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Today's
Stories
December 26, 2003
Gary Leupp
Bush
Doings: Doing the Language
December 25, 2003
Diane Christian
The
Christmas Story
Elaine Cassel
This
Christmas, the World is Too Much With Us
Susan Davis
Jinglebells, Hold the Schlock
Kristen Ess
Bethlehem Celebrates Christmas, While Rafah Counts the Dead
Francis Boyle
Oh Little Town of Bethlehem
Alexander Cockburn
The
Magnificient 9
Guthrie / Albert
Another Colorful Season
December 24, 2003
M. Shahid Alam
The Semantics
of Empire
William S. Lind
Marley's
List for Santa in Wartime
Josh Frank
Iraqi
Oil: First Come, First Serve
Cpt. Paul Watson
The
Mad Cowboy Was Right
Robert Lopez
Nuance
and Innuendo in the War on Iraq
December 23, 2003
Brian J. Foley
Duck
and Cover-up
Will Youmans
Sharon's
Ultimatum
Michael Donnelly
Here
They Come Again: Another Big Green Fiasco
Uri Avnery
Sharon's
Speech: the Decoded Version
December 22, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Pray
to Play: Bush's Faith-Based National Parks
Patrick Gavin
What Would Lincoln Do?
Marjorie Cohn
How to
Try Saddam: Searching for a Just Venue
Kathy Kelly
The
Two Troublemakers: "Guilty of Being Palestinians in Iraq"
December 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
December 19, 2003
Elaine Cassel
Courts
Rebuke Bush for Trampling the Constitution
Robert Fisk
Raid
on Fantasyville: Shooting Samarra's Schoolboys in the Back
Zoltan Grossman
The
Occupation Has Failed to "Capture" the Loyalty of Iraqis
Mike Whitney
Bush's
Afghan Highway to Nowhere
Harold Gould
Has the Radical Arab Strategy Really Worked?
Gary Leupp
The
Neocon's Dream Memo
December 18, 2003
Ann Harrison
A
Landmark Victory for Medical Pot
John L. Hess
Catfish
Blues: The SOB's from Out of Town
Karyn Strickler
Ebola
is Good for You!
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Duryodhana
Dies
Harry Browne
Hail
Jim Hickey, the "Irish Hero" of the Colonial Occupation
of Iraq
Hammond Guthrie
Captured in Abasement
December 17, 2003
Robert Fisk
Saddam's
Cold Comforts
Gideon Levy
"Don't
Even Think About the Children"
Marjorie Cohn
The Fortuitous
Arrest of Saddam: a Pyrrhic Victory?
Andrew Cockburn
Saddam's
Last Act
December 16, 2003
Robert Fisk
Getting
Saddam...15 Years Too Late
Mahajan / Jensen
Saddam
in Irons: The Hard Truths Remain
John Halle
Matt
Gonzalez and Me
Josh Frank
The
Democrats and Saddam
Tariq Ali
Saddam
on Parade: the New Model of Imperialism
December 15, 2003
Robert Fisk
The Capture
of Saddam Won't Stop the Guerrilla War
Dave Lindorff
The
Saddam Dilemma
Abu Spinoza
Blowback on the Stand: The Trial of Saddam Hussein
Norman Solomon
For
Telling the Truth: the Strange Case of Katharine Gun
Patrick Cockburn
The
Capture of Saddam
Stew Albert
Joy to the World
December 13 / 14, 2003
Bill and Kathleen Christison
Chickenhearts
at Notre Dame: the Pervasive Fear of Talking About the Israeli
Connection
Stan Goff
Jessica Lynch, Plural
Tariq Ali
The Same Old Racket in Iraq
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Map is not the Territory
Marty Bender / Stan Cox
Dr. Atkins vs. the Planet
Christopher Brauchli
Mercury Rising: the EPA's Presents to Industry
Gary Leupp
On Marriage in "Recorded History", an Open Letter to
Gov. Mitt Romney
Sasan Fayazmanesh
The Saga of Iran's Alleged WMD
Larry Everest
Saddam, Oil and Empire: Supply v. Demand
William S. Lind
How to Fight a 4th Generation War
Fran Shor
From Vietnam to Iraq: Counterinsurgency and Insurgency
Ron Jacobs
Child Abuse as Public Policy
Omar Barghouti
Relative Humanity and a Just Peace in the Middle East
Adam Engel
Pretty Damn Evil: an Interview with Ed Herman
Kristin Van Tassel
Breastfeeding Compromised
Ben Tripp
On Getting Stabbed
Susan Davis
"The Secret Lives of Dentists", a Review
Dave Zirin
Does Dylan Still Matter? an Interview with Mike Marqusee
Norman Madarasz
Searching for the Barbarians
Poets' Basement
Guthrie and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Dean on Race
December 12, 2003
Josh Frank
Halliburton,
Timber and Dean
Chris Floyd
The
Inhuman Stain
Dave Lindorff
Infanticide
as Liberation: Hiding the Dead Babies
Benjamin Dangl
Another Two Worlds Are Possible?
Jean-Paul Barrois
Two States or One? an Interview with Sami Al-Deeb on the Geneva
Accords
David Vest
Bush
Drops the Mask: They Died for Halliburton
December 11, 2003
Siegfried Sassoon
A
Soldier's Declaration Against War
Douglas Valentine
Preemptive
Manhunting: the CIA's New Assassination Program
John Chuckman
The Parable of Samarra
Peter Phillips
US Hypocrisy on War Crimes: Corp Media Goes Along for the Ride
James M. Carter
The
Merchants of Blood: War Profiteering from Vietnam to Iraq
December 10, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
The
War According to Newt Gingrich
Pat Youngblood / Robert
Jensen
Workers
Rights are Human Rights
Jeff Guntzel
On Killing Children
CounterPunch Wire
Ashcroft Threatens to Subpoena Journalist's Notes in Stewart
Case
Dave Lindorff
Gore's
Judas Kiss
December 9, 2003
Michael Donnelly
A
Gentle Warrior Passes: Craig Beneville's Quiet Thunder
Chris White
A Glitch
in the Matrix: Where is East Timor Today?
Abu Spinoza
The Occupation Concertina: Pentagon Punishes Iraqis Israeli Style
Laura Carlsen
The FTAA: a Broken Consensus
Richard Trainor
Process and Profits: the California Bullet Train, Then and Now
Josh Frank
Politicians as Usual: Gore Dean and the Greens
Ron Jacobs
Remembering
John Lennon
December 8, 2003
Newton Garver
Bolivia
at a Crossroads
John Borowski
The
Fall of a Forest Defender: the Exemplary Life of Craig Beneville
William Blum
Anti-Empire
Report: Revised Inspirations for War
Tess Harper
When Christians Kill
Thom Rutledge
My Next Step
Carol Wolman, MD
Nuclear
Terror and Psychic Numbing
Michael Neumann
Ignatieff:
Apostle of He-manitariansim
Website of the Day
Bust Bob Novak
December 6 / 7, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
The
UN: Should Be Late; Never Was Great
CounterPunch Special
Toronto Globe and Mail Kills Review of "The Politics of
Anti-Semitism"
Vicente Navarro
Salvador Dali, Fascist
Saul Landau
"Reality
Media": Michael Jackson, Bush and Iraq
Ben Tripp
How Bush Can Still Win
Gary Leupp
On Purchasing Syrian Beer
Ron Jacobs
Are We Doing Body Counts, Now?
Larry Everest
Oil, Power and Empire
Lee Sustar
Defying the Police State in Miami
Jacob Levich
When NGOs Attack: Implications for the Coup in Georgia
Toni Solo
Game Playing by Free Trade Rules: the Results from Indonesia
and Dominican Republic
Mark Scaramella
How to Fix the World Bank
Bruce Anderson
The San Francisco Mayor's Race
Brian Cloughley
Shredding the Owner's Manual: the Hollow Charter of the UN
Adam Engel
A Conversation with Tim Wise
Neve Gordon
Fuad and Ezra: an Update on Gays Under the Occupation
Kurt Nimmo
Bush Gives "Freedom" Medal to Robert Bartley
Tom Stephens
Justice Takes a Holiday
Susan Davis
Avast, Me Hearties! a Review of Disney's "Pirates of the
Caribbean"
Jeffrey St. Clair
A
Natural Eye: the Photography of Brett Weston
Mickey Z.
Press Box Red
Poets' Basement
Greeder, Orloski, Albert
T-shirt of the Weekend
Got Santorum?
December 5, 2003
Jeremy Scahill
Bremer
of the Tigris
Jeremy Brecher
Amistad
Revisited at Guantanamo?
Norman Solomon
Dean
and the Corp Media Machine
Norman Madarasz
France
Starts Facing Up to Anti-Muslim Discrimination
Pablo Mukherjee
Afghanistan:
the Road Back
December 4, 2003
M. Junaid Alam
Image
and Reality: an Interview with Norman Finkelstein
Adam Engel
Republican
Chris Floyd
Naked Gun: Sex, Blood and the FBI
Adam Federman
The US Footprint in Central Asia
Gary Leupp
The
Fall of Shevardnadze
Guthrie / Albert
RIP Clark Kerr
December 3, 2003
Stan Goff
Feeling
More Secure Yet?: Bush, Security, Energy & Money
Joanne Mariner
Profit Margins and Mortality Rates
George Bisharat
Who Caused the Palestinian Diaspora?
Mickey Z.
Tear Down That Wal-Mart
John Stanton
Bush Post-2004: a Nightmare Scenario
Harry Browne
Shannon
Warport: "No More Business as Usual"
December 2, 2003
Matt Vidal
Denial
and Deception: Before and Beyond Iraqi Freedom
Benjamin Dangl
An Interview with Evo Morales on the Colonization of the Americas
Sam Bahour
Can It Ever Really End?
Norman Solomon
That
Pew Poll on "Trade" Doesn't Pass the Sniff Test
Josh Frank
Trade
War Fears
Andrew Cockburn
Tired,
Terrified, Trigger-Happy
December 1, 2003
Fawzia Afzal-Khan
Unholy
Alliances: Zionism, US Imperialism and Islamic Fundamentalism
Dave Lindorff
Bush's
Baghdad Pitstop: Memories of LBJ in Vietnam
Harry Browne
Democracy Delayed in Northern Ireland
Wayne Madsen
Wagging the Media
Herman Benson
The New Unity Partnership for Labor: Bureaucratizing to Organize?
Gilad Atzmon
About
"World Peace"
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy and Intelligence: Monstrous Messes
November 29 / 30, 2003
Peter Linebaugh
On
the Anniversary of the Death of Wolfe Tone
Gary Leupp
Politicizing War on Fox News: a Tale of Two Memos
Saul Landau
Lying and Cheating:
Bush's New Political Math
Michael Adler
Inside a Miami Jail: One Activist's Narrative
Anthony Arnove
"They Put the Lie to Their Own Propaganda": an Interview
with John Pilger
Greg Weiher
Why Bush Needs Osama and Saddam
Stephen Banko, III
A Soldier's Dream
Forrest Hylton
Empire and Revolution in Bolivia
Toni Solo
The "Free Trade" History Eraser
Ben Terrall
Don't Think Twice: Bush Does Bali
Standard Schaefer
Unions
are the Answer to Supermarkets Woes
Richard Trainor
The Political Economy of Earthquakes: a Journey Across the Bay
Bridge
Mark Gaffney
US Congress Does Israel's Bidding, Again
Adam Engel
The System Really Works
Dave Lindorff
They, the Jury: How the System Rigs the Jury Pool
Susan Davis
Framing the Friedmans
Neve Gordon
Arundhati Roy's Complaint for Peace
Mitchel Cohen
Thomas Jefferson and Slavery
Ben Tripp
Capture Me, Daddy
Poets' Basement
Kearney, Albert, Guthrie and Smith
November 28, 2003
William S. Lind
Worse Than Crimes
David Vest
Turkey
Potemkin
Robert Jensen / Sam Husseini
New Bush Tape Raises Fears of Attacks
Wayne Madsen
Wag
the Turkey
Harold Gould
Suicide as WMD? Emile Durkheim Revisited
Gabriel Kolko
Vietnam
and Iraq: Has the US Learned Anything?
South Asia Tribune
The Story
of the Most Important Pakistan Army General in His Own Words
Website of the Day
Bush Draft
November 27, 2003
Mitchel Cohen
Why
I Hate Thanksgiving
Jack Wilson
An
Account of One Soldier's War
Stefan Wray
In the Shadows of the School of the Americas
Al Krebs
Food as Corporate WMD
Jim Scharplaz
Going Up Against Big Food: Weeding Out the Small Farmer
Neve Gordon
Gays
Under Occupation: Help Save the Life of Fuad Moussa
November 26, 2003
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: the Case of a Rape Foretold
Bruce Jackson
Media
and War: Bringing It All Back Home
Stew Albert
Perle's
Confession: That's Entertainment
Alexander Cockburn
Miami and London: Cops in Two Cities
David Orr
Miami Heat
Tom Crumpacker
Anarchists
on the Beach
Mokhiber / Weissman
Militarization in Miami
Derek Seidman
Naming the System: an Interview with Michael Yates
Kathy Kelly
Hogtied
and Abused at Ft. Benning
Website of the Day
Iraq Procurement
November 25, 2003
Linda S. Heard
We,
the Besieged: Western Powers Redefine Democracy
Diane Christian
Hocus
Pocus in the White House: Of Warriors and Liberators
Mark Engler
Miami's
Trade Troubles
David Lindorff
Ashcroft's
Cointelpro
Website of the Day
Young McCarthyites of Texas
November 24, 2003
Jeremy Scahill
The
Miami Model
Elaine Cassel
Gulag
Americana: You Can't Come Home Again
Ron Jacobs
Iraq
Now: Oh Good, Then the War's Over?
Alexander Cockburn
Rupert Murdoch: Global Tyrant
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
Weekend
Edition
December 27 / 28, 2003
A Linebacker for Peace
& Justice
An
Interview with David Meggysey
By DAVE ZIRIN
David Meggyesy was an All-American linebacker
at Syracuse University before playing for the National Football
League's St. Louis (now Arizona) Cardinals from 1963-1969. He
was active in the movements for civil rights and opposition to
the war in Viet Nam. In 1970 he wrote his football autobiography,
Out of Their League, that examined how big time sports in the
United States can dehumanize athletes. Since 1981, Dave Meggyesy
has worked as the Western Regional Director of the National Football
League Players Association (NFLPA).
DZ: You were raised in what has been
described as a "low-income household in Glenwillow, Ohio."
DM (laughs) Is that how its been described?
Actually I was, literally, raised on a pig farm next to a dynamite
factory in Glenwillow, Ohio. Before we moved to the farm when
I was five years old my father worked as a machinist and was
a union organizer in Cleveland Ohio. The dynamite factory was
the Austin Powder Company whose property was right next to our
farm. The company owned about 1,000 acres of land, the whole
Glenwillow township including the town. It was one of the last
company towns in Ohio. They had company housing, a company store,
a company farm and this factory that was churning out explosives.
DZ: How did your Dad's politics shape
your view of the world?
DM: He never talked about it that much,
but he would be considered a progressive. He viewed the world
from a radical perspective. He was very critical of the capitalist
system and the political economy that we have in place in this
country. He was in the middle of labor fights in Ohio in the
1930s. A lot of those guys were fighting for basic workers rights
and their battles led to the formation of the National Labor
Relations Act in 1936. His line was President Franklin Roosevelt
saved the country from going socialist by pushing for the NLRA.
DZ: When did you first realize that
there was such a thing as a Civil Rights Movement?
DM: I didn't have a clue about civil
rights or people of color for that matter when I was growing
up. I didn't see a black person until I was 13 or 14 years old
and that was on TV. During high school I competed against black
athletes and had black teammates on the football team at Syracuse
University. During my senior year at Syracuse in 1963 I became
aware of the Civil Rights movement.
DZ: How did you get involved in the
movements of the 1960s?
DM: Initially it came at it from a sociology
seminar I took my senior year at Syracuse. During this seminar
we read about and discussed civil rights and various human rights
issues This seminar certainly opened my eyes. Then during my
first year in the NFL I read Michael Harrington's book Poverty
in America The book had a big impact on me, remember I grew up
poor, reading it made me begin to question our economic and political
system. I asked myself, how is it the richest country in the
world has one quarter of its population living in poverty? As
I was asking myself these questions, the civil rights movement
was starting to heat up. My third year in the NFL I formed a
friendship with anthropology graduate student at Washington University
named John Moore. John was in Viet Nam as a Special Forces soldier
very early on, long before our government admitted we had military
forces in Viet Nam. I remember John had this beautifully made
cross-bow mounted on his wall. I asked John about it and he told
me a story about being in Viet Nam on patrol and a Vietnamese
farmer came up out of an irrigation ditch and shot at his patrol
with this crossbow. It started John thinking, what would make
this guy have the commitment to do that? John said that he started
reading progressive writings including Marx's Capital and he
became a Marxist. John he turned me on to more radical literature.
At the time I was a sociology graduate student at Washington
University. John is now Chairman of the Anthropology Department
at the University of Florida.
DZ: What did people on the Cardinals
think about you exploring these ideas?
DM: Coaches and teammates would see me
reading various progressive books and magazines on the away game
plane trips and sometimes they would ask me what I was reading
but it wasn't any big deal. We didn't have sit-ins or study groups
reading Karl Marx. I was going through a process of my own self
education. Through these various influences I got involved in
the civil rights movement. I was reluctant at first to tell my
African-American teammates about it. My feelings were that it
would be embarrassing for them to have this white guy being active
and they may be feeling like they should have been involved.
A lot happened between 1963 and 1969. The civil rights and then
the anti-Vietnam War movements just exploded in every city in
this country. I don't think you could be a young person or old
person for that matter and see on TV the civil rights marches,
the police dogs, fire hoses, children being murdered and people
gassed and not be moved to do something. It was unbelievable.
DZ: What was it about the war in Viet-Nam
that so infuriated you?
DM: Eventually more than half the country
was against the war. On the evening news every night people were
seeing battle scenes, scenes with American and Vietnamese people
being killed and bombed, of kids burning with napalm. There were
body counts and increasing American casualties. And the American
people were just appalled. There was absolutely no reason to
be in Vietnam. Why do you think we have seen nothing during this
Iraq war about what is really happening on the ground? We are
dropping one-ton bombs on people in Iraq and we see the bombs
launched but not the level of destruction or the bodies. We say
we precision bomb this, or bomb that, yet we, the citizens who
are paying for these bombs and vast military don't see how many
people were killed. We don't see and aren't allowed to see the
destruction and bodies in street. The political establishment
and the military have sanitized every war since Vietnam. They
learned their lesson and the media is kept away from what is
happening. We the people need to start connecting the dots and
asking why are we occupying this country? And we need to connect
the dots more than that. Why, in the most fabulously wealthy
country the world do we not have national health care system
and universal basic health care for everyone? Most folks don't
connect those dots. In the 1960s we were doing that.
DZ: What are your memories of Muhammad
Ali resisting the draft?
DM: I thought it was great! His famous
line, "No Vietnamese ever called me n----." made sense
to me.
DZ: It is thought that the NFL is a bastion
of right wing hyper patriotic ideas. How did the movements of
the 1960s for racial justice and against the war affect the discussions
on the team bus and what not? DM: Probably one of the moments
that politicized me and a number of my teammates was when we
had to play our game against the New York Giants the weekend
after President Kennedy was killed. Athletes tend to hold their
political views to themselves. But guys were really pissed about
that. We all felt out of respect for the President, we should
never have played. But the orders came down from Pete Rozelle
with the bullsh-- reason that we had to play to save the country
that NFL football games would bring everyone together. The players
heard that and said, "This is a bunch of bullshit."
Believe me it generated a lot of discussion among the guys.
DZ: What about later in the Viet-Nam
years?
DM: During the latter part of my career,
I began looking at sports and football and began trying to figure
out its relations to society as a whole. And I began wondering
why other countries don't play this game. I was coming to the
understanding that big time football was more than a game, that
it was a form of political expression and political theater.
During that time there was this jingoistic, super patriotic,
use of football, particularly during the Super bowl to sell the
war in Viet Nam. Yet there were a tremendous number of people
against the war including myself. My response was to get more
serious and start organizing my teammates on the Cardinals. I
started a petition drive on the Cardinals, that would be sent
to our Congressional delegation and Senators calling for and
end to the war. My teammate Rick Sortun and I put it together.
Rick was a Goldwater Republican in 1964 and he was my roommate
on the road. We had many heated discussions. During the off season
in 1967 he went back to the University of Washington and when
he came back for training camp in 1968 had gone from Goldwater
Republican to a member of the Young Socialist Alliance. I kid
Rick and tell him he was my first convert. The times they were
a changing. The next petition Rick and I put together in 1969,
we had 37 teammates sign it. In the locker room political discussion
and debate was quiet because the coaches frowned on it, but if
I would be reading Ramparts magazine or an interview with Malcolm
X other players including our star running back Johnny Roland
would give me a power fist salute as if to say we're with you.
It wasn't that difficult to do it. There were a whole lot of
people against the war.
DZ: What happened with the petition?
Did it ever go public?
DM: When I asked the guys to sign the
petition I told them it would not be made public. It was a letter
we all signed that would be sent to our Congressmen. It was pretty
milquetoast given what was going on in other places. We were
calling for a negotiated settlement and to bring the troops home
now. A reporter from UPI got a hold of it and went to Cardinals
owner Stormy Bidwell, asking for a comment. Stormy was pissed
livid. He pulled me out of a defensive players meeting and said
I had to get a hold of that letter immediately before it went
public. So I went outside the stadium in my football uniform,
hailed a cab and got the letter back from the Chairman of the
St. Louis Anti-War Committee. The next day Cardinals Head Coach
Charlie Winner said to me, "I want you to apologize to the
team. This is a big distraction for the team and you owe the
team an apology." I got up in front of the team and said
I was sorry the petition almost went public because I said it
would be kept private and that was all I was apologizing for.
I told them if they wanted to sign a new petition they could
stop by my locker after practice and do it. Charlie almost had
a heart attack.
DZ: So many athletes have been "blackballed"
for their politics. Did you ever feel that pressure?
DM: They tried to put the hammer on me
to get me to stop my anti war activities. In 1968 I was taken
outside by one of the coaches and asked, "Do you want to
play football? I have been told to tell you by the ownership
that if you continue to do what you're doing, you are going to
be thrown out of the League."
A few days later I wrote the Cardinal
management and told them if they continued to threaten me this
way, I would go public. I said in my letter that half the country
is against this war, and my anti war work doesn't impact my playing,
and it is my right as a citizen to protest the war. Nothing happened.
Later in the season NFL Commissioner
Pete Rozelle sent an order down to the teams that when the National
Anthem is being played, we, the players, would have to hold our
helmets under our left arm look up and salute the flag. I found
it repulsive that anyone would be telling me and my teammates
that we had to salute the flag and how to do so. So I did a low
key 'Tommie Smith' and held my helmet in front of me and bowed
my head. The next week a sports columnist wrote about how reprehensible
it was that anyone would refuse to salute the flag. The team
didn't know what to do. They thought that if they would be cool,
maybe it would go away. So at the start of our next game, some
fans unfurled a big banner that said the Big Red [the nickname
of the Cardinals] thinks Pink. It was their way of saying that
I was a "pinko" (a communist) and we were a "pinko"
team.
Midway through 1969 season I got benched.
That hurt as much as anything because the ultimate power management
has over a player is whether you play or not. At the professional
level this is also your livelihood. When they benched me I just
couldn't believe it. Clearly, I was superior to my back up.
On the plane ride back to St. Louis with
Rick Sortun after our last game in Green Bay we decided were
going to quit. We were tired of being part of what we saw as
an American war game and political theatre that was supporting
the Vietnam War. Personally, what really hurt was not being allowed
to play. During the trip fellow linebacker Larry Stallings sat
down beside us and said, "Dave, I don't know what went down
with you and the coaches, but you not being in there really hurt
our defense."
When I was benched for "political
reasons" all kinds of self-doubts began to creep into my
mind. Because one of the core values in sports from the athlete's
point of view is that it is a meritocracy, the best players play.
An athlete has to believe this is true or he can't play. When
someone messes with that it messes with everything that is great
about sports. That's why it was so incredibly gracious for Larry
to tell me what he did and it showed his integrity. Larry's comment
meant a great deal because I knew my teammates understood.
DZ: What do you think of people who
say that athletes don't have 'the right' to use their public
profile to 'speak out on political issues?
DM: I think that is absolutely wrong.
Athletes probably have more of an obligation to do so precisely
because of their public position. Athletes are citizens too.
In the 1960s Tommie Smith, John Carlos, Muhammad All and others
stepped up and took principled positions on issues. Now athletes
are either making the most milquetoast statements or shilling
for corporations that exploit their workers. For instance, Michael
Jordan who was the public face and billboard for Nike while they
make their money off of Asian sweat-shop labor. A few years ago
Jerry Rice came out to the grand opening of Nike's San Francisco
downtown store. When Jerry showed up the press started asking
him about child labor in Nike's Asian factories and he was just
blown away. He said, "What right do you have to ask these
questions?" Well, if you shill for Nike, you should have
to answer those questions. In a way Jerry was an innocent man,
he didn't understand the connections.
DZ: Can you see players today speaking
out against the war in Iraq?
DM: It's possible, I doubt if it will
happen. I think all people need to be more political, including
athletes, but we need a mass movement to raise our political
consciousness and push the political establishment. It is a chicken/egg
problem but I see signs of it building because people are feeling
the pain of the present administration's policies. In the 1960's
there was more of a mass movement that coalesced around civil
rights, rolled into Vietnam and the women's movement. You could
not held be exposed to those ideas of economic and social justice.
Just as today, a lot of athletes were pretty traditional about
the system back then. That "don't question authority"
attitude was more entrenched back then but began to change when
these movements began to build. Of course we had great national
leadership during that era in Martin Luther King, Malcolm X,
and Robert Kennedy. I think a lot of people are opposed to the
Iraq occupation and if that goes on too much longer it will ignite
people. I want to be clear, I think no one should be obligated
to do anything. Freedom means freedom to choose how you want
to live your life. But that cuts both ways. History shows that
if the citizens do nothing or very little the elites will rob
them blind. My position has always been that everyone has the
right to be free to speak out on anything. That is the biggest
stone in our country's foundation. Last season Toni Smith the
woman's basketball player from Manhattanville College Smith turned
her back on the U.S. flag protesting poverty and injustice here
in the US. It was a courageous and remarkable act, exercising
her right of free expression. In the 1960s, athletes saw how
sport was connected to politics. Smith and Carlos wanted to open
the world's eyes as to how African-Americans were treated at
home. They said that you can't just send us out to run and jump
and represent the United States and say things are groovy.
DZ: Do you think we need a new revolt
of the athletes?
DM: I think we need a revolt only in
the sense that fundamental change needs to happen in many sectors
of society. In our major professional sports the athletes made
tremendous positive changes via their unions during the past
25 years. At the NFLPA we organized the players and built a strong
union and now we have power and equity, a seat at the table and
leverage and to get the compensation the athletes deserve. I
think the professional sports unions are excellent examples showing
how unions can effect positive change, how people can use ideas
and organization to change structures. That is what the 1960s
were really all about. People say we need - and I think they
are right - political mass movements to effect positive change
in the major political and economic structures. I think right
now, today, with Bush, the Iraq occupation and what his government
has planned for the country and the world, we are looking down
the barrel of a gun. It is time to act. As we used to say, back
in the day, "Don't mourn America, organize."
Dave Zirin
is the News Editor of the Prince George's Post, Prince George's
County's only black-owned paper. He can be reached at editor@pgpost.com.
He also is launching www.edgeofsports.com
Weekend
Edition Features for Dec. 20 / 21, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
How
to Kill Saddam
Saul Landau
Bush Tries Farce as Cuba Policy
Rafael Hernandez
Empire and Resistance: an Interview with Tariq Ali
David Vest
Our Ass and Saddam's Hole
Kurt Nimmo
Bush
Gets Serious About Killing Iraqis
Greg Weiher
Lessons from the Israeli School on How to Win Friends in the
Islamic World
Christopher Brauchli
Arrest, Smear, Slink Away: Dr. Lee and Cpt. Yee
Carol Norris
Cheers of a Clown: Saddam and the Gloating Bush
Bruce Jackson
The Nameless and the Detained: Bush's Disappeared
Juliana Fredman
A Sealed Laboratory of Repression
Mickey Z.
Holiday Spirit at the UN
Ron Jacobs
In the Wake of Rebellion: The Prisoner's Rights Movement and
Latino Prisoners
Josh Frank
Sen. Max Baucus: the Slick Swindler
John L. Hess
Slow Train to the Plane
Adam Engel
Black is Indeed Beautiful
Ben Tripp
The Relevance of Art in Times of Crisis
Michael Neumann
Rhythm and Race
Poets' Basement
Cullen, Engel, Albert & Guthrie
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