WASHINGTON – The WNBA has long been at the forefront of social justice campaigns, but the efforts in Washington are often at another level.
In the past 12 months, the Mystics led efforts that culminated in three league games being postponed after Jacob Blake was shot seven times in the back, in front of his children, by police in Kenosha, Wis., in August. Players arrived at the arena wearing T-shirts that spelled out the name of Jacob Blake with seven faux bullet holes in the back of the shirts. Guard Ariel Atkins became one of the leading voices of the bubble in Bradenton, Fla. Outside the bubble, guard Natasha Cloud was one of the most outspoken athletes in all of sports and opted out of the season to focus on her social justice efforts.
“We have a very socially conscious team, and I think the league has a lot of very socially conscious players,” Mystics Coach and General Manager Mike Thibault said. “So now that the election has passed and we have a new administration, the change that’s going to come about is going to be a little bit more subtle, I think. We’ve had the amplifying points, the flash points, but now it’s down to the nitty-gritty work that has to be done – the stuff that doesn’t make the newspapers, the media.”
The latest front-facing effort came in the team’s apparel. Nike released three new jerseys per team before this season, and each organization was consulted to tell a story unique to that franchise. The Mystics and New York Liberty are the only two to replace their team names with statements focused on bringing attention to social justice initiatives. New York’s “Rebel” edition reads “EQUALITY” across the front; the Mystics’ version reads “RISE” in a “rallying cry to stand up for all women’s rights,” Nike said in a statement. The red colorway was inspired by the 2017 Women’s March in Washington, and the entire edition is an ode to gender, racial and LGBTQ+ equality movements – from women’s suffrage and civil rights movements to protests in recent years.
A unique detail of the jerseys is the text of the 19th Amendment printed along piping that represents the paths of marches through the streets of D.C. en route to the National Mall. The amendment prohibits the denial of voting rights to citizens on the basis of sex, effectively giving women the right to vote.
“We’re in D.C. – you can’t not see,” Atkins said. “It’s in our face every day. I’m going to practice seeing the Capitol in my rearview mirror. There’s always things that are reminding us of not only what we’ve had to deal with before, but what’s going on daily in these offices that are two miles from us. . . . When you come to play in D.C., straight off the bat, you understand what it means to be a part of the D.C. community because it’s just something that we talk about. . . . What are the things that we can do to actually give back to the D.C. community? When we talk about fighting for social justice issues, these aren’t just issues that we saw on the Internet. We live this stuff every day. And we know that the people around us, the people in our community are living it every day.”
Like the text of the 19th Amendment on the new jerseys, however, progress is not a straight line. Mystics players are proud to bring attention to women’s rights, but the inclusion of the amendment elicits additional thoughts: The amendment was ratified in 1920, but it would be another 45 years before the Voting Rights Act outlawed Jim Crow provisions that kept African Americans from voting.
Women won the right to vote in 1920, but African American women, who make up the majority of the WNBA, weren’t included in practice.
“It was hard, I’m not going to sugarcoat it,” Cloud said. “My challenge to Nike would be to please include us in the decision-making first, you know what I mean? Because if we were in those rooms, we would have brought it up immediately.
“The conversation we had once we saw it was, ‘Well, y’all know that doesn’t include Black women?’ From that point, it was kind of really too far along in the process to make any significant changes. So for us, it was, ‘OK, how do we now take control of the narrative behind this, and what are our intentions moving forward?’ “
The Mystics weren’t the only team to run into issues with their jerseys. The Dallas Wings’ “Rebel” edition featured a design inspired by the World War II P-40 Warhawk plane and the Women Airforce Service Pilots corps. The problem is that African American women who applied weren’t accepted to the program, according to Time magazine. Nike, the WNBA and the Wings decided to pull the uniforms.
Cloud said as soon as the Mystics players pointed out the issue, the organization backed a clarifying message. The focus was then shifted to the “Rise” section of the jersey and a small flap in the bottom corner that reads “Shall not be denied.” The motto of “District of Change” was emphasized even more.
When asked about the dichotomy of the messaging, Nike replied in a statement: “Black women played a crucial role in the suffragist movement, yet their full enfranchisement didn’t culminate with the 19th Amendment. It was, however, a start to a new decades-long struggle to secure voting rights for all Americans. The uniform detail is meant to encourage conversation around the complete history and impact of the women’s vote.”
The jerseys almost symbolize the struggles people of color have faced since the inception of the country. Progress typically includes pushback, and the fight for equal rights continues.
“Ultimately, the players want to be about change and they want to have their hand in that change,” WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said. “Whether it’s civic engagement or voting rights or health equity or other issues that many of them are passionate about, I really look forward to seeing that they do this year and handling any crises that come our way.”
The WNBA created the Social Justice Council last year and dedicated the 2020 season to those efforts. A large part of their work centered on getting people out to vote, and the presidential election had the highest voter turnout in more than a century. The Atlanta Dream players campaigned against their owner, Kelly Loeffler, who has since sold the team, and helped elect Raphael Warnock to one of Georgia’s U.S. Senate seats. Loeffler opposed the league’s support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Since those elections, though, several states have begun to enact voting restrictions that some argue make it more difficult for people of color to vote.
Those are the types of ebbs and flows that make the discussions important in the first place.
“This is going to be, again, those hard dialogues,” Cloud said. “Let’s talk about America’s true history and what that Constitution stands for, because it never stood for anyone Black and Brown. But how do we change that narrative moving forward? How do we push that needle forward here in 2021? And I think that’s what we’re doing.”
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