NBA Players Are Striking Over Jacob Blake. Will America Listen?
Last month, NBA players were invited into a bubble in Orlando, Florida. They were meant to knock out their playoff matches in COVID-safe exclusivity, with access to rapid testing and a fan-free court. But when players expressed agitation at being brought out of the fray of nationwide protests and political discourse and into a nearly hermetically-sealed sports entertainment arena, the league responded with the exact definition of virtue signaling: “Black Lives Matter” painted onto the court, a short list of league-approved messages in lieu of jersey names, and rote PR-friendly statements about social injustice.
On Wednesday, days after the police shooting of 29-year-old Black man Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and on the four-year anniversary of former NFL player Colin Kaepernick’s first kneeling protest during the national anthem, the Milwaukee Bucks’ players responded to the NBA’s illusions of normalcy with a combination of strike and protest. They didn’t show up on court for their playoff game against the Orlando Magic and, according to The Athletic’s Shams Charania, who broke the story, have since attempted to reach out to Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul. This is the first time an entire NBA team has gone on strike, though there are several historical examples of individual NBA players protesting social injustice via strike or, in the case of Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf in 1996, refusing to stand for the national anthem. And the issue of police brutality is very personal to the Bucks—in May 2018, body camera footage was released of Bucks’ guard Sterling Brown being tased and wrongfully arrested by Milwaukee police in a parking lot; Brown filed a civil lawsuit against the department last year.
Blake—who had broken up a fight before heading to his car and being apprehended by police officer Rusten Sheskey, who shot him in the back seven times—is still in the hospital, conscious but paralyzed from the waist down. In this way, the violence he has suffered echoes Rodney King, whose severe beating by the LAPD in 1991 left him with lifelong injuries and helped spark the 1992 LA Riots. If Blake manages to survive his injuries, his name, like King’s, will loom larger than himself as his life continues—but this time, Black people with a measure of power in the corporate system that deeply influences our politics will have begun a collective movement in his honor.