“I want to go protest”
Cheers to Jaylen Brown, NBA’s Powerful Voice for Social Change
| revcom.us
From a reader:
After the Boston Celtics secured their place in the NBA’s Eastern Conference finals, one of their star players, Jaylen Brown, appeared on NBATV Live wearing a white T-shirt with three black fists surrounding a partial confederate flag/swastika with words underneath of “Destroy Racism.” He wears the word “Liberation” on the back of his jersey. About that he said, “The definition of liberation is free yourself from oppression, slavery, or marginalization. I wanted to represent that. This is the season to break free of some of those cycles.”
When the NBA players began discussing boycotting the playoffs after the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Wisconsin, Brown, who is also the Vice President of the National Basketball Players Association, tweeted out, “I want to go protest,” rather than just boycott.
After the police shooting of Jacob Blake, Brown got in his car and drove 15 hours to lead a protest in Atlanta, near his home town of Marietta. He tweeted, “Being a celebrity, being an NBA player don’t exclude me from no conversations at all.... We’re raising awareness for some of the injustices that we’ve been seeing. It’s not ok... First and foremost, I’m a Black man and I’m a member of this community, and I grew up on this soil.”
His coach, Brad Stevens, has said that Jaylen will do more off the court than on the court during his lifetime.
Brown has become the go-to guy for other players who want to have conversations about social issues. About that, Brown, who played his college ball at UC Berkeley, says, “So what I’ve learned from being here is that a lot of guys care, a lot of guys pull me to the side and ask questions, a lot of guys want to have discussions of topics and things like that to learn more. They don’t necessarily know how to say things because of the backlash the media may give, or they’re scared to say the wrong thing. But I want them to know, to continue to have that courage. We have it together. It’s harder to single out one of us and make us look like we don’t know what we’re talking about.”
Jaylen Brown has become the most powerful voice and a leader in the NBA for the liberation of Black people and for social change.
"Being a celebrity, being an NBA player don't exclude me from no conversation at all."
— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) May 31, 2020
Jaylen Brown drove 15 hours from Boston to Atlanta to join the protests.
(via @FCHWPO) pic.twitter.com/eZR1fxvCdd
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