There's No Place Like Home: Refocusing Olympic Protest
"THIS 'SHUT up and play'? That's not OK. That's not the Olympics." So wrote Sports Illustrated's Aditi Kinkhabwala, joining a rising chorus of sportswriters criticizing the pre-emptive repression of speech of Olympic athletes.
It's no doubt worthy of their ire. The British Olympic Association told their teams in writing that they are forbidden to speak out "on any politically sensitive issues." Other countries have done the same.
Canadian Olympic Committee president Dick Pound made crystal clear to the Canadian Olympians, "If it is so tough for you that you can't bear not to say anything, then stay at home." USA basketball and Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said, "None of these athletes [has] a responsibility to be political. They have the responsibility to represent their country." And IOC head Jacques Rogge has also said that "political factors" need to be kept away from the Games.
This hypocrisy is mind-boggling. The entire reason the Olympics are even in Beijing is political in nature--an effort by the West to embrace China as a 21st century economic and military superpower. The Olympics were to be China's coming out party. Yet the recent crackdown in Tibet has opened a Pandora's box, where athletes and professional protestors are rushing to condemn every aspect of China's market Stalinist economy: its treatment of Tibetans, China's role in Darfur, labor rights abuses and environmental concerns.
And that's just for starters. As we have seen in the recent running of the Olympic torch--turned into a protester obstacle course--everything is on the table. The repression of speech by Olympic officials occurs precisely because many athletes want to talk.
American softball player Jessica Mendoza, who won a bronze medal in the Athens Games, is part of a coalition of more than 200 athletes called Team Darfur. She is planning to wear Team Darfur wristbands in Beijing when she's not competing. "I don't think it's my place to tell China what to do," she told Vahe Gregorian of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "But I do think it's my place to tell people what is happening. I want people to know that nearly 400,000 people have been killed in Darfur since 2004."
Mendoza also invoked that ultimate moment when protest and politics intersected, the Black Power salute of John Carlos and Tommie Smith on a podium in the 1968 Mexico City Games. Mendoza described it as "an effective use of their time in the limelight"--even if they were "sent packing" and expelled from Olympic Village. They otherwise might not have been heard somewhere else," she said. "That was a moment in time to watch."
AND YET, while I support the right of any athlete to speak out and not be silenced by Olympic bureaucrats to make things pleasant for China's rulers, we should also look critically at what it is that people are protesting.
It speaks to a far different set of concerns than those represented by Tommie Smith, John Carlos and the Olympic Project for Human Rights.
Smith and Carlos came to Mexico City to raise awareness about injustices happening in their own country. They wore no shoes on the stand to protest poverty in the United States. They wore beads to protest lynching in the United States. They wore gloves and raised them during the playing of the anthem to signify dissent against the way the African American Olympic athletes were treated. As they said in their founding statement, "Why should we run in Mexico City only to crawl home?"
Yet none of this 2008 crop of athletes is daring to say that maybe protest begins at home. They are raising concerns about China's policies in Tibet or Darfur, but not the U.S. wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. There are concerns about China's labor standards, but not the way their own sponsors, like Nike, exploit those standards.
No wonder the head of the U.S. Olympic Committee, Chief Executive Jim Scherr, issued a surprisingly benign statement that athletes should "do what they want to do" but "shouldn't feel undue pressure to be a part of someone else's cause." But blaming China for the ills of the world ignores the stubborn fact that there is a reason the games are in Beijing. Western complicity in China's crimes isn't challenged by bashing China. It's only covered up.
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Mr. Zirin here puts into words something that I have been thinking throughout this period torch relay protests. While I definitely do not support China's government and many of its actions and policies, I have felt uneasy about the way westerners have been piling on China. Along with the racist undertones of the whole thing, I feel that westerners and particularly Americans need to look at their own leaders and themselves first. America's crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, for the most obvious examples, deserve the attention of protesters before any of China's issues. In Japan, we had people protesting (just a little) in Nagano when the torch passed through, but what about the US military bases scattered all over this country with their nuclear weapons and misbehaving soldiers? And what about the way the US military is abusing the people of Okinawa? WWII ended over 60 years ago. America needs to leave. The occupation should end. Shouldn't there be some protests about this? I realize thisis a little off the issue here, but my point is that Americans have plenty of their own messes to clean up before worrying about other countries' problems.
Goes beyond the knee-jerk liberal, "They can say what they want" position to the deeper issues, especially our need to fight the classically American pair of militarism and racism. You have the clear-eyed historical analysis of a latter-day Marxist. Thanks so much for this column and for all your writings.
Agree heartily with Zirin. The USA has killed more people in furtherance of its empire than has China in its brutal dictatorship. Look to the glass roof over your heads, you people with rocks.
HI DAve
There is an internet site (twentieth century Hemoclysm) that summarizes available estimates by various historians and demographers of death counts in conflicts through the twentieth century.
Check the site out. yes, It is the internet, but, if even it's inaccurate by a lot, The USA has a LONG way to go if it wants to catch up to China, under Mao.
The interesting thing about China, is how successful the regime is at keeping us in the dark about what goes on there. You just never hear about it. What is life really like there right now? Good luck trying to find anything.
Dave,
I thoroughly enjoyed your article and the complexity with which you deal with the protest. It shows how activism in this country is often built on seeing injustice in other parts of the world only. Upon reading your article, I reflected on all those great athletes recently who have faced sanctions for speaking out against US policies.
Stan
Great article and I didn't see you make your blinker on when you made the lane change at the end of your article.
I am not one who says we should only contribute our energies to issues at home here in America but I think it is a powerful point that the athletes are willing to protest the injustices abroad but not doing so at home. I'm not sure about what is going on in Canada and Great Britain but surely the War in Iraq or many other issues could be at the top of their lists.
I know China's crimes should be brought to light, but I hope China isn't the only nation that gets chin checked.
I know Ali was the greatest, but you are a VERY close second!!!! Superb piece. God bless you, Dahlia
I agree with all the comments already posted, particularly with H's. I believe you should dig deeper into this issue with another article, particularly since the point of protesting criminal Chinese policies while ignoring criminal American policies smacks of hypocrisy. The Olympics have always been a politicized event and I think our athletes should be more focused on bringing light to oppressive policies at home, rather than championing "someone else's cause". Why doesn't Jessica Mendoza wear a black armband to protest the one million Iraqis that have died as a result of the US invasion and occupation? Or protest US support for the brutal Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories? Or the vast scope of America's Empire, in which we have military bases or personal stationed in over 130 countries worldwide? And if foreign policy is not where athletes want to protest, how about protesting domestic policies. Like the fact that over 2 million--thats 1 in 32 Americans--are in prison? Or the use of torture, the suspension of habeas corpus, illegal wiretapping, criminal crony capitalism, the destruction and neglect of New Orleans, etc.?
I believe there is a statement sometimes attributed to by Confucius that says, "If you point your finger at someone, remember there are 3 more pointing back at you."
Excellent post, Dave. Huzzah to everything you said.
What coach K said:
"If it is so tough for you that you can't bear not to say anything, then stay at home." USA basketball and Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said
makes me sick beyond description, and is especially telling of our times. And this is a man who's supposed to be modeling responsible citizenship for the young people directly under his guidance as well as the hundreds of thousands of other kids who see him on TV being held up as an outstanding leadership figure? And notice how he spins it, saying it they can't "bear" it. Nice little not-so-subtle undertone of accusing the athletes of conscience of being wimps.
Bastard.
Dave, your article is right on time. The hipocrasy of these corporations is mind boggling. Just play and shut up so we can continue to make our money and still oppress the people of China and elsewhere around the globe. Keep up the good work.
Hotep
mike k will likely come up short anyway. he has been exposed of late as overrated. demanding lockstep allegiance hardly motivates. ask pat knight.
i do think though, dave-ali, that you are assuming that u.s. athletes aren't challenging the empire based on the words of the white non-athletes who hog the floor. i don't know of any athletes coming out with flagpins a blazin'. many will stay home. i realize that this is not self imolation, but it is a rejection of "shut up and dance." others may punk the imperialists the way jesse owens did hitler.
carlos and smith surprised, they may have modern day counterparts who will make us proud.
Great stuff!
Your best column yet. If you get any better we're simply gonna have to nominate you for the Nobel (Peace, that is. For Lit you need to come up with fiction, not dispel it.)
Awesome, just awesome!
Are you serious do you really want to compare the atrocities of China to the minor infractions of the United States. Now I agree that no country is perfect but the United States is close to it when you compare us to China. The proof is that a whole race of people is not trying to leave the country. China was given the olympics so they can stop the human rights abuses that occurs there but instead they have increased and went international with it with their role in the situation in Dafur. Someone has to say something matter of fact they should take the olympics away from China.
hi dave, i think you're right in that it's much more complex than most American athletes and fans are willing to admit.
and we should be willing to understand that as the United States, and with the world's fortune (via economic power) at our control, we have bullied half the world into the state it is currently in.
the Tibet/China issue is a lot more complex also, I think, than we've been led to believe in mainstream, right-leaning, and left-leaning press.
Nausherwan Hafeez- "Like the fact that over 2 million--thats 1 in 32 Americans--are in prison?"
Good one.
Tibet is small change for the Chi-coms. Don't forget that in addition to the muderous mullahs of the Sudan, China also props up the junta in Burma (Myanmar), the totalitarian aristocracy in North Korea, the decrepit despot Robert Mugabe, not to mention the all-time genocide gold medalists the Khmer Rouge. That's on top of starving/murdering some 40 million of their own people. All in the last half century!
That said, I don't care if China hosts the Olympics. Just so long as I don't have to watch it.
I agree with an earlier comment about not anticipating the way you turned things around on athletes (and us) at the end of your article. I appreciate you giving me something to read that makes me think!
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Great. Now i can say thank you!
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Dave Zirin is the author of the book: "Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics and Promise of Sports" (Haymarket). You can receive his column Edge of Sports, every week by going to dave@edgeofsports.com.
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