August 27, 2020

NBA Players End Strike

Pool/Getty

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

Well, it’s over. Multiple reports this morning from inside the Orlando “bubble” say that NBA players have decided to end their wildcat strike. It began on Wednesday when the Milwaukee Bucks refused to play the Orlando Magic to protest the shooting of Jacob Blake by Kenosha, Wisconsin, police. And now it ends with a “discussion” that will “include plans of action moving forward on social justice issues.”

That’s a bit of public relations pablum relayed by ESPN’s head of SOURCES, Adrian Wojnarowski, that at minimum suggests Wednesday’s fervor had worn off.

In a few hours last night, the spirit of the NBA strike spread to the WNBA, to baseball, to soccer and tennis and even to one prominent NBA studio analyst. Even as a one-night wildcat strike, the walk-out was monumental. Within the sports context, it immediately reoriented athletes’ understanding of their labor power. There is an idea, the residue of labor’s rollback over the past half century, that a strike has to be done exclusively for direct changes in conditions at your workplace. An exasperated (anonymous!) owner in ESPN’s article on the 24 hours of the strike certainly thinks so: 

“What is it they think the league can do?” one owner wondered. “We have been fully supportive.”

(As Spike Friedman points out, owners aren’t exactly passive actors here. Steve Ballmer, owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, funds both this LAPD initiative and the academic study used to justify it.)

Not all strikes are about the conditions of the workplace being struck. Not all of them are about wages, time off, benefits. There is an ongoing Strike for Black Lives across industries; it includes fast-food workers, Uber drivers, and janitors. The grievances include more than just one workplace’s problems.

At the time of his assassination in 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was in Memphis leading a sanitation workers’ strike. During a rally, King delivered his now-famous “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech to a crowd of more than just the garbage workers. “Be concerned about your brother,” he implored. “You may not be on strike, but either we go up together or we go down together. Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness.”

He proposed boycotts of Coca-Cola, Wonder Bread, Sealtest milk. The point was to create crossflows of pressure, in solidarity. “As Jesse Jackson has said, up to now only the garbage men have been feeling pain,” King said. “Now we must kind of redistribute that pain.”

A night without basketball is hardly a full redistribution. One wonders what kind of strike could be.

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate