangible steps in other fights — like for racial justice, a fairer immigration system, and action on climate change.

These athletes just showed us all a path forward. I hope more workers are inspired by their example.

Brian Wakamo is an inequality researcher at the Institute for Policy Studies.

Brian Wakamo: NBA's China fiasco shows what's most important to business

From OtherWords.org

The NBA has gotten itself into a bit of a situation.

On Oct. 4, acclaimed Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeted in support of the continuing protests in Hong Kong. His simple, two-sentence tweet (which has since been deleted) has prompted an unlikely controversy

The owner of the Rockets, Tilman Fertitta, quickly denounced his general manager’s tweet, saying it does not speak for the organization and emphasizing that the Rockets are, resoundingly, not a political organization.

Why did Fertitta condemn his own manager? The replies to his tweet offer a clue.

Nearly all come from Chinese nationals warning that if Morey isn’t fired, the Rockets will lose the entire Chinese market. Fertitta himself may agree, as evidenced by his liking Instagram comments calling for Morey’s ouster. Reports suggest the Rockets have internally discussed this option.

Firing one of the most successful general managers in the NBA over the past decade may seem absurd. But the Rockets are the most popular NBA team in China — and, as many businesses have found, that market share can put a lot of pressure on political speech well outside of the country.

By now the Rockets have lost business deal after business deal in China, drawn a condemnation from the Chinese consulate in Houston, and jeopardized their status in the country.

The NBA hasn’t exactly been supportive of Morey either. In a bland statement, Commissioner Adam Silver offered only very tepid backing.

Meanwhile ,Brooklyn Nets owner Joe Tsai — a co-founder of Chinese retail giant Alibaba — put out a long statement describing Hong Kong’s protests as a “separatist movement.”

In an especially disappointing statement, superstar LeBron James seemed to suggest Morey — who has been doing business in China for over a decade — was “misinformed” about the situation in Hong Kong.

American politicians from across the spectrum, on the other hand, have been much more supportive.

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz tweeted in support of Morey, while fellow Republicans Rick Scott and Josh Hawley demanded answers from the NBA. Democratic presidential candidates Beto O’Rourke, Julián Castro, and Elizabeth Warren all condemned the response from the league as well.

Yet this groundswell of support from American politicians will likely only inflame the critical response from China.

China has long been attempting to regulate foreign free speech via economic pressure.

Many movie studios, like Disney’s Marvel outfit, have altered scripts to prevent films from being boycotted in the Chinese market. Google has repeatedly censored its searches to appease the Chinese government, while Twitter has suspended accounts which are critical of China.

This pattern extends even further. China’s government often pays Chinese student associations on college campuses to boost Chinese state visits — and to criticize any sentiment seen as anti-China. In many cases, the Chinese government has harassed even non-Chinese academics who criticize the state.

Among major sports leagues, the NBA often brands itself as the most woke. LeBron James has consistently stood up for the Black Lives Matter movement, and once called President Trump a “bum.”

But the league has long been happy to take Chinese money and sponsorships, especially since Yao Ming was drafted by the same Houston Rockets years ago. And progressive politics hardly dominate there besides — Tilman Fertitta has even proclaimed his support for Trump’s policies.

Still, the obvious prioritization of commercial ties with a government that’s attacking demonstrators in Hong Kong and putting millions of ethnic Uyghurs in concentration camps is a damning statement about what the league — and the economic system it operates in — truly values.

Brian Wakamo is a researcher on the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies.

Science, sexual innuendo and basketball

"Untitled'' (wood and acrylic  vintage NBA photo layered with the late famed MIT engineer Harold Edgerton's iconic photo "Bullet Through the Apple''). This is a  "photo-sculpture'' by TODD PAVLISKO in his show "Hummingbird,'' Sept. 11-Oct. 24 at Samson Gallery, Boston.

Mr. Edgerton, the inventor of the electronic flash, was known as "The Man Who Froze Time''.

The gallery says of the show:

"For those ... interested in unpacking Pavlisko's layers of meaning in this series, the works deliver on that front as well. One need consider the dual action of sports drama blended with scientific alchemy in order to build elaborate narratives surrounding competition, sexual prowess, indictments of masculine bravado, or any number of allusions toward the passing of time and the fading of clarity. At the apex of their momentum, objects are caught in their trajectories. The athletes’ clenched bodies along with bullets, basketballs and sensuous droplets of water are all frozen in time. Though their explosive kinetic force is silenced by the medium; the images, caught at the moment of release, imply a highly audible experience. Like much of Pavlisko's work, this content confronts us from a variety of angles—at times with levity and sharp wit, and at other times with absolute stoicism and sobriety. Often, the murky territory in limbo is the only real static landing pad for these mixed reactions. A bombastic front underpinned with quiet subtle nuance is a paradigm invariably present.''