Ask anyone living in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area and they will mention how life has not appeared normal lately.
In fact, ask many of us living in the United States and they will mention how life has not seemed normal for the past year and change.
We had a feeling it would get this bad. In fact, we had a feeling that what would ensue following that fateful election day of 2024 that things would be even worse than anyone could have potentially imagined. There was a reason why we at Beyond The W published our “Roadmap for Resistance in Women’s Sports” piece after processing the election results.
Lately, the epicenter of the nation’s attention has been Minnesota where two high-profile killings at the hands of ICE agents have taken place. Two weeks ago, we mourned the loss of Renée Nicole Good and are doing so again in honor of Alex Pretti. Let us also not lose track of the fact that another of ICE’s victims was Keith Porter – as well as several Hispanic individuals.
Life has not seemed normal in the Twin Cities as of late. In fact, it does not even seem right to attend sporting events. Following the death of Pretti, a game that was scheduled to take place between the Timberwolves and Golden State Warriors was postponed.
It is safe to say that the minds and heart of many in Minnesota are not on basketball, hockey or any sports at the moment. The Timberwolves held moments of silence to honor the deaths of both Good and Pretti and what immediately followed were loud calls from fans for ICE to finally leave Minnesotans alone.
Thankfully, women’s sports are doing what women’s sports have done throughout history – answer the call in the face of injustice. Prior to Unrivaled’s Sunday games, its co-founder Breanna Stewart held up a sign that read “Abolish ICE.”
Unrivaled, the WNBPA and the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) have also released statements on social media following the tragedies in Minnesota. Reactions have poured in from the sporting realm including from A’ja Wilson, Angel Reese, Brianna Turner and Natasha Cloud among others. Also among those who have made their voices heard are Lynx players Napheesa Collier, Natisha Hiedeman and DiJonai Carrington. That list also includes Paige Bueckers – Minnesota’s very own.
Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve, who rarely posts on X, even sent out a tweet displaying her solidarity with the protesters in Minneapolis.
Steve Kerr, Stephen Curry, Tyrese Haliburton, Jaylen Brown, De’Aaron Fox and Karl Anthony-Towns have also spoken out.
But the theme remains a common one – the women’s sports community as well as women athletes being on the front lines of the societal response to injustice. It is seemingly a tale as old as time.
Perhaps it is such because women athletes understand that women’s sports is – itself – political. They understand what injustice is because they battle through it on a day-by-day basis – especially considering the majority of WNBA or Unrivaled or Athletes Unlimited players are Black women.
Black skin has always been political in the United States of America. Being a woman has always been political in the United States of America. Being a woman athlete has always been political in the United States of America because being a woman athlete automatically defies gender norms put in place – by men.
That is why telling any Black, Brown or LGBTQIA+ athlete to merely “stick to sports” is ignorant on its face because the institution of sports was not created for women. Women had to fight with their blood, sweat and tears over time to prove that they too could jump, kick and hustle just as hard as any man – if not harder.
Yes, women can be demure and cutesy, but they have proven time and time again that they can go from beauty to beast when they step foot on their respective field of play.
How women athletes are on the forefront of the backlash to the atrocities in Minneapolis also makes us think of a recent poll that was released by VoteHub. Peter Lutz wrote an article for the website displaying the partisan voter registration of the major sports.
Nearly 70% of WNBA athletes were registered as Democrats per this poll. Only two percent were registered Republicans. Compare that to the NBA where 43% were registered Dems and 46% are Independents. Only 10% of NBA players are registered Republicans per this poll.
In the NFL, 44% of its players are said to be Independents and 34% are registered Democrats. Compare that to Major League Baseball where 54% of its players are registered Republicans – and only eight percent are registered Democrats.
One wonders why the response from MLB players has been much more muted than that of the WNBA? Connect the dots and that poll tells us why.
Meeting the moment is nothing new for professional women’s basketball players. In fact, it is nothing new even when the topic is unrest and injustice in Minnesota. It is still fresh in our minds how WNBA players rallied to protest the police killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile back in 2016. It is also fresh in our minds how players responded to George Floyd’s death in 2020 during the pandemic.
That, in many ways, was a watershed moment for the WNBA because the league, which had Lisa Borders at the helm at the time as league president, in many ways found itself in the midst of those protests. In that moment, the WNBA found that leaning into social activism was not something it should shy away from.
It found out it should embrace it, given it is in the W’s DNA as well as the DNA of women’s sports as a whole. Add in the fact that most WNBA players are Black women and the fact that there is a huge LGBTQIA+ contingency within the W plus its massive LGBTQIA+ fanbase and it found out that social activism fits the league like a glove.
And we are seeing it once again in response to the tragedies that has taken place in Minnesota. We have seen on many occasions elected politicians fail to meet the tense moment of the last several months.
But a lesson is once again being learned that the public at large is becoming aware of. After all, it is a credo of the WNBPA.
Bet. On. Women.
