With the Super Bowl days away, journalist Dave Zirin joins Ola and Vin for a mind-blowing discussion of all things sports, politics, nuclear weapons, and of course, Taylor Swift. Vin shares the story of the athletes who helped save the world from nuclear destruction.
Dave Zirin: https://www.davezirin.com/
Vin's new book: https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/12923/saving-world-nuclear-war
Kansas Relays and the Soviets: https://www.kansan.com/arts_and_culture/breaking-the-ice-how-lawrence-became-an-olive-branch-between-nations-during-the-cold-war/article_986a6f2c-f9ac-11e6-8893-b723ad654f38.html
Athletes United for Peace: http://www.athletesunitedforpeace.org/?q=athletes-united-for-peace-our-story
The Nuclear Freeze and Randall Forsberg : https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2010_12/LookingBack
Ola: [00:00:00] This is minds blown.
Dave: They're not only enacting such a monstrous genocide, but what they're also, you know, an Olympic coach was killed of the Palestinian soccer team, so how can you kill Olympic coaches and be invited to the Olympics?
Ola: Welcome to Minds Blown. We are your hosts. I'm Olamide Samuel, a diplomat,
Vin: And I am Vincent Intondi, a historian.
Ola: and we are here to blow your minds.
Vin: That's right, Ola. We're gonna blow their minds with little known stories that show you how nuclear weapons affect every aspect of your day-to-day life, all while having great conversations with fantastic guests. [00:01:00] So Ola. We've been talking about,. Trying to get this conversation of nuclear disarmament outside of DC outside of those think tanks, and really try to find ways to get it to the mainstream, as it once was.
And this was the idea. So I'm, I'm really hoping that through the guests that we have and the conversations we have, that this is gonna reach people that never actually, think much about this issue for a variety of reasons. I'm pretty excited that we're, we're starting this off.
Ola: Absolutely. Same here. We've been talking about this for quite a while, most of our conversations, hover around nuclear disarmament and nuclear weapons and while people just don't see the same stuff we do.
. How nuclear weapons affect every aspect of almost everything.
Without further ado, let's introduce our first guest, Dave.
Vin: Let's do it.
Ola: Now Dave writes about the politics of [00:02:00] sports for the Nation Magazine, the winner of sport in society, and Northeastern University School of Journalism's Excellence in Sports Journalism Awards. Dave has published 11 books, including the John Car Story, a People's History of Sports in the United States and the.
Vin: You've probably seen Dave on E-S-P-N-C-N-N-M-S-N-B-C or read his work in the New York Times Vibe Magazine, the LA Times, Washington Post and more.
Ola: And his most recent film Behind the Shield is an amazing look at the NFL, which we will get into today.
Currently you can find Dave on his podcast, edge of Sports, his radio show, the Collision, and his TV show with Real News on YouTube. We are so lucky to have him for our inaugural show. Welcome Dave
Dave: well, [00:03:00] it's an honor. Thank you so much for having me. I respect both of your work so much, and it's important. To have these conversations, especially in 2024 and hey, what can I tell you? The idea of being the first guest on Minds Blown. I'm gonna be the answer to a trivia question someday. I'm very excited about that.
Ola: We're very excited to have you here. Looking forward to that trivia in a couple of years when you know we've probably got the world's minds blown. So before we get into it with Dave and all things sports and politics, vin, I've got a challenge for you.
Do you think you can set us up right and blow our minds?
Vin: Challenge accepted Ola. What I wanted to talk about for this story is so often today we hear about how organizing and protesting and going into the streets and signing petitions that none of these things actually work.
None of these things move the needle. Nobody listens. And so I really wanna prove the naysayers wrong today [00:04:00] by showing and focusing on what I would argue is the greatest citizen led mobilization effort in United States history. So how's that to start?
Ola: Oh, that's going big. Definitely greatest citizen led mobilization in US history. Yeah. I can't wait to hear this.
Vin: Well, what if I asked you, if there was a person in the 1980s that had such horrible policies that millions of people had to rise up and say, no, this is not gonna happen. Who would that person, who do you think of in the 1980s?
Ola: Eighties. Horrible person. Definitely Reagan.
Ronald Reagan: My fellow Americans, I'm pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.
Vin: Exactly,
Ola: about it everywhere,
Vin: Ronald Reagan. Right. So we'll start there. And when Reagan becomes president, he makes it pretty [00:05:00] clear he is not in favor of nuclear disarmament or arms control in any way. There was not a single arms agreement that he actually endorsed or liked.
And when he comes into office, he talks about a winnable nuclear war and he talks about how much money he's gonna spend on nuclear weapons. His, his cabinet, he surrounds himself with people that are, are very like-minded, and they start now talking about a winnable nuclear war.
His deputy under Secretary of Defense, TK Jones. Actually said that with enough shovels, Americans could survive a nuclear war. All they need to do is dig a hole, cover it with a couple of doors, and then throw three feet of dirt on top of it, and citizens would all be safe from radioactivity.
This was the type of ru Yeah, go ahead. I know you gotta process that one.
Atomic cafe clip: Now listen, kids, if they're dropping an atomic. We'll wait about a minute. After it's all over, then we'll go upstairs and take a look around
Ola: right. And you're saying this man says, that [00:06:00] if a nuclear war happens, you just get a shovel, dig. Three feet. So not even six feet where they bury people when they die three feet.
Vin: Yeah, and we have others in his administration talking about that only 10 million people will die. And if that's the case, that's the whole. Only 10 million. Right.
Ola: Oh.
Vin: that, the. Right, right. That's not the whole population of the us So it's, it's all good. .
Atomic cafe clip: And by the way, do you know exactly what your family would do if an attack came, say it. 10 o'clock tomorrow morning. It's a good question, isn't it?
Vin: And so this is the type of rhetoric coming out of the Reagan administration and people are, are freaked out obviously. And so there's the aspect of people, just citizens being completely freaked out because they're, they're seeing all, everywhere they turn, they're, they're seeing nuclear issues of nuclear war rhetoric with Russia.
There's this new network, MTV that comes out, which you really couldn't watch MTV [00:07:00] without seeing nuclear war.
MTV Promo: I want my MTV twenty-four hours a day on cable tv
Vin: there was a group Genesis led by Phil Collins super popular at the time.
And one of their videos was, they used puppets and it was Reagan and Gorbachev and Reagan having dementia wakes up in the middle of the night and he hits the wrong button, he hits the red button and blows up the world.
Land of Confusion: Morning dear. Ah, hey man. What a terrible dream. I am parched. That's better. I could use another one of those.
Vin: You have all this kind of Cold War culture happening and nuclear culture happening, but then Reagan actually starts spending on this stuff. So. Keep this in perspective as well. Reagan ends up spending trillions of dollars throughout his two terms on defense and on
Ola: Trillions,
Vin: yeah. So he spends up to [00:08:00] $2.7 trillion he spends on defense, and he ends up spending on new nuclear weapons delivery systems, the MX missile, B one and B two bombers, all of this kind of stuff.
So while he was doing this black children were now four times as likely as white children to grow up on welfare, which was now reduced to $700 a month which left them way below the poverty line. And in Michigan where the unemployment rate was the highest in the country, the infant death rate began to rise in his first term in parts of Detroit.
One third of children were now dying before their first birthday. Food stamps were cut. Free school lunches were cut. Yes. So all of this was, now this is how we were going to pay for all of these nuclear weapons that you know, but as long as we got those doors and enough dirt, we're gonna be okay.
Atomic cafe clip: Don't worry about yourself. You'll be okay.
Ola: You know how crazy it is that one third of [00:09:00] kids die before their first birthday?
So to have one in three in the greatest country in the world, that is
Vin: City on the hill, right? City on the hill. US exceptionalism. Yep. And this is what's happening. You can imagine that if you're looking around and seeing all this and hearing all this. You would say, I need to do something. This is life or death. This is nuclear war. This is gonna happen. And so that's exactly what happened in the United States.
But it was ordinary citizens that we, that really, you know, start to take pay attention to this issue. And a lot of this comes from Randy Forsburg. Are you familiar with Randy Forsburg? I know you're diplomat and, and nuclear policy is in your wheelhouse, but.
Ola: I haven't heard of Randy. Who is he?
Vin: Randy Forsburg is a she, it's Randall Forsburg, and she was. Yeah, so in 19, again, so much of this history is [00:10:00] led by women and are also forgotten in this history. But in 1979, here's this 38-year-old woman, Randy Forsberg, and she is now working at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Was a think tank and she was a typist working with the Swedish government and she starts. Reading and learning about all the things she's actually typing and,, processing about nuclear weapons and it hits her. And so when she returns back to the United States and she's at MIT. She decides she's gotta do something to try to stop this.
Randall Forsberg: The politicians don't believe it yet. But they will, we'll not go home and be quiet. We'll go home and organize.
Vin: And this is where we get what's called the Nuclear Freeze Initiative. And the Nuclear Freeze Initiative is a simple thing where it's just saying that the US and the Soviets need to stop testing, producing, and deploying nuclear weapons. And this proposal became the [00:11:00] manifesto of peace, the likes of which the United States has to this date, never seen.
Ola: Wow, I've heard of the nuclear freeze. But again, it's 'cause it's, it's part of the history of the work. I, I do. But the proposal that the US and, and Soviet Union, what we know as Russia today would stop the production and testing and deployment of nuclear weapons. That, that will sound crazy today because you'd be going up against a sophisticated industrial complex,
Vin: the, well, the other thing though is, is so much of what you know we see and then why so many citizens just kind of tune out is because most things with nuclear weapons, it seems like you gotta have a PhD in physics to understand. that was the, that was the beautiful thing about the freeze is you didn't, it was plain, it was simple.
And it provided agency, right? It gave people to say, I can take this initiative and I can get people in my neighborhood to sign it. I can get my congressmen, my mayors, I can get all [00:12:00] sorts of things happening around this. And that worked. And it, and it was touching on like wildfire. All of this is, is happening in the eighties, and you start to see new groups pop up groups, like Nurses for Nuclear Disarmament and dancers for nuclear disarmament architects for nuclear disarmament.
. When the Russians invaded Afghanistan in 79 in response, the US the summer that summer Olympics, the US decided to boycott in retaliation for this.
JImmy Carter: And I have notified the Olympic committee that was Soviet invading forces in Afghanistan. Neither the American people, nor I will support sending an Olympic team to Moscow.
Vin: So we boycott their, their Olympics because they did this. And then of course, in return, the Soviets clap back and they boycotted us the Olympics here in the United States in 1984.
So during this time, residents in Lawrence, Kansas. Why Kansas? Middle America pretty conservative? Well, because Kansas was surrounded by [00:13:00] nuclear silos. So this issue is really front and center for a lot of the regular folks just living in Kansas.
They had these annual Kansas relays these competitive races that were done at the University of Kansas. And so they thought, these residents thought, well, wouldn't it be something since there's no Olympics, if we could bring some Russian athletes here and have them compete with US athletes and use this as a sign of peace, get some dialogue going and friendly competition. In 1982 one of the, the residents of Lawrence, Kansas, Bob Swan Jr. An insurance agent. He actually just happened to work with professional athletes and his friend Mark Scott. They create Athletes United for Peace, . And the goal was to use sports to bring people together to bring Russian athletes and US athletes together and try to.
Halt the arms race in some way. Just make a little dent in some way. Children in Lawrence, Kansas start sending letters to their counterparts in Russia and politicians like Senator Bob Dole from Kansas, [00:14:00] he ran for president at one point, and Senator Ted Kennedy get behind this initiative.
And in 19 83, 14 Soviet athletes arrived in Lawrence, Kansas to participate in these relays. So maybe think about today and could we ever pull something like this off? You know, I mean, you think about even Ukrainian athletes and Belarusian athletes or Russian athletes.
You can't even get them to shake hands after a tennis match. And here we got Russian athletes coming to the US to work with US athletes. It's pretty incredible.
Ola: It is. I'm surprised they didn't get denied visas like,
Vin: good
Ola: the Russian delegation in 2023 to negotiate the extension of something called a new start. The head of the delegation wasn't granted a visa and wasn't, you know, couldn't be there because of that. So, you know, just on a very practical level, that's, that's quite phenomenal that they were able to pull this off.
Vin: Yeah and, and it's crazy when you see it. If you watch any video of this or read any newspaper articles about it, because you have Russian athletes now, you know, putting their arms around. [00:15:00] US athletes and saying,, I don't want nuclear war to, this is my new friend. I don't want anything to happen to him.
When people are together and realize you're just people, right? Like John Kennedy said it, president Kennedy said it in his address at American University in 19 63, his peace speech at American University, in which he said, you know, there's, we all breathe the same air, right?
We all have children. We're all just human beings.
JFK: For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's futures, and we are all mortal.
Vin: The Athletes United for Peace did all sorts of things. They had our bikeathon and, and they had marathons and they had public service announcements and they opened up education forums and things of this nature for athletes or for people on both sides.
And speaking of the Super Bowl, right around the corner. There were NFL players that took part in this Todd Christensen of the now Las Vegas [00:16:00] Raiders, Rick Sanford of the New England Patriots, Joe Delaney of the Kansas City Chiefs. I mean, at one point you even had the whole Baltimore Orioles baseball team visiting Hiroshima.
Again, I think about that today. Imagine if you, yeah, imagine if you had today
Ola: Like the Lakers or
Vin: the Lakers, right? Right. Could you imagine seeing LeBron in.
Ola: all his fans would be like, what's going on Hiroshima?
Vin: the power of athletes. They have a more enormous power. Right? , we mentioned John Carlos and Tommy Smith at the 68 Olympics, in Mexico City. But there was another athlete who kinda gets overshadowed. His name was Bob Beaman. And Bob Beaman was arguably the greatest long jumper in history.
Bob Beamon: And when I landed, I heard the people roaring.
They said, we don't even have a manual tape to measure this jump. They're so enormous. My teammate said to me, Bob, you just jumped over twenty-nine feet. I was between time and space. Because I didn't quite understand what I had done.[00:17:00]
Vin: He set the world record in Mexico City and he was one of the first members of Athletes United for Peace. To bring this home, did Athletes United for Peace and you know the work they did, did it change the world by itself? No,
. Collectively what we know now is that Reagan, his while at the time was saying he wasn't really paying attention to this. We know now later that. His administration admitted Reagan was deeply affected by the day after film, was paying attention and knew exactly what was going on in the streets, knew what the nuclear freeze initiative was doing, and was told and realize he had to change course.
He could not keep this up. And so this is when we start to see Reagan now talking about that a nuclear war can never be fought and a nuclear war cannot be won.
Ronald Reagan: We should seek to reduce the suspicions and mistrust that have led us to acquire mountains of strategic weapons. Since the dawn of the nuclear age, every American president has sought to limit and end the dangerous competition in nuclear [00:18:00] arms. I have no higher priority than to finally realize that dream.
I've said before. I will say again, a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.
Vin: And with. His counterpart the, the real visionary, the, that ended the Cold War, Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leader, they signed in 1987, the historic INF treaty which for those not familiar, actually eliminated a land-based ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and a series of missile launchers, especially throughout Europe.
And. To go back to Randy Forsburg, who in some way started, you know, so much of this in the eighties with the nuclear freeze initiative. She had said at the time when they signed it, quote, this is a victory for the peace movement. And all these years later, Ola, I would agree with her.
Ola: Definitely mind blowing. I mean, from where I come from, the work, the work I do on nuclear policy, we only see, [00:19:00] or we assume that it's the work we do at the diplomatic level, negotiating and pushing back door deals and all of that sort of stuff that gets, you know.
Agreement signed, but we're talking about the INF treaty here, which, you know, only recently in the past five years was, you know, disassembled by the US and Russia. But like this is one of the biggest. Stabilizes of security in Europe and across, you know, the, the Euro Atlantic dimension. And this came from protests on the street.
Reagan could actually listen to people marching like that is, yeah, that's definitely a mind blown for me.
Vin: This history is something we really should look back and learn about and, and especially to see the power of athletes.
What about you, Dave? How much of this did you know?
Dave: Well, it's interesting. I, a couple of parts I knew very, very well. I've written about Athletes United for Peace. I've interviewed them. I've been to events that they've put on [00:20:00] over the years. But really just in the two thousands and, you know, I learned the history from some of the old heads, knew about Bob Beeman, certainly knew about the bike races and the like.
And also, you know, I grew up, I don't know if you knew this man, but I grew up across the street pretty much just a block and a half away from Central Park at the 81st Street entrance on the west side of New York. So even though I was young, as young can be, I absolutely remember the 1982. Gathering. , it's a, it's might be my first political memory that, or an actual campaign, and I kid thee not by the people of New York against Donald Trump because he was attempting to buy a huge section of Central Park and develop it. so my mom got me a T-shirt that said, you gotta have park. One last thing I did not know that you said that really was cool to me was I didn't know about Todd Christensen. I didn't know about Joe Delaney. [00:21:00] I didn't know about that level of NFL intervention into this. And for a league that prides itself on the only politics, it really holds being politics of pro-military.
And when someone like Colin Kaepernick steps out, it's seen as somehow anathema to the entire operation of what the NFL is. That's really impressive to me. But one last observation, as long as I have the mic and am the first guest on your show is, I'm wondering, sitting here, if we lived in a social media era, would someone like Todd Christensen, who was a big time player, he have gotten more of a backlash than he did?
I. Would it have gotten more focus than it did? Would people like myself who prides themselves on knowing NFL history absolutely know that Todd Christensen was in that mix because it would've been reported on from below. I just think it was [00:22:00] easier back then to memory hole certain things and isolate them from sports fans like maybe the NFL just abided all of that because they knew it wouldn't become something that interfered with the games themselves. While today, it very well might.
Ola: Dave, since this
Ola: is my first time meeting you could you tell me and our listeners, you know, how you began down this path? Like, how did you first know sports and politics was going to be your thing?
Dave: The origin story is not that complex. I was really into politics. I was really into sports growing up. I never really saw how the Twain met until 1996 when I was in college, and the basketball player, Maud Abdul Raul. Made the decision to not come out for the national anthem out of criticisms around U.S foreign policy, militaristic policy.
I mean, he was very internationalist in his thinking, and that blew my [00:23:00] mind. And one of the reasons why it blew my mind is at this very time where Mahmoud Abdul-Raouf made his stand. I was sitting in on a class at school taught by a a guy who's, the respect I have for him overwhelms a professor named Mahmoud Al-Kati.
And Mahmoud Al-Kati taught a class called The Black Athlete since 1945. Now that being said, you know why I said sitting in on a class? Because I didn't get in the class 'cause was so popular. But I was so into the topic that even though my other grades definitely needed the attention, the actual grades that went into my GPA, I would sit in on his class and my roommate got into the class.
So I would read my roommate's books and sit in on the class because I was like, this is everything I've always wanted. I'm a political person, I'm a sports person. This is blowing my mind. And then when Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf made the [00:24:00] decision to not come out for the anthem, it crystallized what I'd been learning in Mahmoud Al-Kati's class.
Yes. There are two Mahmouds in this story. not mishearing me. And so Mahmoud Al-Kati teaches me. About the past and Rauf is teaching me about how this applies to the present and I, I was thinking to myself, I want to be somebody who extends this history into the present. history could not be more relevant, particularly at the time as you're starting to see sports becoming this hyper-exalted brought to you by Nike platform.
'cause it was in the nineties under the leadership of organizations like ESPN and individuals like Michael Jordan, where you see U.S sports really become a global entity and. Soccer, which of course springs organically from all the countries of the earth became something that was rivaled [00:25:00] by the ways in which U.S sports, particularly basketball and baseball, made international inroads
A book came out in 1998, I believe, called Redemption Song. Muhammad Ali in the spirit of the 1960s, and that's where I learned about Ali. And it was also written by an author, a British author named Mike Marcusy, with a degree of flair and and excitement that made me say, wow, sports history doesn't have to be boring.
Because a lot of what I'd read was kind of academic and dry. And so to read it written with a kind of verve and rhythm. Made me not only that, not only began my as Vin, well knows my obsession with Ali's history, but also my belief that the writing itself didn't have to be something that wouldn't rise to the level of the best kind of sports writing, which is sports writing.
[00:26:00] That certainly, you know, raises the heartbeat.
Vin: To see these magazines and the sports journalism just go by the wayside is so awful. It's just so disheartening.
Dave: sports is big. Business sports has never been more powerful in communities. And so this is a function also of economic inequality and the fact that the billionaires who mine sports are also, you know, very chummy with the billionaires who have been coming in from VCs, venture capitalists who are buying up our newspapers, and they want sports to be the toy department of the media world.
And then if you're dealing with very tough cuts, the toy department will be the first thing to go. So some of this is honestly Vin, I think pernicious and intentional. And also some of it though is just about ignorance. Not realizing the importance of what sports coverage brings to our lives. I [00:27:00] mean, come on, look at what happened with the New York Times.
The New York Times sports page was part of a guild strike that actually brought the New York Times editors to their knees. So what do they do? They eliminate this Union Eyes, department of the paper. And replace it with a non-organized, non-union entity in the athletic. I mean, sometimes this is also just about union busting.
And that that's distressing as well in and of itself. And union busting is a function of economic inequality, which is what I'm saying is underlying the attacks on media, the attacks on watchdogs and the attacks on a sports department, and let's not get it twisted. The LA Times sports department had a huge task in front of it, in looking deep into the 2028 Olympics, which are set to be staged in L.A.
And every Olympics brings corruption. Every Olympics brings debt displacement, [00:28:00] the militarization of public space, gentrification. They all bring these side effects that hurt communities, and it's up to the media to expose them. So you need these social movements, but if people aren't aware of the corruption, where are the social movements supposed to come from in a mass way beyond like the, the, the far too small organized left. So this is where we're at. And in Los Angeles, where, believe me, the powers that be want these Olympics in every conceivable way.
It just feels very, very suspicious and fishy to me that the entire sports page of the LA Times gets gutted right as the Olympic work in LA is being ramped up.
Vin: So one thing that I often think about with Dave specific, specifically you, is how I try to. Figure out watching sports, [00:29:00] liking sports, but then also being disgusted with aspects of sports. Like, what, what am I, I'm watching the NFL, but yet I'm constantly critical of the NFL. So for you that this is your livelihood, this is your, you know, passion, your, your life, how do you juxtapose it?
How do you deal with, you know, loving sports, loving athletes, writing about it, but then also needing to be critical of it in so many different ways? Especially I, I would say with the NFL.
Dave: We're in a very difficult situation with regards to sports consumption because of how it's being used and operated as a cudgel. I mean, I just think we have to think of ourselves as fans as being a movement unto ourselves and try to figure out ways that we can criticize sports, point out what's wrong about sports, but then also fight to reclaim sports, not reject it.
I mean, look at the Olympics, which I just mentioned and classified it as in being involved with debt and displacement and hyper-militarization. The Olympics also have some of the most beautiful [00:30:00] sports on earth, and they're also sports that are very, all only really consumed sometimes during the Olympics.
And so it's a chance for people who are involved in these beautiful artistic acts to actually be seen and appreciated. And that to me is a beautiful thing. That to me is something worth defending
I love that the sports get this platform. I don't love the way like barnacles on a boat. So many negative political agendas are attached to sports. So look at the Super Bowl right now where the right wing has decided that Taylor Swift, just because she said four years ago, that she was gonna vote for Biden is somehow a symbol of this.
This folk, this folk country singer from Tennessee, is now the symbol of left-wing decay. So they've decided that Kansas City has to lose. They're losing their minds by the way, um, about Taylor Swift for people listening to this outside the United [00:31:00] States partly because they're afraid of the influence that she has since she has more social media followers than Donald Trump by the millions.
I mean, they, they're, they're out for grievance and they're out for blood. And sports is a part of that agenda, which is exactly why I think sports, which I think at, at its best, can speak to the best angels of our nature. We need to fight to reclaim it, not to reject it.
Vin: Here, here.
Ola: Couldn't agree more. Couldn't agree more, and.
Dave: rejecting art. I mean, and I wanna point this out too, is like art is produced under horrific circumstances. Music is produced under horrific circumstances, yet you never hear people say, we need to reject music or we need to reject art. But you do hear a lot, we need to reject sports. And I think if we understood sports as art. I think our approach to it would be very different and frankly, much healthier [00:32:00] politically.
Ola: Football doesn't necessarily mean the same thing in Nigeria. You know, when we speak of football, we we're speaking of soccer, right?
So we don't really know much about American football or the NFL. So can you like explain to me, and you know, our listeners, many of which would also be from the African continent, this power of the NFL and this connection with the US military and the NFL.
Dave: Yeah, we should probably call it American football or. Something like that because you know, I have friends in I had a friend in Argentina who called football. Football Imperialismo. He says, we play our football, you play football. Imperialismo, the thing about football is that it's hilarious to me that it's so popular in the United States. You can't really find foreign purchase anywhere despite its best efforts. And I think one of the reasons for that is that it is so much a game that is [00:33:00] built around the concept of settler conquest. I mean, and that's just a, a, a foreign concept to much of the world.
This idea of constantly moving down the field to acquire ground. Doing it in a way that that fe not, doesn't just reflect militarism, but features it like the quarterback is called a field general. The throws are called bullets and bombs. You're approaching a defense that's trying to push you backwards.
I mean, I always have thought of football is that it's like a child's idea of war, advancements, rejection, retreat. And exciting real war when you speak to people who fought them tends to be long, long periods of boredom, followed by moments of incredible, incredible adrenaline horror shows that, you know, send your blood pressure through the stratosphere. But [00:34:00] football to me is much, is so militaristic and so based on this idea of conquest that it just is, is not the cup of tea for most of the world.
Vin: Stay with football American football and even internationalism. When you wrote the Kaepernick book, the Kaepernick Effect, and for those listeners that have not read that book, I obviously highly recommend it, but it's not a biography of Colin Kaepernick, that's not what the book is about.
It's, it's looking at his effect on, on sports and on individuals at all levels. And. , you learn about the, the backlash in more conservative areas and so on and so forth. And now when I watch Premier League, soccer, football, European football, at the beginning of every match, they take a knee in solidarity against racism, and that's all they do.
Right? And so now that the, this has passed, looking back. What were some of the things that surprised you when you researched that book, and how do you feel [00:35:00] now? Do you feel like it's become performative, it's been hijacked? What do you, what are your thoughts on, on, you know, where we are since when Kaepernick decided to take that knee,
Dave: And I think taking a knee during the Anthem is such a challenge. The idea of patriotism, particularly the militaristic patriotism that accompanies the NFL, that it's never been colonized as a gesture. It's never been gentrified. Like I, I got a a note from a neighbor who was staying in a kibbutz in Israel before October 7th, and after October 7th, they played the Hatikvah, which is the military anthem of Israel.
For his kibbutz, and he took a knee during the Khatikva and left the kibbutz. Like that idea of taking a knee is such a direct challenge that I don't think it's, it can be [00:36:00] gentrified, colonized or, or, I mean, of course any gesture can be performative if you don't believe in what you're doing. It is a gesture where, say you're one of those people who are like, shoot, I think Colin Kaepernick was cool.
I'm gonna do it too. the people who want you to pay a price for that are not gonna care but what I learned in talking to people, like, especially all these high schoolers, is that for them, their turning point in their thinking was not Colin, Kaepernick taking that knee.
When they were really young, when they were 10, 11 years old in 2012, when Trayvon Martin was killed by George Zimmerman. Trayvon Martin, a a young man, not even a man at all. He was a boy. He was a child stalked and killed by a wannabe police officer in Sanford, Florida. That is what shook them towards consciousness to say that, my goodness, my black life does not matter.
When Kaepernick took a knee, it was [00:37:00] this is one of the things I learned doing it, is that it was a, it was like bequeathing a language onto athlete activists. Like, here is a language about how you can protest. Here is a language for you that you can have your opinion heard about how this country values black life, and maybe people will hear it and maybe they won't.
Or maybe it'll just upset all the right people and stir up a hornet's nest. But that's the bravery piece that a lot of these young people engaged in and it didn't get the publicity, they didn't get any commercial contracts out of it. All they got out of it, in some cases was changing their community forever.
And in other cases, their family had to leave the town entirely because of death threats made against their person. So that was one of the important things I learned during the book. Another thing I learned. With all these young people taking a knee. Is that it? What's not just football [00:38:00] boy athletes, girl athletes, transgender athletes.
Every possible sport you could think of the band, in some cases, national anthem singers in some cases, like a real interesting variety of folk. Super interesting. And it says something about the universality of the gesture that anywhere where patriotism is put in your face, you can challenge that. I. You can do something about that.
Just food for thought and I, I, that really changed me. And if there was just one last thing I learned, I'm sorry to go on, but if there's just one last thing I learned that was very dear to me is that the athletes who organized their locker room before doing it tended to have a much easier time than the athletes who were just like, I'm gonna do this as a solo venture.
Which is a great lesson for young people about organizing and about numbers.
Vin: Yeah, I don't think that you, you never know how many people [00:39:00] it affected because I was teaching. In Sanford, Florida when Trayvon was murdered, and I remember I was teaching a course on African American history and we were, we were actually discussing the murder of Emmett till when the nine-one-one tapes came out.
And, and seeing all those students crying at their desk and saying, professors are still killing us for, for no reason except that we're black. And so. Again, even if it's, you know, giving them just some sort of agency where they can then take a knee yeah, , , it matters. It matters in ways that, you know, I obviously can't even comprehend.
So yeah, it was, it's a, it's a great book though, that I highly recommend our listeners pick up amongst all your books.
Ola: So Dave, on your TV show you've been discussing to a large extent how the sports world both in the US and outside, are actually failing when it comes to the genocide taking place in Palestine. What do you think would happen if an athlete like Kaepernick, for example, were to speak out for Palestine?[00:40:00]
Dave: Well, we know that the backlash would be extreme because we've already seen uh some athletes try to speak out and what they've received. I know of athletes who are trying to organize athletes for a ceasefire and they're having an incredibly difficult time. I mean, it, it's always tough when you feel like the world is gonna fall on your shoulders and you only have a couple of years to make money.
And when you have this living memory of Colin, Kaepernick being blackballed, denied the right to make a living that weighs heavily on the mind of the athlete. And also, you know, it's, for some athletes, it just feels like, well, who am I to say something that's happening thousands of miles away, even if the local connections are very extreme.
And, like Angela Davis said, she said, from Ferguson to Palestine, freedom is a constant struggle.
Ola: Fans, the sports community, the sports world is failing, you know, [00:41:00] when it comes to.
Dave: I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I'm just, it, it very much upsets me because when we speak about the toll being taken on Gaza and to a lesser extent the West Bank, I don't think people realize how many athletic associations have been bombed. I don't think people realize how many athletes have been killed.
I don't think people realize that dozens of administrators, workers for these sports foundations have been killed. I mean, this idea that Israel has put forward in the U.S too. This is a total war against the people of Gaza. And Gaza is Hamas and Hamas is Gaza. And those words are almost interchangeable and and phrases that have existed in the movement for decades, like from the river to the sea.
Palestine will be free. Doesn't become this statement of aspiration and freedom, which is how I've always understood it, but a statement genocide against the Jewish people. I mean that that is as propagandistic a trick [00:42:00] that's has been pulled off. As anything I remember in decades. So I think the international sports world is failing Palestine because the Palestinian sports community has been devastated to such a degree that it makes you wonder why no solidarity exists.
And frankly, it makes you wonder why Israel would be given a red carpet to be at the Olympics. They're not only enacting such a monstrous genocide, but what they're also, you know, an Olympic coach was killed of the Palestinian soccer team, so how can you kill Olympic coaches and be invited to the Olympics?
That's one of the things that's weighing on my mind.
I wanna bring it back to what we originally started with, which with your research , with Athletes United for Peace and athletes in general.
Vin: With the Cold War, if you thought, you know, they made a, a, a significant difference. And can we see that again? Do you think the era of kind of fighting for something, maybe that seems very [00:43:00] abstract as nuclear disarmament is, is gone, that era's gone, do we think there's a little bit of hope there that we can, we can actually organize around, around this issue, which I know is a difficult one.
Dave: Yes, it makes a big difference because of the platform that athletes hold. And because athletes tend to come from more poor and working class backgrounds, so when they speak out, they're speaking directly to a constituency that identifies with them. And yes, we're gonna see it again. It ebbs and it flows.
It goes up. It goes down. That's what history shows us. And ideally, the role that people like you both can have. And the role that I try to play is that when it flows and does not eb, we don't want people recreating the wheel. We want people figuring out how they can stand on the shoulders of giants. I mean, I'll tell you guys a quick story.
, I was on a call, like a secret call with these athletes talking about how to organize for a ceasefire, and they produced a wonderful statement [00:44:00] calling for a ceasefire. But I had to weigh in and say, I love this statement. There are names here that need to be there, like there are names not here in the statement.
That should be there. Like Muhammad. Ali, like John Carlos and Tommy Smith, like Wyoming, Attias, like people who stood up. And you are part of that tradition, and you should use the fact that you're part of that tradition to even give more validity to the fact that you're taking a stand.
Ola: We're, we're getting to that point where, you know, we may not be able to turn back the tap when it comes to nuclear risk, and it's just really scary that this escalation is going very much unnoticed in the public sphere.
And so my question is, how can athletes, how should athletes, sports, journalists, the sports world , like what can we [00:45:00] do to educate people about this ?
Dave: I think one of the things that I've seen that's been very interesting is people taking their protests to stadiums. I mean, stadiums can be sometimes the most publicly funded space in your city, even though it costs a lot of money to get in.
Things like demonstrations, outside stadiums, banner drops inside stadiums. I mean, this is one of the legacies of the civil rights movement is the understanding of mass communication and mass media in education. And I think we have to live that. I mean, that's what the civil Rights Movement taught themselves uh, because it hadn't existed before in the same kind of way.
And that's the legacy we need to stand on, is understanding that. We cannot let, and I'm sorry to sound like the Washington Post, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna alter it a little bit. We cannot let protest die in darkness.
Ola: So. [00:46:00] When Muhammad Ali fought George Foreman in Zaire, which we now know as the Democratic Republic of the Congo today, Ali was supported by the local population much more than Foreman was.
And this dynamic was captured in the film when we were Kings and also the chant. Ali Bomaye, you know, was. Recently featured as the title of the game's Hit record with Two Chains and Rick Ross. Can
you.
Dave: Well, I mean it, it was, first of all, the fact that there was a fight in the first place in what was called Zaire was a huge deal. To have a fight on the African continent, to have a fight in a place where there would be signs when you would land at the airport That said Zaire where black power has become a [00:47:00] reality. I mean, that had a strong effect on people. There was also a pretty awful underbelly of it where the dictator of the country, Mobutu, Sese Seko, , was somebody torturing dissidents killing people. Mobutu was a terrible Western-backed dictator. But that's not what people saw, they saw. I mean, the, the greater symbolism was not who Mobutu was.
The greater symbolism was actually the, the fight being, , in Africa, in, you know, that that was huge. And it was the sort of thing where, where, where it made people feel a sense of ownership of an Ali victory being important to them. Now, why didn't they gravitate to George Foreman, who African American grew up very poor in Houston?
Why didn't he represent that? Well, George Foreman was somebody who was seen fairly or otherwise in 19 sixty-eight as at the Olympics as being the counter-voice to Tommy Smith [00:48:00] and John Carlos because the day after they raised their fists, he bowed to the audience after winning gold and waved a small American flag. So he was painted as being the opposite of the revolution that was occurring in black athletics when you factor in. Also that he arrived in Zaire with the kind of attack dog. I mean, literally he walked in with a dog on a leash and it just happened to be the kind of dogs that were used by the imperialists to attack from, from Western Europe to attack.
The freedom fighters of sub-Saharan Africa. So he was painted right away as being a kind of, for better or worse, for fair or not, the kind of imperialist champion coming to conquer Zaire and Muhammad. Ali was seen as the person defending black [00:49:00] power, and so Ali Boumaie, when you factor in that Ali was also a great underdog in the fight. I mean, it created a perfect set of circumstances for Ali. Boumaie becoming a phrase that not only would be heard through the ages, but when I was in Louisville for Ali's funeral and the procession went by, people in Louisville were chanting Ali Boumaie. That's the power
Vin: be chilled. Dave, my friend, I can, we cannot thank you enough for coming in for coming on for our first episode. It was great to have you on. Thank you so much, Dave.
Well, although we did it first episode in the books and, we could never have done it without our team. So sincere thanks to Lex International, Jason, the whole team behind the scenes, for those of you that are listening, if you liked. This [00:50:00] episode. We encourage you to hit the subscribe button wherever you get your podcasts.
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Ola: Minds Blown. Is produced by Jackson Street Collective and made possible by Lex International.