The pain from the news of charges not being filed by the Wisconsin DA against the police officers that shot Jacob Blake stemmed from how familiar it all felt. By this point, we all know that prosecutors and police work hand in hand, and it takes something truly perverse for the former to go against the latter. We’ve seen it too many times. Give prosecutors any kind of rope to haul themselves out of having to put cops on trial, and they’ll grab it. While our souls deflate every time it happens, it’s hardly a surprise.
It seems so long ago now, given that we’ve still had to navigate a pandemic and then an interminable election, but it was Jacob Blake’s shooting that spurred the first ever cross-sport general strike that we’ve ever seen. Did it result in massive, immediate change? No, it didn’t. But things like this so rarely if ever do.
It can feel like it accomplished nothing, given that the cops will walk after all of it. It can feel like sports, mostly, stopped once again for no reason. We all so badly want massive and instant change.
But there’s a reason that those cops’ acquittal is showing up on ESPN.com. There’s a reason that it simply isn’t passing in a news ticker, but that everyone sees it. The Bucks aren’t solely responsible for the awareness, but they have a major part in it. These things move more slowly than we like, sometimes much more slowly, but simply the amount of eyes on something like this versus the amount that would have been even three or five years ago? The Bucks and everyone who followed them have a claim to that. It’s a step, just not a leap.
Maybe even one year ago, Marquette’s basketball team doesn’t decide to wear black over a non-filing like this. Media isn’t running to Donovan Mitchell to see what he has to say, or LeBron isn’t tweeting about it. It’s perhaps infinitesimal movement, but it’s movement. It’ll feel like more than that down the line, when real change takes place. And we have to believe it will, even if it won’t come soon enough to save so many.
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But look what happened in Georgia in the presidential election and in last night’s senate runoffs. Which state first decided to make its NBA arena a polling place in an effort to address rampant voter suppression in Black communities? It was Georgia, a state that voted for a Democratic president for the first time in decades. And the activism of WNBA players against one of the league’s owners, Georgia Sen. Kelly Loeffler, worked to unseat her in the Senate and possibly control of the Senate.
So while the protest of athletes in the wake of Blake’s shooting may not have led to charges being filed, it certainly had an impact on the nation.
So it turns out Alex Morgan might just be a total dipshit.
The USWNT star announced she tested positive for COVID-19 yesterday, and it’s truly a mystery how that came about. Yes, a true mystery how a woman — with a newborn child keep in mind — who had been plying her trade in London, a city that is currently a total wildfire amongst a new strain of the virus, who then decided to travel to California, another hotspot, to spend the holidays amongst a big group of family, contracted the virus. Oh, and she posted this picture while doing so on Instagram. It’s just a math problem that only a supercomputer could figure out, isn’t it?
This is the same Morgan who once got tossed from Disneyworld for being that drunk. Turns out, that somehow isn’t the dumbest thing she’s done. Which is kind of impressive, in one way.
The U.S. claimed the World Junior Championships last night 2-0 over Canada, grabbing a lead and then letting goalie Spencer Knight dismissively turn away any hint of a Canadian comeback for the last period and a half.
When the U.S. took the lead late in the 1st period, it was the first time Canada had trailed the whole tournament and the first 5-on-5 goal they had surrendered. Canada looked especially lost in its own end for the game’s first 30 minutes, simply because it had spent any time there in its first five games. Its comeback never got off the ground thanks to Knight.
It will make for some interesting viewing in the next couple years as Knight becomes ready to take over the Florida Panthers’ net, and yet Sergei Bobrovsky is still there pulling down eight figures. But that’s a question for another time.
The coup-de-fuck-you took place after the game. Too bad Don Cherry isn’t still on the CBC, as that picture would certainly be enough to kill him.
Let’s end with this.
This article is auto-generated by Algorithm Source: deadspin.com
