His journalism has appeared in the source, the College Sporting news, the San Francisco bay view. He talks about his book whats my name, fool . The San Francisco bay view has said that he is that rarest of commodities with sports writing. An original voice. This book will be loved an orginal voice. Please join me in welcoming dave zirin. [applause] dave whats my name, fool . Sports in resistance in the United States. This book is about times when radical politics found expression in the road of role of professional sports in the u. S. Just to be clear, i have heard some of the jokes about this book. Like, radical politics in u. S. Sports. That will make a great template. Why dont you write about. Omething in little more mature why dont you add the great atheists of the Christin Coalition . There is a tradition deeply hidden when times of struggle off the field exploded onto the field with electric consequences. I actually had a front row seat for this carnival of reaction. I went to a Washington Nationals game. That is my home team. I went because i wanted to see a baseball game. Instead, what i was treated to was what the nationals were calling military Appreciation Night or man. Where, 20 young men were sworn into the u. S. Marines before the start of the game. This took place with george w. Bush sitting in one of the owners boxes up top. Like caesar, waiting for lines to emerge from the dugout. The announcer thanked bush and the troops for fighting for our freedom in iraq. I sat there slackjawed, utterly speechless. As fans, we were informed by the this embodied god voice that we could sign up for Operation Iraqi freedom at a stand located right outside of the stadium. Peanuts, cracker jacks and war, thats a great evening if i ever heard one. You find yourself in this stadium with absolutely no voice. You find yourself with no way to express yourself to the athletic industrial complex. I was sitting there and it never ceases to amaze me how sports, something that had a huge role in shaping may growing up, a positive influence on me growing up. I think we should celebrate beauty and the best of competition and fun. It can be used in such a disgusting way. I love sports, i think we need to fight for sports. What we need to know is our history. That is our greatest ammunition in this fight. We need to know the history of the athletes, the sportswriters and the fans who have stood up to the machine if for no other reason than knowing this history allows us to look at the world and see that struggle can affect every aspect of life in the system. I want to start about the title of the book and where it comes from. I used to have a joke that flunked mightily. Whats my name, fool . And no its not a tribute to mr. T. I was at a book store when a young, wellmeaning person asked me if this was a book about mr. T and was totally serious. I want to start about where this title comes from. This is a direct reference to what i think is behind points of that connection between sports and resistance. ,hich in my view is the time was when the heavyweight champion of the world had one foot in the black freedom struggle and one in the antiwar movement. Of course im talking about the , great muhammad ali. In 2005, i think people under 30 know ali as a walking saint. President s had him on the back pat him on the back and leave him by the hand. You would never know that this was the most despised, and slanderized and brutalized athlete on the face of the earth in the 1960s. He changed his name from cassius clay to cassius x and then to muhammad ali. If we are going to talk about to get wille has smith out of their heads. There are no words for the storm this caused when cassius clay changed his name. When boxing was obviously the biggest sport in the United States in the 1960s, the champion of the red white and blue, strength, aggression, all these things. Then all of a sudden you had the heavyweight champion of the world talking about how pretty he was which was shocking in itself and then, joining the organization of malcolm x. The mobbed up, corrupt, rightwing fight world lost their minds. What was incredible is that whether or not you called the i, it saidlay or al everything about you. What side you are on in the black struggle, the free speech struggle. It was an incredible thing. My stepaunt was telling me how she moved out of her apartment for a week. She stayed on a friends couch because she got into a huge fight with her dad about whether the heavyweight champions name happened to be clay or ali. You may think this is a dysfunctional family. You would be right. It wasnt an argument about pain, it was an argument about the. The political period. It was an argument about the radicalization breaking out and what side of the barricades you are on. In 1965, ali fought a twotime champion. A man who was proudly patriotic, floyd patterson. This is what patterson said to the reporters. This is a direct quote. He said, this fight is a crusade to reclaim the sport from black muslims. As a catholic, i will reclaim this from clay. His name is clay. Was thatponse to this he had no response. He had nothing to say in response to this. He let it simmer and then he did his talking in the ring. Nine rounds against patterson and he just took them apart. He would yell, come on white america, what is my name . Whats my name, fool . That is where i get the title of the book. It is not just the title, it is a good book. Most sports fans know that mohammed ali is the first responsible for saying whats my name, fool . It is the background that people dont know. The swirling black freedom struggle. The symbolic struggle that always fight sad a li had. As Bryant Gumbel said, i cant believe im quoting him, it is a good quote. He said one of the reasons the Civil Rights Movement went toward is because black people were able to claim their fear. That came from watching mohammed ali. He refused to be afraid. Julian bond who was a civil rights activist and is now a head of the naacp, he said that the act of ollie joining the nation was not something we all agreed with. We loved that he was telling white people to go to hell for us. I want to give two examples of his presence giving people confidence in the movements going outside of the ring that are very evocative and not something we are taught in sports century moments on espn. The first is something that took place in alabama. You had a group of africanamerican athletes. The youth wing of the Civil Rights Movement. They organized a group called the loans county freedom party. They were trying to register the. Ourse of the poor sharecroppers, people who worked in factories down there. They are famous in the annals of the Civil Rights Movement because they were the first people to use the symbol of a black panther. They use that as an inspiration. They called themselves the black panthers. That is something that the people who know the Civil Rights Movement know. A lot of people dont know that the slogan they had emblazoned underneath the black panther was we are the greatest. Another example is Martin Luther king when he came out against the war in vietnam in 1967. It is not remembered the degree of pressure and criticism he received at the time, not just from the mainstream media, the groups whovil rights thought he should not be speaking on international affairs. When he gave his first press conference, like mohammed ali us, we are all victims of the same injustice and oppression. That to me is incredible. I think the stories are incredible, i hope i am not alone. I think the problem is that in sports history itself, as it is told on the world wide leader espn is that it gets soft created, the bad music it becomes espn. The political teeth get extracted. That is what the book is about. It tries to reclaim that history and learn about the fire underneath the icons. The history that we know, the history we are not told. For example, it is wellknown that jack johnson was the first black heavyweight champion in the world in 1908. Do we know when he defended the title, his defeat started the greatest race riots this country had ever seen and would see until the 1968 king assassination. The character of these rides were white mobs. These riots were white mobs. They were attempting to enter black neighborhoods and black communities defending themselves by force after a boxing match, this occurred in 1910. To continue that, booker t. Washington who was outraged went to johnson and demanded that he condemn people for rioting. Johnson responded that you can kiss my black ass. We also know that baseball was segregated for 50 years until 1947. Do we know the story of Lester Rodney . Lester rodney used the sports section to fight for baseballs integration. A campaign that garnered over a million signatures from Wrigley Field to Yankee Stadium to misty comiskey park. I got to interview Lester Rodney for this book. It was an absolute privilege and not something i will ever never forget. 95 years old and sharp as a tack. We may know Jackie Robinson as the first two integrate into baseball. I think we know him mostly as this quiet, suffering, black saint who was brought to the dodgers under the paternal one of branch dickey. We also dont know him as he was the number one requested speaker of the naacp in the United States at that time. He barnstormed around the country speaking and meetings at meetings. He stormed around the country speaking at meetings. The number two speaker was Martin Luther king. The way that robinson would wrap up his speeches he would use this one line. He would say if i have to choose between the hall of fame and full citizenship for my people, i would choose full citizenship time and again. When eugene debs would say that i will arrive, it will be with the ranks, not from the ranks. That is what i hear from robinsons words. I think it is incredible. We may know about the famed black power salute of tommie smith and john carlos of the 1968 olympics. It is being commemorated. Last month it was commemorated , in a statute in california. There is a lot about that picture we dont know. It is one of the most marketed pictures in the last hundred years. We dont know that tommie smith and john carlos wore beads to protest lynching. They wanted to protest poverty. They didnt wear shoes. Massive breach of etiquette at the time. When i got to john carlos, he i asked why he left his jacket open he said i wanted it , open to represent shift workers, bluecollar people and the underdogs. The people whose contributions to society are so important but dont get recognized. We certainly dont hear about the instances that were occurring around these guys in 1968 that led to that moment. The assassination of dr. King and how it influenced those guys to make a stand at the olympics. The strikes in maine and paris. The movement that was occurring in south africa at the time. It was apartheid. Of course, the assassination of 500 students and workers in mexico city right before the olympics by the state police as they attempted to make mexico city safe for the olympic games. We see the picture but we dont hear any of the history. That is the equivalent of telling the story of the titanic and forgetting the iceberg. It is bad history. , that politics and generally bad writing as well. We may know about billie jean kings match against bobby rigs. Whenever they do retrospectives of that, we dont know how deeply embedded that match was at the time. It was one of the most enduring victories of the womens movement. It ensured equal funding. It is largely unenforced but still an incredible victory. It is calmly thought of as just a sports thing. Also, Educational Opportunities in general. It is a living history and it is a life anytime athletes try to or Carlos Delgado says that this was based on murder lies. This close of the racism of this system. People should check out his book of poetry called more than an athlete that will blow your mind. It was alive when felipe alou who is a manager of the San Francisco giants stands up to the antiimmigrant racism on sports radio. I think it is especially alive when the u. S. Congress and their steroid hysteria hoopla. They are like Joe Mccarthys little cousin. They feared calling barry bonds to testify on steroids. They were afraid that he would say what he was saying to reporters. Why is it illegal to use steroids but it is not illegal why is steroids cheating, the making a shirt in korea for . 50 and telling it for 100 here not . We can dissect what we like and dislike about sports and challenge not only sports but challenge our society to change. When warplanes fly overhead and before Baltimore Ravens games, we can ask how many physical education classes are cut to pay for every blue angel. Windows disgustingly sexist beer to sell beer we can , ask what they are doing. Aen announcers on fox the touchdown dance get too raunchy, we can ask how a network that pays the oreilly millions and promotes shows like whos your daddy and the littlest groom, i dont want to say what that is about but it is kind of gross. How they have the right to be the purity police. When our cities are attempting to be soaked by sleazy stadium deals. Like the rat house. We can stand up as sports fans and say we may love baseball, basketball, im not going to give a billionaire 350 million present for the privilege of watching it. By speaking out for the political soul of the sports that we love, we stand for social justice in every arena. We also begin to impose our own ideas on sports. A counter morality to compete with the hypocrisy of the proleagues. This is a thrill to barry bonds to not give up sports. The thrill of michael vick, or me a hand kicking a soccer ball. It is a morality that recognizes athletes as human beings with mines as well as bodies. I think it needs to understand that athletes who speak out for social justice, but in our ability to build a struggle outside the arena. If we want more muhammad alis, john carloss and billy jean kings. If we want to see a day mail day king we need every drop of history we can get our hands on. As tommy smith himself said about his famed black power salute, it is not something that andn lay on the shelf forget about. He is absolutely right. Struggle is part of our future. Affect athletes and fans alike. What the book is about at the end of the day knowing that is knowing that those who speak out actually stand in a tradition that goes back 100 years and speaks to beyond the field of play. It is tradition we should embrace whether we are sports fans or not. Thank you. [applause] dave were taking questions. I would remind people that we are on tv. Just raise your hand. I have been mulling on this question for about 10 years. I have been really looking for to being here. Dave i cant think of a better place for you to ask than on television. I read your article about the jacks johnson riots. I remember in 1992. I was a freshman in high school, when the Chicago Bulls first won the nba championship, i remember seeing on tv, the rodney king trial verdicts that just happened. Ive remember seeing on tv that after the bulls one, fans rushed won, fans rushed to the vip. I think the chicago stadium is on the poor side of town. They were assaulting limousines and all of the important people. They were Burning Police cars. There was a little rebellion going on. Isically, my question is and wanted to ask given the fact that the Chicago Police are racist and brutal, what is it about that that allows these little opportunities for people to fight back in a Victorious Way . They won, they drove the cops away. Do you know of anything else in the world sports history where there was some political advance after a sports victory or defeat . Dave as far as world sports, i dont know, do sports take place out of the United States . I was born and raised in this country. Ive never heard of these other sports. Just kidding [laughter] dave when sports rights do occur, i think, obviously, you dont go out and burn a limousine. I think they are largely, if not entirely expressions of alienation. Whether they occur on College Campuses for cities that doesnt , mean they are politically progressive in any way. It is not a good thing. I had somebody asked me i was at syracuse university. There was this right after we won the temperature. How do we channel this against the war . You dont. Not it is an expression of disconnect from politics, not an expression of their connection. It is an outgrowth of anger and frustration that people feel. I do think it is something positive that we can organize. It was a character of people defending their neighborhoods against white lynch mobs and feeling the confidence to do that. I think there is a qualitative difference than some guys lighting their mattress on fire in their frat house and throwing it out on the street. I want to talk to those guys, just not when they are drunk. I want to talk about the olympics first. I dont know if you mentioned in the book. I think this one man was the head of the committee. He was a former physical director for francisco franco. I was wondering if you know the background behind that. I dont know whether or not you talk about the situations. Marty glickman was one of them. He was excluded from the olympics because he was jewish. You had included that in the book itself. The other question i had was the transformation metamorphosis of george foreman. He was really quiet and really closed and didnt say very much. Ali was really boisterous. It was a complete metamorphosis. George foreman was really loud. Did you talk about that . It was probably because he took too many punches. Can you make a comment on that . There was a book called in your face that talked about the issues of that period of time. Dave he was the head for a long time of the International Olympic committee. The ioc, throughout thei