Scroll through the Twitter feed of the late John Lewis, Civil Rights icon and Representative for the state of Georgia’s fifth congressional district, and you will see receipts from a lifetime of service. On July 10, he tweeted an official statement opposing Donald J. Trump’s intended changes to the student visa program, which would have prohibited international students from staying in the country if their classes moved to online status because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Three days prior, he tweeted the mug shot from his May 1961 arrest and wrote: “59 years ago today I was released from Parchman Farm Penitentiary after being arrested in Jackson, MS for using a so-called ‘white’ restroom during the Freedom Rides of 1961.”
Lewis saw more than the inside of jail cells during his fight for racial justice—he saw his life flash before his eyes under the brutal violence of police officers, which he described in a tweet on March 7. Lewis’ reflections on the brutalities and sacrifices of the past never overshadowed his ongoing efforts for justice—first, in the streets of the segregated South, and eventually as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Lewis passed away on Friday at age 80 following a short battle with pancreatic cancer. He leaves behind grieving family, friends and colleagues, and a legacy of do-gooding and troublemaking matched only by his peers: Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., who had been a mentor to Lewis before King was assassinated in 1968, and C.T. Vivian, a minister and “field general” to Dr. King, who also passed away on Friday.
Georgia Senator and Atlanta Dream owner Kelly Loeffler on Saturday tweeted condolences to Lewis’ family, in a message that rang shallow and disingenuous.
“John Lewis changed Georgia, America, and the world for the better,” Loeffler tweeted. “He lived a life of service and his impact cannot be overstated,” adding that she and her husband are “praying for his loved ones during this difficult time.”
Yes, Lewis changed the world, and he survived imprisonment and “gave a little blood” during his fight for racial equality to do so. Yes, Lewis changed America, and he did it by speaking up against wrongdoing, the same way the players of the Dream and the entire WNBA are speaking up against the ongoing brutalization and killings of African Americans by police.
“When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have to speak up,” Lewis said. “You have to say something; you have to do something.”
More powerfully, Lewis urged young people to accept risk on behalf of the greater good. “I want to see young people in America feel the spirit of the 1960s and find a way to get in the way,” Lewis said. “To find a way to get in trouble. Good trouble, necessary trouble.”
The players of the WNBA, inspired to transform the 2020 season into one big campaign for racial justice, are doing just that—making good trouble—in a way that would make Representative Lewis proud.
Loeffler, on the other hand, who is politicizing their efforts and transacting on Black people’s pain? Not so much.
Kelly Loeffler: An affront to the Dream
Dr. King’s, the American, the WNBA’s and otherwise
From trouble in the IMG Academy bubble located in COVID-19 hot spot Florida to Elena Delle Donne trending on Twitter following her essay in The Players’ Tribune concerning the WNBA’s panel of physicians’ decision to deny her request for a medical exemption, the league is getting lots of attention heading toward the July 25 of the delayed and abbreviated 2020 WNBA season—May 15 was the original regular-season start date and 22 games will played instead of the 36 required under the new collective bargaining agreement—and much of it isn’t great.
Just north of where the pandemic season is playing out, dual crises smolder in the backyard of the Atlanta Dream. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp—whose claim to the governorship hinged on a recount against Stacey Abrams (an African-American woman with strong leadership roots in Atlanta who serves on the WNBPA Board of Advocates) and remains in question—has sued the city of Atlanta over Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms’ choice to mandate that all citizens wear masks in public spaces to quell the explosion of coronavirus cases in the Southeastern United States. Bottoms, also an African-American woman, is battling the coronavirus herself.
And wedged within these political battles are Atlanta Dream co-owner Kelly Loeffler and the team’s players, past and present, who are engaged in a war of their own against racial injustice.
When players Natasha Cloud of the defending champion Washington Mystics and Renee Montgomery of the Dream opted out of the 2020 WNBA season to throw their full attention into social justice initiatives, the players—80 percent of whom are Black women—advocated for the league to dedicate the season to social justice.
WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert announced the league’s agreement to emblazon BLACK LIVES MATTER onto the courts of IMG Academy and to proceed with a #SAYHERNAME campaign, conceived by original Dream star Angel McCoughtry, whose name will always be synonymous with the team, that will add that hashtag and the names of Black Americans killed by police—like Breonna Taylor’s, whose killers still have not been charged—onto the backs of players’ jerseys.
Loeffler, whose politics came to the forefront when she accepted an appointment to the U.S. Senate, spoke vehemently against the WNBA’s choice to embrace Black Lives Matter and in a letter to commissioner Engelbert stated, “The truth is, we need less — not more politics in sports.”
True, which is why Loeffler should have kept her mouth shut on the matter, the way she did in 2016—pre-Senate appointment—when players donned “I can’t breathe” warmup t-shirts before games to protest a spate of police killings of unarmed African-American men that year.
“My personal opinion is that she has to play the political game to look good in front of her peers,” McCoughtry said on Saturday during media availability for the Las Vegas Aces. It is her first year in an 11-year career playing for a team other than the Dream.
“If you want to play the political game, do that, but don’t include us in it,” McCoughtry added. “So, that’s where I’m at with it—leave us out of it. When we’re talking about social injustice and things, that’s not politics—that’s human rights. So, I don’t even know why she’s mixing the two.”
The answer is simple: Loeffler is using her privilege as a wealthy, White politician in a transaction for political gain at the players’, teams’ and league’s expense.
She is using the power white supremacist structures have afforded her to take something for herself at the expense of players enduring the hardship of playing in the “bubble” in swampy, critter-ridden Florida, unable to leave, while also experiencing personal reckonings with the state of the nation due to what McCoughtry on Saturday referred to as a “pandemic” of racism.
In line with the views of the base she is courting, Loeffler appears to be denouncing Black Lives Matter as a political organization every chance she gets, further politicizing a human rights matter and misconstruing the aim of Black Lives Matter and the goals the WNBA, its teams and the players have for the season. “In a time when polarizing politics is as divisive as ever, sports has the power to be a unifying antidote,” Loeffler stated during a campaign stop in Georgia, according to NPR. “There is no room for racism in this country. We cannot have it. But there is an organization, different from the saying, an organization called Black Lives Matter founded on Marxist principles. Marxism supports socialism.”
Black Lives Matter embraces no official political agenda and the organization’s mission statement asserts, in part:
“Black Lives Matter began as a call to action in response to state-sanctioned violence and anti-Black racism. Our intention from the very beginning was to connect Black people from all over the world who have a shared desire for justice to act together in their communities. The impetus for that commitment was, and still is, the rampant and deliberate violence inflicted on us by the state.”
When Loeffler was appointed to the U.S. Senate in late 2019, the WNBA appeared to have adopted an approach of keeping the freshman senator’s political dealings separate from the league’s affairs. On draft day in April, for example, Engelbert referred me to Loeffler’s senate office when I inquired about the insider trading allegations against her. When the players began demanding that Loeffler sell her ownership stake in the team, Engelbert stated that the WNBA will not force Loeffler to do so.
Loeffler, however, has failed to separate her political ambitions from her role as team co-owner, for the opportunity to politicize the 2020 WNBA season was too tempting.
But the reasons she is wrong for the Dream specifically run much deeper.
Loeffler’s Antithesis to the Dream
“Yeah, when I first got drafted, my goal, of course, was to retire in Atlanta, and play in the city where, you know, Martin Luther King originated, and you know, it’s a very predominantly Black city,” McCoughtry reflected on Saturday when I asked whether she believes Loeffler is living up to the original vision of the Dream.
“So, things change, of course, but as far as Kelly’s concerned, I think that as of right now she has not reflected what the Dream logo stands for,” she added.
When then-WNBA president Donna Orender announced in late 2007 that the city of Atlanta was granted an expansion team, to be owned by local businessman J. Ronald Terwilliger, the next step was to come up with a team name, logo and colors.
The ownership group and league agreed on Dream as the Atlanta team’s name to honor the Civil Rights legacy of Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose fight for racial justice began in the city’s Ebenezer Baptist Church—founded in 1886 and declared a National Historic Site in 1980—where Dr. King was baptized as a baby, served as co-pastor under his father as an adult and was laid to rest after his assassination in 1968.
The Dream’s history, from conception, is tied to the ideals of Dr. King.
“The rising phoenix symbolizes the city’s rise from the ashes of the Civil War to become a world city,” a Dream press release announcing its rebranding efforts states. “The shooting star ties the Dream back to its roots and is prominent within the formal logo. Finally, the basketball represents the game we pour everything we have into each day.”
But nowhere is the team meaning more pronounced than the accompanying video with a woman stating, in voiceover, “This city rose like a phoenix from the ashes/creating a convergence of black and white/grit and grace/perseverance and new beginnings/we … ignited civil rights/and today we are the home of hip-hop and Hollywood of the South/we are Atlanta/the dream/and the beacon for diversity”—all against a backdrop of images including Dr. King, players and the city itself.
WATCH: Dream brand identity unveiling
Atlanta’s WNBA team was named Dream in honor of the speech Dr. King gave at the 1963 March on Washington. We know it today as King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, which too often is boiled to a reduction of lofty ideals concerning the pursuit of goals or inspiration for hope rather than what it is: a searing condemnation of the nation’s racist history and a stern demand for equal rights for all.
King marched on Washington to collect on the promise of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”:
He stated before the world the historic dehumanizing treatment of Black Americans and demanded the opposite, including an end to police brutality:
Dr. King, in one of the most iconic speeches in human history, called for freedom to ring even “from Stone Mountain of Georgia,” a site engraved with the images of Confederate warlords Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson, which also served as a site for Ku Klux Klan initiations, including one in the summer of 1948 that ushered in 700 new members.
All kinds of people live near and visit Stone Mountain; it is a predominantly Black suburban area. However, an attempt to reform the historic monument to white supremacy by installing a bell tower in celebration of King’s “Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!”—was met with “protestors, some flaunting assault rifles, for a ‘Defend Stone Mountain’ rally” to preserve the “purity” of the “Confederate roots,” Southern Poverty Law Center stated, based on reporting from the Atlanta Journal Constitution.
Loeffler is a U.S. senator for all of Georgia—Atlanta, Stone Mountain and everywhere in between. Her job is to serve all citizens of the state, not just the far-right disciples of Trump who, like the president himself, has departed from the core principles of what once was, and now is, the obliterated Republican party.
Instead of zipping her lips on these matters as she did in 2016, Loeffler has come out with statement after statement condemning Black Lives Matter protesters as “mob rule,” while staying silent about armed White men taking to government buildings in other states to protest lockdowns designed to curtail the spread of the coronavirus. The players know what’s up, and no one more so than McCoughtry, who devoted the majority of her career to the Dream.
“I think that as of right now she has not reflected what the Dream logo stands for,” McCoughtry said of Loeffler. “I think that if she really did have a problem with LGBTQ people or Black Lives Matter, I don’t think she would have had us players in her home. Why even own a WNBA team?”
“If you want to play the political game, do that, but don’t include us in it,” McCoughtry said. “So that’s where I’m at with it—leave us out of it. When we’re talking about social injustice and things, that’s not politics—that’s human rights.”
Whether Loeffler caves to the players’ demand to sell her stake in team is yet to be seen but McCoughtry is happy to be back on the court after a knee injury cost her the end of the 2018 season and all of the 2019 season except for one minute. Now with the Aces, she is grateful to be on the court again. “I’m just glad to be back playing,” McCoughtry said. “I’m grateful to have a job, because times are hard right now … And I’m glad to be able to use this job to fight and advocate for things, and I’m truly happy to be back.”