By Tamryn Spruill On Saturday, and four days after Election Day on Nov. 3, major news outlets declared Joseph Biden and Kamala Harris the winner of the 2020 presidential race. Biden and Harris were declared victorious after winning Pennsylvania and its 20 electoral votes, which put them at 279 of the 270 votes needed to win the presidency. Incumbent Donald Trump, nearing the end of a volatile, destructive, tantrum-filled four years in the Oval Office, is the clear loser, with 214 electoral college votes. Unlike the champion athletes he has publicly degraded and denied celebratory visits to the White House -- athletes who most often practice good sportsmanship after a loss, and even shake the hands of the victors before leaving the court -- Trump has refused to concede. But that hasn't stopped these same athletes from reveling in the Biden-Harris victory or sharing their feelings about it. Here's a roundup from around the WNBA: For Natasha Cloud, a 2019 champion with the Washington...
Natasha Cloud: ‘We Are the Deciding People on Who Runs Our Country’
By Tamryn Spruill Natasha Cloud says her 2020 WNBA season was draining, without playing in a single game. The 2019 champion guard with the Washington Mystics opted out of the season to devote her full energies to social justice initiatives in the aftermath of the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. For Cloud, trying to reform a system that has never been fair to Black Americans has been “daunting,” but there was no question that even an attempt to force change--starting in the District of Columbia, where she plays--would outweigh in importance a Mystics’ title defense. For Cloud, righting injustice starts with giving power back to the people, and that starts with voting. During a conversation in early October, Cloud weighed in on the urgency of the 2020 presidential election (in the following Q&A that has been edited for clarity and conciseness): How would you describe your season of social justice work? Talking about what's going on in our country right now and...
Natasha Cloud: ‘Vote Like Your Life Depends on It’
By Tamryn Spruill If you haven’t heard, an Election Day is fast approaching on November 3rd. Not just any election, but perhaps the biggest of our lifetime, with nothing more at stake than the very democracy we’ve taken as a given, and perhaps, for granted. “Vote like your life depends on it,” Natasha Cloud said during a call in early October about her social justice activism. Cloud, a starting guard with the 2019 WNBA champion Washington Mystics, and Renee Montgomery, a two-time champion and free agent, both opted out of the 2020 season in the “wubble” of IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida, to pursue social justice initiatives, many of which were centered on voting. With exactly two weeks until the 2020 presidential election, The Hard Screen brings you an election special featuring: interviews with Montgomery and Cloud about their efforts to combat voter suppression and educate voters on the electoral process in their respective cities of D.C. and Atlanta; a breakdown why it has...