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Athletes and Activism" How Sports and Politics Intersect

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Athletes and Activism" How Sports and Politics Intersect

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Reflect and respond:
1. Which, if any, of these athlete activists had you heard about before? How has your understanding changed by watching this video? Or what have you learned?
2. Identify 2-3 activism actions the athletes highlighted here take.
3. What changes do the athletes want to see? How would they like the world to be different?

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Athletes & Activism: How Sports And Politics Intersect

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"Going for Broke" The Moth Presents: Jim Obergefell 

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"Going for Broke" The Moth Presents: Jim Obergefell 

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Reflect and respond:
1. What activism actions did Jim Obergefell take?
2. What injustice/s did he want to change?
3. What skills did he use to make change?

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"Stumbling Stones": A Different Vision of Holocaust Remembrance

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"Stumbling Stones": A Different Vision of Holocaust Remembrance

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‘Stumbling stones’: a different vision of Holocaust remembrance

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A German artist has now laid more than 70,000 Stolpersteine stones in cities around the world – but not everyone approves

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Student Walkouts Have Changed American History Before. Here's How

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Student Walkouts Have Changed American History Before. Here's How

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Student Walkouts Have Changed American History Before. Here's How

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Student walkouts, from Birmingham to East L.A., have changed American history before. Here's how.

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The Stealth Sticker Campaign to Expose New York's History of Slavery

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The Stealth Sticker Campaign to Expose New York's History of Slavery

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Peter Stuyvesant was an enslaver. So were other prominent New Yorkers whose names are all over the city.

You could live on a street named after an enslaver. From left, Ada Reso, Elsa Eli Waithe and Maria Robles have started a campaign to alert New Yorkers to the area's history of slavery. Credit... Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times

Last month, Vanessa Thompson stepped outside the juice bar where she works on Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn and noticed a green and white sticker on a light pole. She leaned in for a closer look.

"John van Nostrand was a slave owner," it said. "According to the US census in 1790, the (Van) Nostrands owned 6 people."

Ms. Thompson, who is Black, was dumbfounded. "I didn't even know anything about that," she said. "He could've owned me."

The sticker was partly the brainchild of Elsa Eli Waithe, 33, a comedian living in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, who, along with two collaborators,has been on a mission to let New Yorkers know that a good number of the city's streets, subway stations and neighborhoods are named after enslavers.

The project was inspired in part by a talk between Mx. Waithe, who is Black and grew up in Norfolk, Va., and a white friend about a Confederate monument in Portsmouth, Va., that was dismantled last August. Mx. Waithe recalled the friend's dismissing the statue as a Southern issue, a regional affront.

But just a few months before, while scrolling through social media, Mx. Waithe had stumbled upon records from the nation's first census in 1790, which listed well-known New York families like the Leffertses, the Boerums and the Nostrands. To the right of those names was another category: "slaves."

According to the census, the Lefferts family enslaved 87 Black people throughout New York City (Prospect Lefferts Gardens and an avenue in that Brooklyn neighborhood were named after them). The Boerums owned 14 slaves (the neighborhood Boerum Hill is named for them). And the Nostrands (of the eight-mile-long Nostrand Avenue), enslaved 23 people (this number would nearly double by the beginning of the 19th century).

A sticker along Nostrand Avenue. Credit... Michelle V. Agins/The New York Times

Designed by Ada Reso, 30, who is Mx. Waithe's roommate, and with research by Maria Robles, 33, the stickers, which mimic street signs, feature the names of prominent New Yorkers and provide details on the number of slaves they owned.

So far, the trio has distributed about 1,000 stickers, mostly in Brooklyn, though they hope to expand eventually throughout the five boroughs.

The group's mission reflects a growing body of scholarship challenging the assumption that New York City, and the North more generally, was an idyllic land of freedom.

"We've all been given this education around, 'Slavery happened in the South, and the North were the good guys,' when in reality it was happening here," Ms. Robles said.

Enslaved labor was foundational to New York's early development and economic growth, said Leslie M. Harris, a professor of history and African-American studies at Northwestern University and author of "In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626-1863."

For parts of the 17th and 18th centuries, the city was home to the largest urban slave population in mainland North America, Dr. Harris said. At one point, 40 percent of Manhattan households owned slaves, most of them Black women doing domestic work, she explained. The local economy was also heavily dependent on the slave trade: Wall Street banks and New York brokers financed the cotton trade and shipped the crop to New England and British textile mills, according to Jonathan Daniel Wells, a history professor at the University of Michigan.

For enslaved people in the South who escaped to New York, a main stop on the Underground Railroad, permanent freedom was not guaranteed. Throughout the first half of the 19th century, Black people were often kidnapped in New York City - both those who had been born free and those who had escaped bondage - and were sold in the South. The Fugitive Slave Act facilitated the practice, which was chronicled most recently by Dr. Wells in his book " The Kidnapping Club: Wall Street, Slavery and Resistance on the Eve of the Civil War."

Slavery dates to the city's very beginnings. In the 17th century, Peter Stuyvesant, the director-general of the Dutch colony that gave rise to New York, enslaved 15 to 30 people on his 62 acres, part of which was in the area that is now the Bowery, according to Jaap Jacobs, an honorary reader in the school of history at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland who is working on a Stuyvesant biography.

Peter Stuyvesant, who led the Dutch colony that gave rise to New York City, was an enslaver as well. Credit... Hulton Archive, via Getty Images

Today many sites still bear his name: Stuyvesant High School and Stuyvesant Town among them. The websites for the school and apartment complex do not mention his history as a slave trader and owner. Neither does St. Mark's Church, under which Stuyvesant is buried (although it does have a section outlining its work in racial justice).

But the Stuyvesant stickers, which were distributed around the city last fall, offer the additional information.

"Peter Stuyvesant was a slave trader," they read. "Peter Stuyvesant trafficked 290 human beings in the first slave auction in Manhattan."

Stuyvesant High School, which offered admission to eight Black students out of 749 spots for the 2021-22 academic year, is working to update its website to include more context on Stuyvesant, according to a Department of Education spokeswoman, who added that the department "has a sustained commitment to build an anti-racist education system that serves all children, in all school communities."

Nadeem Siddiqui, the general manager of Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village, said that the vast apartment complex near the East River "will always be a community that supports equity for all, and we have a zero-tolerance policy for racism or discrimination of any kind."

And St. Mark's Church has hosted virtual conversations with Dr. Jacobs focusing on " slavery in Stuyvesant's world," according to the Rev. Anne Sawyer, its rector. She added that a temporary memorial outside the church honors slaves owned by members of the church and by Stuyvesant on the Bowery.

Unlike many movements, Slavers of New York is not seeking explicitly to strip the names of enslavers from the public eye, Mx. Waithe said.

"Our goal is to get the information to the people who live in and around the community and let them decide what they want to do about it," Mx. Waithe said.

Back in Crown Heights, in front of Lionheart Natural Herbs and Spices, a Nostrand sticker has been on a parking meter for months. Tracey Reid, the store's owner, seems fine with it staying put. "It's important for people to not just think, 'OK, we're on Nostrand Avenue,' but to know it's part of the history of slavery," she said.

The project has seen a few detractors, mostly in the form of people who may see the stickers as vandalism and remove them. Last fall, all of the stickers on Bergen Street in Brooklyn disappeared within an hour of going up, according to Ms. Reso and Ms. Robles.

On a recent rainy Sunday afternoon, the two put a Nostrand sticker on a crosswalk pole at the corner of Nostrand Avenue and Lincoln Place in Crown Heights. Passers-by were asked if they were aware of the family's history.

Simbi Ogbara, 25, was not, she said. But upon learning more, she said she hoped the avenue's name would be changed.

"It doesn't make me feel proud of living on this street," said Ms. Ogbara, who is Black.

This was a typical response, Ms. Robles said. "The facts speak for themselves."

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The Stealth Sticker Campaign to Expose New York's History of Slavery

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Peter Stuyvesant was an enslaver. So were other prominent New Yorkers whose names are all over the city. Last month, Vanessa Thompson stepped outside the juice bar where she works on Nostrand Avenue in Brooklyn and noticed a green and white sticker on a light pole. She leaned in for a closer look.

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Superbowl dancers say they weren't paid for Super Bowl halftime show

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Superbowl dancers say they weren't paid for Super Bowl halftime show

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https://spectrumnews1.com/ca/la-west/la-times-today/2022/02/02/-professional-dancers-say-they-were-not-paid-for-super-bowl-halftime-show

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America loves football, but we may love the Super Bowl halftime show even more wholeheartedly. In 2020, for example, the Super Bowl's football component attracted 102 million viewers, but 104 million people watched the halftime show, which that year featured J.Lo and Shakira.

The Super Bowl is the biggest TV advertising event of the year by far, and the halftime show draws excitement weeks in advance. This year's has been no exception, with enormous buzz around anticipated performers Eminem, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, and Mary J. Blige.

But stars alone do not a superb halftime show make. It takes hundreds of dancers to make the event into a complicatedly choreographed, riveting, hashtagged, and widely discussed extravaganza of a performance that helps the Super Bowl reach $482 million in ad sales. (Not to mention the massive revenue from Super Bowl tickets: the NFL does not release this, but the Los Angeles Times reports that the cheapest ticket for tonight's Rams vs. Bengals game is $5,663, and that the average ticket price is $10,540.) And this year, despite the incredible amount of money generated by both the game and the halftime show, those dancers have revealed some grotesque exploitation.

The situation mirrors that of many creative industries, where labor is extracted from talented and ambitious young people who are expected to cheerfully accept "experience" and "exposure" in lieu of fair compensation. Like all artists, the Super Bowl dancers deserve better.

This year's show will feature 115 dancers who belong to the SAG-AFTRA union, paid and recognized as professionals. But four hundred other, less fortunate dancers are also part of the event. In late January, some of the latter group of dancers revealed on social media that they'd received a DM inviting them to "volunteer for free" at the show, and that the show was looking for "predominantly African American movers."

An extensive rehearsal schedule was demanded of the volunteers, with eight days of practice and rehearsals running for as long as nine hours the week of the show. Dancers who had participated in past Super Bowl halftime shows said this was typical. Strict confidentiality is required of these volunteers, and no social media about the rehearsals or show is allowed, raising the question of how volunteers are supposed to benefit from this "exposure."

Roc Nation, the production company responsible for the halftime show - as well as the head choreographer, Fatima Robinson - insisted that "professional" dancers in the halftime show would be paid, that they were only seeking volunteers for the "field cast," and that those volunteers would not be "asked to learn choreography."

These dissembling defenses were pure boss nonsense. Many professional dancers had received this volunteering offer. As well, the Los Angeles Times and others reported that unpaid dancers worked side by side with professionals on last year's halftime show, and dancers said that field cast volunteers were frequently asked to perform choreography and dance moves.

Taja Riley, a professional dancer who has been part of Janet Jackson and Beyoncé's Super Bowl halftime shows, made an Instagram post accompanied by a video of herself singing, "I don't work for free," attaching a satirical clip of an artist attempting to pay for a pair of pants using "exposure" as currency. Emphasizing that the Super Bowl was the most profitable televised event of the year, Riley and other dancers then engaged in a pressure campaign that attracted extensive media coverage, including from the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.

The fact that the show's choreographers were specifically seeking black dancers to work for free seemed especially outrageous to many, in a time of extensive lip service to #BlackLivesMatter in both the corporate and creative worlds. But what rankled most were the enormous profits made at the expense of dedicated, hardworking people, and the scam of working for free.

The target of the campaign was not only the Super Bowl and the production company but also the relevant union, SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists), which Riley and others felt had been complicit in the volunteer dancers' exploitation by failing to insist that everyone working on the show be compensated fairly. In response, SAG-AFTRA announced in late January that it had reached an agreement with Roc Nation that no professional dancers would be asked to work for free on the halftime show, and that the union would be advising its members not to rehearse or perform for the Super Bowl without compensation.

For Riley and many in the dance community, this wasn't nearly good enough; they thought, rightly, that no one should be asked to work for free for such a massively profitable enterprise as the Super Bowl.

After further public outcry and continued media frenzy, Roc Nation announced this month that the four hundred "volunteers" would be paid $15 an hour for their work on the halftime show. That's a victory, because minimum wage is better than nothing. But Riley and others think it's still insufficient, given the massive profits involved and the labor required of the dancers. Riley remains skeptical, based on her experience, that there is much of a difference between the work of the "field cast" and that of the "professional" dancers; the Los Angeles Times reports that last year the "professional dancers" received $712 for the show, and $45 an hour for rehearsals.

The dancers understand this situation well. In all creative fields - journalism, art, museums, music - exploitation of ambitious, talented people is common, and bosses use workers' desire for exposure and experience to extract free labor from them. Consider the continued existence of unpaid internships in such industries - literary magazines that pay writers nothing and many other "volunteer opportunities." It's one thing to make art that might never become profitable for the pleasure of it. But the Super Bowl halftime show, while it exploits such inspiration and desire, is one of the most profitable sporting events in the world. Its disgraceful annual exploitation of hundreds of dancers shows how cynically capitalists treat artistic work.

As well as winning $15 an hour for the field cast, Taja Riley and her fellow dancers have also struck a blow against the pernicious culture of voluntarism in the culture industry. They're right to keep demanding a better deal.

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America loves football, but we may love the Super Bowl halftime show even more wholeheartedly. In 2020, for example, the Super Bowl's football component attracted 102 million viewers, but 104 million people watched the halftime show, which that year featured J.Lo and Shakira.

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Teen repairs computers to reduce e-waste and give back to his community

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Teen repairs computers to reduce e-waste and give back to his community

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https://newsela.com/read/teen-repairs-computers/id/2001028264/

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Newsela | Instructional Content Platform

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Newsela is an Instructional Content Platform that supercharges reading engagement and learning in every subject.

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Young L.A. Latinas Forge Activism, Empowerment Through Biking

CONTENT WARNING: Violence, language
https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/519744/ovarian-psycos-the-la-bicycle-crew-for-women-of-color/

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They are cycling through the dark streets of downtown Los Angeles en masse, pumping their fists and shouting "Whose street? Our street!" They are fighting domestic violence and gentrification in their communities and in their own lives. They are by turns aggressive and vulnerable, political and irreverent.

These are the young Latinas who call themselves the Ovarian Psycos, (yes, no "h" in the word "psyco") an all-female bike brigade and the subject of a documentary airing on PBS Independent Lens. The film, which debuted at South by Southwest last year, now has its broadcast premiere on Monday, March 27.

The Ovarian Psycos are no mere recreational riding crew. Their website describes the group as believing in "feminist ideals with indígena (indigenous) understanding and an urban/hood mentality."

In more everyday language, as one founding member of the group puts it in the film, "It's (the Ovarian Psycos) for the uneducated woman, it's for the knuckle-headed girls, the punk rockers, the cholas, the sisters in the neighborhood that lived that hard life."

Founded in 2010 in East Los Angeles, the Ovarian Psycos say that their group bike rides are a form of empowerment. Their bicycles, members observe in the film, represent not only a way to exercise their bodies but also an opportunity to organize in their communities.

The group holds monthly rides around Los Angeles, often with a political theme. Calling themselves the "Ovas," they recruit new members with flyers bearing the provocative tagline, "Sixter, are you psyco?"

Joanna Sokolowski, director/producer of the film, told NBC Latino that she and her filmmaking partner Kate Trumbull-LaValle approached the Ovarian Psycos because "we were looking for stories about young radical women."

"They are fighting to reclaim their voices," Sokolowski said. "For me, they really embody what I see as the future of feminist activism." The Ovarian Psycos, she noted, are queer- and trans-inclusive and hold co-ed as well as all-female rides.

The Ovarian Psycos proudly sport what some might view as symbols of an outlaw movement, from their bandanas to at times-defiant language. But Sokowlski sees this as a strategic move. "The Ovarian Psycos are very cognizant of how they use imagery and symbolism. It is an act of protest to them, and we tried to show that and connect it with the legacy of where they live."

Los Angeles is renowned for its freeway/car culture, and cycling is known both as a sport dominated by men and rife with sexism. So the Ovarian Psycos' existence can be seen as a collective form of rebellion against societal norms.

Maylei Blackwell, associate professor at the University of California Los Angeles and author of Chicana Power, told NBC Latino that the Ovarian Psycos fit into a long legacy of women of color organizing.

"What they are doing amounts to a kind of feminism that is organic to their communities and reflects a younger perspective," said Blackwell. "What many women are shamed by, or what they are often the victims of violence over, they are claiming as their own and putting it upfront."

East Los Angeles has traditionally been a hotbed of Latinx activism, Blackwell explained. "Now, the Psycos organizing is related to women's mobility issues, fears of displacement, and sexual harassment issues."

The neighborhood where many of the Psycos live, Boyle Heights, has one of the highest population densities in the city of Los Angeles and in Los Angeles County. East Los Angeles, where Boyle Heights is situated, is approximately 97 percent Latino.

The film chronicles how this environment can lead to stress and trauma among young Latinas.

Several of the "Ovas" - strong and seemingly invincible in public - deal with anxiety and insecurities at home. One of the member's mothers wonders why her college-age daughter is even riding a bike, which the older woman terms "more of a boy thing than a girl thing." Another member, a single parent, strives to raise her daughter free of racism, sexism, and gender stereotypes.

Xela de la X, a founding member of the Ovarian Psycos, explains in the film that the bike brigade is the rare way for lower- and working-class young women to connect. Sisterhood, community organizing, and social justice are their ongoing, larger goals - which the Psycos take very seriously. "We have a responsibility to make our lives, our pain, and our rage meaningful" De la X says.

Kate Trumbull-LaValle told NBC Latino that the Ovarian Psycos as drawing upon everything from the Zapatista movement to the Chicana movement to biking culture. "This is not just a story of women on bikes," she said. "This is about how complex the lives of working class activists are, as mothers, daughters, sisters, and citizens."

"When I look at the Psycos, I see strength, intelligence, and a re-appropriating strategy," Trumbull-LaValle stated. "Some folks, yes, they might see a stereotype because they are reclaiming language that is circulating on the Eastside. But we tried to show that they are in control of their work, their lives, and their messaging."

Ovarian Psycos ends with a grim statistic form the World Health Organization, that one in three women experience physical or sexual violence, and most likely from an intimate partner.

"What we've tried to do, and what I hope people see is the work the Psycos are doing on their own terms," said Trumbull-LaValle.

"The heart of the film is really organizing," she added. "I hope their work is inspiring to people across different communities; they show us the importance of sisterhood and neighborhoods, and that is an important lesson for us all."
Follow NBC News Latino on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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'Ovarian Psycos': These Latinas have forged activism, empowerment through biking

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They are cycling through the dark streets of downtown Los Angeles en masse, pumping their fists and shouting "Whose street? Our street!" They are fighting domestic violence and gentrification in their communities and in their own lives. They are by turns aggressive and vulnerable, political and irreverent.

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DeSalvo and Nickolas Orth have opened their home in the Hawley Green neighborhood of Syracuse, NY, to the sick since 1992. Founded on the foundation of social justice, The Friends of Dorothy House provides hospice care for those with AIDS. Now, 26 years later, Michael and Nick who with community support are able give aid to the weary in need of recuperative care, supportive assistance and emergency support.

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Michael DeSalvo and Nickolas Orth have opened their home in the Hawley Green neighborhood of Syracuse, NY, to the sick since 1992. Founded on the foundation of social justice, The Friends of Dorothy House provides hospice care for those with AIDS. Now, 26 years later, Michael and Nick who with community support are able give aid to the weary in need of recuperative care, supportive assistance and emergency support.

Thanks for all that you do.

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After watching/reading one of the additional stories (with white backgrounds above) take 4 minutes to reflect and respond:

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After watching/reading one of the additional stories (with white backgrounds above) take 4 minutes to reflect and respond:

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1. Identify WINDOWS and MIRRORS in the stories you heard.
2. What injustices are the activists working to change?
3. What surprised you about the issues or activists?