by Etan Thomas
I was glad to be able to sit down with Swin Cash of the Detroit Shock to talk about these subjects.
Etan: Take me through how all of you came to the decision to collectively take the stand in the WNBA?
Swin Cash: It really came about as a result of everything that was going on in the country at the time. There were forty-eight hours that really had everyone in a state of shock. There were back-to-back murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, and there was the video on Facebook Live that actually showed Philando Castile being killed and another video showing the police kill Alton Sterling, and at the time I think people were really numb and didn’t know what to do. I know that Minnesota were working behind the scenes. I know their team really wanted to take a stance. I was actually on the executive committee of the union and we heard from other players, so everyone was wondering what they were going to do and it really was pretty much a forty-eight-hour turnaround where we had Minnesota who first publicly took a stand and two days after that we were in New York taking a stand and other teams were following suit . . . We understood that by making this stance, it wasn’t going to be favorable with everyone, but at the same time we were so committed and we collectively felt that we needed to use our platform in that way.
Etan: What was your reaction to the police saying they were not going to do security for WNBA games?
Cash: Yeah, the officers decided that they were not going to remain on their posts during the game and do their duty as to what they were hired to do and they walked out of the arena. So not only were they refusing to acknowledge that we had a constitutional right to voice our opinion, but they were abandoning their responsibility as policemen to protect the players and fans alike . . . Minnesota had a press conference first and they verbalized how they felt and where they stood on all of the issues and the shirts displayed that as well. In New York, we took a different approach; immediately following the two shootings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile you had the five Dallas police officers that lost their lives. So we had Black Lives Matter on the front of our shirts, but we also had #ForTheDallasFive out of respect for those officers, and there was a lot of debating and going back and forth. We really let every team decide what exactly it was that they wanted to stand for, because obviously the players in Dallas wanted to honor the Dallas Five but they still wanted to keep the focus on Black Lives Matter. It was . . . not a lot of sleeping, but a lot of conference calls talking to players from around the league and mobilizing in different markets.
Etan: WNBA president Lisa Borders fined the New York Liberty, Phoenix Mercury, and Indiana Fever five thousand dollars each and their players five hundred each, which was a very different way than the NBA handled a similar situation. But the fine didn’t deter you; it actually seemed like it motivated you to take the entire protest to another level.
Cash: Yeah, we had a new WNBA president and she was trying to figure out how she would discipline or enforce the rules, and at the end of the day . . . We knew going in, especially after exploring everything with our legal team, that they could legally fine us because of this direct violation of the rules, but because the WNBA didn’t fine Minnesota at the beginning, everyone was even more inclined to do it . . . And once you saw other teams joining the movement and it was spreading like wildfire across all the teams and the players, the league came down with a decision. We didn’t back away from it. We knew the decision was going to happen because we were advised that it would happen . . . Collectively, we all said we were not going to back down just because of their fine that we all knew was an attempt to squash our movement . . . So we continued. And the next phase of that was the media blackout where in the postgame interviews, we would make a statement, then we would only answer questions about what was happening in our society and about Black Lives Matter. That was explained to the media and they understood our position, and that was that.
Etan: So what led them to rescind the fines?
Cash: You’ll have to try to get a statement from the WNBA and ask them. After they saw that we weren’t going to back down . . . we received a call from our union informing us that they were in fact going to rescind the fine and that they really liked that we were having a dialogue and that they wanted to discuss with us where we go from here and offered their support. That leadership came straight from Lisa Borders, so I really give her credit . . . You don’t see people in that position admit that they were wrong and listen the way she did. So at that point . . . those conversations started happing right after the fines were rescinded.
Etan: I asked D Wade this same question, because after Miami Heat players wore I Can’t Breathe shirts they faced some of the same criticism. He said that it wasn’t about police, it was about bad police. Talk about that aspect of what Black Lives Matter actually means.
Cash: I definitely agree with Dwyane and we got the exact same pushback. Some of it was because some people were in fact uneducated and . . . believe everything they hear or are shown on television. And when you have people who go on television and use consistent negative descriptions of Black Lives Matter, and you make it seem like it’s something that it’s not, people will be more fearful of it and believe what they have been shown and told . . . Even in school they tell you if you don’t know the answers, go do the research, and people don’t do that today. Everybody has this microwave-popcorn society that says, “I don’t want to look it up, just give me the answer right now.” And of course we had so many females who had family that were police officers and we had people who served in the Marine Corps and the army and they understood perfectly that we weren’t saying that it’s all police or we weren’t antipolice, but that we needed to pay attention to what was happening . . . We had to make sure that all of our women understood where their positions were, how they felt, and to only speak to what you felt. We continually stressed that just because you say that Black Lives Matter doesn’t mean that all lives don’t matter, but Black lives have to matter in order for all lives to matter.
Etan: Yeah, one of the main criticisms I’ve seen is: “Shouldn’t all lives in fact matter, and not just the Black ones?”
Cash: I know for me personally, I always answer that in pointing out that, statistically, young Black men and women are being killed at an alarming rate by police officers—more than any other race—and looking at the justice system, receiving longer and harsher sentences for the same crimes as other races. We are getting profiled, we have family members who are constantly suffering. I could keep going and going. People think that just because I have a specific job or live in an affluent area that it somehow separates us from the struggle, but the reality is that if we are not training these officers, if we’re not making sure that everyone has a fair opportunity, we’re just basically being a part of the problem instead of trying to be part of the solution.
Etan: Why is that such a difficult concept for some people to grasp?
Cash: I think there are some people who want to live in their bubble, and when they are exposed to reality they push back because to them it is so unfathomable and they just don’t want to accept it as reality. Or they may care about it and hope that someday it changes, but it doesn’t affect their day-to-day, and when you’re living in a country now where people are talking about my job, my health care, they want to focus on other issues that are directly pertinent to them. “If I am not Black or brown, I don’t have to walk around every day with this type of struggle. My experiences aren’t the same, so basically it’s not my problem.” So it’s different for people of color because . . . this is our reality. They can change the channel when they get tired of hearing about all the racial issues or the issues with the police, but we can’t change any channel because we are living it every single day.
Etan: Talk about the power of solidarity.
Cash: First, you have to always keep in mind that whenever someone wants to accomplish something, the first order of business is to conquer and divide. You know what the enemy’s mind-set is and what
they are going to try to do, so you have to know how to combat that. There is always strength in numbers, and there are going to be some people in your group who do not have as much strength as you . . . Right after the inauguration of Donald Trump, the very next day we had a women’s march, not just in different cities but across the world. I was talking to players from other countries overseas and they were just so proud to see men and women and children who came out to support . . .
The march got a response from the president of the United States because he saw us and he saw us together, unified, in full support of each other. So many times, the first step is to make them see you, then after they see you you can verbalize what you want to be done, but you have to get their attention first and there is strength in numbers. I was proud of the WNBA players because for a lot of people, they finally saw us. A lot of people didn’t want to acknowledge our game, our sport, or acknowledge us, because they didn’t see us . . . And let me make this point: we had people in our locker room who were Republicans, Democrats, all different races and nationalities and beliefs, we have a lot of players from overseas, so it’s not like we were all the same demographic or shared the same belief system. It simply came down to what’s right and what’s wrong.
Etan: How do you get white players to speak out?
Cash: It goes back to the locker room and a sisterhood . . . We understand the purpose of fighting for women’s rights, whether it’s fighting for equal pay or women’s health; we have been taught from a very young age to stand together and support each other. The reason why there were so many not only white players but international players who stood with us was because, one, they saw the suffering from their teammates—not heard about it or read about it—but visibly saw it firsthand, whether it’s seeing their teammates crying or seeing them angry or hurt and expressing themselves and explaining their frustration. And we had those dialogues with each other before we publicly made our statement . . . If we’re going to really form a sisterhood, we can’t tiptoe around issues that are deeply and emotionally affecting us to our core . . . We didn’t force anyone to join us at all; we made it known that this was what a majority of us would like to do, but it’s your choice. Either way, we are not going to judge you, but they all understood and all wanted to support, and we had players that really stood up. So I was really impressed by how together our women were and how we were willing to sacrifice for each other without hesitation.
Interview with Tamika Catchings
I can’t say enough about how impressed I was with what the WNBA players were able to accomplish together. Before the July 2016 game against the Dallas Wings, the team captains for the Minnesota Lynx spoke to the media. One of them, Maya Moore, said, “If we take this time to see that this is a human issue and speak out together, we can greatly decrease fear and create change. Tonight, we will be wearing shirts to honor and mourn the losses of precious American citizens and to plead for a change in all of us.”
Cheryl Reeve, the coach of the Minnesota Lynx (who happens to be white), tweeted, “To rebut BLM with ‘All Lives Matter’ implies that all lives are equally at risk, and they’re not. #BlackLivesMatter doesn’t mean your life isn’t important if you aren’t black—it means that Black lives, which are seen without value within White supremacy, are important.”
The New York Liberty had the entire team wearing T-shirts with the words #BlackLivesMatter and #Dallas5 on the front and a blank hashtag on the back. I interpreted the blank hashtag to symbolize the next unarmed Black man or woman to have their life snatched away by the police, the next one we unfortunately know is coming, though we don’t know the victim’s name. After the game, five players walked in formation into the media room to address the crowd of reporters waiting to hear an explanation. Swin Cash stated, “My husband is 6'6", 220 [pounds]. If my husband gets pulled over, when you look at him, does he make you scared? Is something going to happen to him? Those are things that go on in my head.”
When the WNBA initially threatened to fine the players, Los Angeles Sparks standout Nneka Ogwumike was immediately vocal: “Everyone has their own opinion. But for me, at the end of the day, it’s about the ethical nature of everything. The reason why we wanted to do this or why we wanted to come out and express ourselves, as a lot of other athletes do, is because of what’s going on in our world. And a majority of our league is African American.”
Reverend Al Sharpton said that his National Action Network would pay the fines, which he called “unacceptable.” But as Swin Cash discusses above, that ultimately proved to be unnecessary. League president Lisa Borders announced in a statement, “While we expect players to comply with league rules and uniform guidelines, we also understand their desire to use their platform to address important societal issues.”
Fever all-star Tamika Catchings, who was the president of the players union at that time, called the league’s decision to rescind the fines a “huge win overall.” I got a chance to meet with her to discuss what followed those initial protests.
Etan: During the playing of the national anthem on September 21, 2016, the entire Indiana Fever team knelt and locked arms against the Phoenix Mercury. Talk to me about what pushed you all to do this?
Tamika Catchings: It really started earlier in the season. Our team was watching everything that was going on and we all agreed that Black Lives Matter was really at the forefront after all of the police killings that were happening specifically to Black people. It really hurt our hearts seeing everything, we were really bothered as an entire team. And as a team we decided to use our platform to speak about it . . . So, we get to the playoffs, and talking to some of the members of the Phoenix team, and we told them that as a team, we were thinking about making this statement of kneeling during the national anthem.
And I posed it to our team that it’s either all or nothing and that if anybody felt uncomfortable, we don’t do it, and you know how it is with teams—you may get a response within twenty-four or forty-eight hours, and some may have different opinions or fears, but literally within ten, fifteen minutes max, everybody had said that this was definitely something that they wanted us to do together, and that includes our two Caucasian teammates.
Etan: What were the conversations like with those two white players?
Catchings: I think for them, being in the locker room, and hearing stories, and hearing us talking about how deeply we were affected by seeing people getting shot for no reason by the police, and beaten and brutalized by the police—it drew them into a deeper understanding. One of them just recently married an African American man, so for her it was like knowing what her husband has to go through, and gaining a better understanding of what everyday life is for him. And the other one, literally the conversation in the locker room opened her eyes to something she has never firsthand been exposed to. When you are drawn into a conversation and you don’t really have much say because you can’t speak from experience, but you also . . . know the difference between right and wrong, and you can visibly see your teammates hurting and literally in tears, you can’t help but be drawn into what they are hurting about.
Etan: What did it mean to have the support of your coach?
Catchings: It was awesome . . . When we walked to the huddle before the game, Coach knelt down and said, “I’m really proud of you guys. Not just that you guys are standing up for something you believe in, but that you are doing it together.” And even now when I think about it, I get some chills. You know, I think back to my dad, and I remember as a little girl sitting on my dad’s lap, and he has this big scar on his leg, and I remember asking him, “What happened?” He proceeded to talk about being a part of Martin Luther King’s marches, and he was a young kid with his dad taking him to the march, and . . . in all the chaos, they were running away and something happened and the police were arresting people, and my dad fell, and he has like a gash on the side of his leg where something was sticking out from a car and it punctured his leg . . . Now fast-forward forty years, and it
’s your daughter fighting for the same things that he was fighting for with his dad, so it’s kind of putting things into perspective.
Etan: What was his conversation like with you after? I’m sure he had to be beaming with pride.
Catchings: Definitely . . . I remember him telling me how people were upset with them for protesting for their rights, and after we made our stance, I remember getting a call from the GM, and she was like, “The fans were terribly disappointed and we have had a couple of sponsors drop out because they don’t want to support us.” Then someone tweeted out my address, and was saying that they were going to form a massive protest in front of my house.
So, for a while, I had cops sitting in front of my house, posted twenty-four hours a day, and it just made me realize that there had to be some type of change in our world. For people to be so upset at us kneeling during the national anthem, and to be accused of being anti-American . . . Now, I’ve been an Olympian. I’ve represented my country, and me kneeling has nothing to do with the flag. I respect our military forces, our firefighters, our policemen, all the people who have fought for our country. But there are still some issues that need to be dealt with. We did a silent, peaceful protest. Which is what our military fought for us to have the right to be able to do . . . I’m not going to be deterred by them . . .