Column Archive

"Drones, Missiles, and Gunships, Oh My!" Welcome to the 2012 London Olympics

As many as 48,000 security forces. 13,500 troops. Surface to air missiles stationed on top of residential apartment buildings. A sonic weapon that disperses crowds by creating "head splitting pain." Unmanned drones peering down from the skies. A safe-zone, cordoned off by an 11 mile, electrified fence, ringed with trained agents and 55 teams of attack dogs.One would be forgiven for thinking that these were the counter-insurgency tactics used by U.S. army bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, or perhaps the military methods taught to third world despots at the School of the Americas in Ft. Benning Georgia. But instead of being used in a war zone or the theater of occupation, they in fact make up the very visible security apparatus in London for the 2012 Summer Olympics.

What if Kobe Bryant was an Imprisoned Palestinian Soccer Player?

Imagine if a member of Team USA Basketball - let’s say Kobe Bryant – had been traveling to an international tournament only to be seized by a foreign government and held in prison for three years without trial or even hearing the charges for which he was imprisoned. This is what has happened to Palestinian national soccer team member Mahmoud Sarsak. Sarsak who hails from Rafah in the Gaza Strip, was seized at a checkpoint on his way to a national team contest in the West Bank.

Adam "MCA" Yauch: Our Ambassador From Atlantis

In the '60s they said, "don't trust anyone over 30." When it comes to remembering  Adam "MCA" Yauch, who died on May 4, I don't trust anyone under 30. Adam Yauch and the Beastie Boys stood for more than just hip hop and their personal “sounds of science”. They repped the soul of a city that no longer exists. The Beasties were global ambassadors from a lost New York City since smothered under the weight of police violence and gentrification. It was a city that churned out hip hop and basketball legends with arrogant ease. It was a city where the question “what do you do” was less about your job than what you did after work. It was a city where the clubs you could get into were less important than the neighborhoods you could get into – and out of. It was a city where if you could see over the counter, you were getting served. It was a city where a scuffle on 42nd and Broadway might spark and you would not even blink.

Junior Seau's Family Will Allow His Brain To Be Studied and the NFL Holds Its Breath

Today brings news that the family of Junior Seau, the former 10-time All-Pro NFL linebacker who took his own life earlier this week, will be donating his brain for study. They want to know if brain injuries sustained during Seau’s 20-year career may have contributed to his suicide. The ramifications are incalculable. 

20 Years Later: Want to Understand the '92 LA Riots? Start with the '84 LA Olympics

If you don’t light the fuse, the bomb won’t blow. But striking the match and lighting the fuse is only the final step in a process of creating a deadly explosion. The match that started the 1992 LA Riots was struck when a videotape showcasing the brutal beating of African American motorist Rodney King by five police officers was released to the public. It lit the fuse on the bomb when a near all-white jury (10 whites, one Latino, one Asian) in Simi Valley found the officers innocent of all charges. The blast then spread over the next five days in the form of the largest urban uprising in the history of the United States. When the shrapnel had stopped flying, the damage amounted to one billion dollars, 53 deaths, and thousands of injuries.

Echo From the Past or the Present? Washington Capitals victory over Boston Bruins spurs spasm of racism

As rapid-fire as twitter itself, what started as a moment of a sports euphoria turned decidedly ugly. There were the Washington Capitals beating the Boston Bruins 2-1 in Game 7 and moving on toward the National Hockey League's greatest prize, the Stanley Cup. Before my disbelieving eyes, the Caps Joel Ward scored the winning overtime goal against last year’s Stanley Cup hero, Tim Thomas. But Ward is a Black man, and before you could say “post-racial", self-identifying Bruin fans tweeted a cascade of ugly invective, with the “N-word” being their epithet of choice.

Metta World Peace – aka Ron Artest - Did Bad, but Deserves Better

Metta World Peace, the winner of the NBA’s 2011 citizenship award and a player who has done more than any athlete alive to raise the curtain on the taboo sports subject of mental illness, is finding out today that the past is never really past.

Are We Brave Enough to Say Goodbye to Pat Summitt?

Coach Pat Summitt holds a legacy that is greater than wins and titles and even more profound than the bravery with which she's confronting this chapter of her life. In so many respects Pat Summitt is women's sports in the United States: fearless, self-made and tough as hell.

25 years since Al Campanis Shocked Baseball: what's changed and what's stayed the same

The Campanis lesson for Major League Baseball hasn’t been to take on racism in the sport, but find executives who can smile for the camera and talk a cat out of a tree. But the bigger problem today is less the old school prejudice, than something far more systemic.

Ozzie Guillen, Free Speech and the Case of Loretta Capeheart

The space where we can reasonably be heard is becoming constricted exactly at the moment when people are beginning to break out of their shells. We have seen both the Occupy movement and the national struggle to win justice for Trayvon Martin present a new willingness to fight. Attacks on speech are efforts to strangle that impulse in its crib. That’s what makes the legal case of Northeastern Illinois University Professor Loretta Capeheart so critical for anyone who cares about freedom of speech and the ability for us to actually be able to shape our surroundings without fear.