How the NBA and WNBA are effectively fighting against voter suppression
These athletes are using their (technological) platforms to spread the gospel of the vote.
The final question in Wednesday night’s Vice Presidential debate between Mike Pence and Kamala Harris was written by eighth-grader Brecklynn Brown. It read:
“When I watch the news, all I see is arguing between Democrats and Republicans. When I watch the news, all I see is citizen fighting against citizen. When I watch the news, all I see is two candidates from opposing parties try to tear each other down. If our leaders can’t get along, how are our citizens supposed to get along?”
Although I’m not too sure an eighth-grader from Utah really wrote it, it’s true that bi-partisan politics have become incredibly frustrating to watch and that we have never been more divided. President Donald Trump has not only failed on his promise to unite America, but his hateful rhetoric and radical politics have further exacerbated the ideological divide between Democrats and Republicans.
That’s what makes other types of leaders so important, including athletes.
Acknowledging the frustrations that Brown and other citizens face, basketball players have done what political leaders have failed to do: take a non-partisan approach to social change by using their platforms to fight for democracy and against voter suppression. While it’s easy to attack Trump for his lies or hateful rhetoric — meeting hate with hate, as we see on most political talk shows — it’s much harder to fix the broken American voting system and the voter suppression embedded within it, which remains one of the greatest obstacles to a more just country.
The athletes at the front of the movement understand that 100 million Americans chose not to vote in the 2016 election and that one in every five eligible Americans are not registered to vote. They also understand that states across the country have passed measures that include cuts to early voting, voter ID laws, and purges of voter rolls to make it harder for Americans — particularly Black and Brown ones — to exercise their fundamental right to vote. The NBA and WNBA are not dwelling on the fact that Republicans have been in charge of modernizing voter suppression tactics because the focus of this non-partisan movement is simply to make people understand that their vote is important.
But focusing on the vote didn’t happen right away. The NBA and WNBA players entered their respective ‘bubbles’ with the knowledge that they would have a lot of eyes on them and the desire to seek social justice and empower the Black Lives Matter movement. However, two major events encouraged the leagues to narrow their focus to voting.
The first occurred in early August when Atlanta Dream Co-Owner Kelly Loeffler objected to what she deemed the politicization of the WNBA and the Black Lives Matter movement with an open letter to WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert. This resulted in WNBA players calling for her removal from the league and, more pointedly, showing up to the arena in “Vote Warnock” T-shirts, using their platforms to encourage fans to vote for Loeffler’s opponent in the U.S. senate race.
The next event occurred towards the end of August when Wisconsin police shot an unarmed Black man named Jacob Blake in his back seven times. This tragedy led to a temporary NBA players’ strike, giving the players some time to narrow their immediate focus to voting and to demand the league and its owners do more to help the players in their fight for justice. The strike achieved three things:
1. Every team-owned arena is to turn into a polling place for the November election.
2. They are to establish a “social justice coalition” of players, coaches, and owners. Along with increasing access to voting, the coalition is focused on “promoting civil engagement, and advocating for meaningful police and criminal justice reform.”
3. The league, players, and broadcast partners are to work on developing advertisements promoting “greater civic engagement in national and local elections and raising awareness around voter access and opportunity.”
With the goal of increasing voter turnout at local and national elections, the NBA and WNBA utilized the technology-based platforms afforded to them to spread the gospel of the vote through imagery and symbolism. Along with “VOTE” shirts, face masks, hats, and branding becoming normalized at games and press conferences, players and coaches used their media time to talk about the importance of voting.
Furthermore, teams and players from both leagues begun to form nonpartisan voting initiatives and coalitions to help people get registered and vote including the “Rally the Vote” coalition and LeBron James’ "More Than a Vote” campaign. Even the Toronto Raptors encouraged Americans who live in Canada to vote.
But what might be the most encouraging result of all this work is how the NBA led by example, using their time in the bubble to educate themselves about politics and, even more importantly, getting over 90 percent of the league registered to vote — including getting 15 NBA teams 100 percent registered. It’s an astonishing accomplishment considering that it’s estimated that only about 20 percent of the league voted in the last election.
You may be asking yourself: what does all this have to do with technology? After all, this newsletter is called “The Tech Effect.”
Well, my previous posts were largely about the negative consequences of our overreliance on technology. This post focused on one of the positive aspects of technology and how we can use modern technology to our advantage.
The NBA and WNBA players showed us that the strategic use of certain technological platforms such as cable TV, Youtube, and social media networks can be extremely effective when it comes to educating the public and enacting social change. Imagery and symbolism go a long way towards influencing the public, especially when it’s being pushed by leaders we look up to such as athletes.
Even if your platform isn’t as big as that of these celebrities, the internet is the ultimate democratic tool when used properly.
The NBA and WNBA created a blueprint for how to use the platforms afforded to us to carry out positive, non-partisan action, effectively fighting against voter suppression and doing everything they can to restore democracy.
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