The Soul of Sports After Paris & Beirut

Edge of Sports

Dave Zirin / The Nation

News, Sports News, Sports, History, Politics

4.8 • 616 Ratings

🗓️ 19 November 2015

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“Intellectual and material walls are not the way to progress.” The words of today’s guest, George Atallah from the NFLPA, in response to knee-jerk bigotry against refugees after attacks in Paris and Beirut. Atallah’s own family fled Lebanon’s civil war for the United States decades ago and he denounces passionately, as Aaron Rogers did on Sunday, the prejudicial ideologies which lead to hardened hearts and wrongheaded policies on all sides. Then our host, Dave Zirin, expounds on the conscientious sentiment so aptly expressed by French Forward for the Utah Jazz, Rudy Gobert, when he tweeted: “Ne Vous Laissez Pas Manipuler,” or as Dave translates, #staywoke. Finally, the ‘Just Stand Up’ award goes to the Northwestern women’s basketball team, who modified their warmup shirts to read: “We stand with Mizzou,” also issuing a strong statement of solidarity. Special thanks for all the music in this piece to Ibrahim Maalouf, the renowned Beirut-born, Paris-based jazz trumpeter, composer and educator. All songs used with permission of the artist. Ibrahim Maalouf twitter: https://twitter.com/ibrahim_maaloufIbrahim Maalouf website: http://www.ibrahimmaalouf.com/Ibrahim Maalouf songs: “Paris,” “True Sorry,” “InPressi,” & “Beirut” ft. guitar solo by Nenad Gajin. George Atallah on twitter: https://twitter.com/georgeatallah ‘The Nation’ column: http://www.thenation.com/article/ne-vous-laissez-pas-manipuler-aka-staywoke/ If you like the program, please subscribe, tell a friend, tweet us https://twitter.com/edgeofsports, or email [email protected] Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Transcript

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0:00.0	I must admit that I was very disappointed with whoever the fan was who made a comment that I thought was really inappropriate during the moment of silence.
0:09.0	It's that kind of prejudicial ideology that I think puts us in the position that we're in today as a world.
0:19.0	That was Green Bay Packers' all-world quarterback Aaron Rogers, speaking out against anti-Muslim
0:25.8	bigotry. Shouted out at Lambo Field in Green Bay. Welcome to Edge of Sports, the podcast.
0:31.6	I'm Dave Ziron. This week we are thinking about, we are talking about, and we are discussing
0:36.5	the ISIS massacre in Paris and trying to understand its implications through the world of sports.
0:43.4	To help us do that, we have my friend George Atala, the communications director from the NFL Players Association.
0:49.5	We are also going to have a comment by me on the need to stay woke in the wake of these horrific attacks.
0:56.0	And we have the Just Stand Up Award and worthier candidates we could not have.
1:01.0	But first, a quick word about the killings themselves. It was no coincidence that one of the targets was the French national stadium where France and Germany were playing in front of 65,000 people.
1:23.6	The goal of ISIS, which frankly is a shared goal of many people on the right
1:29.0	wing in this country, is to eliminate what ISIS calls the gray zone. That space where young
1:34.8	Muslims, young Christians, young Jews and young atheists come together. They want a holy war,
1:41.3	a clash of civilizations. And again, this objective is shared by the governors in this country in practice by denying
1:48.7	Syrian refugees safe harbor, including my own governor, Larry Hogan, in Maryland.
1:53.9	Now, the French national team for over two decades has been a symbol of this kind of
1:59.3	shared space, a symbol of this kind of gray area,
2:02.6	a place where black, brown, and white could come together to play, and France as well could come together to cheer.
2:08.6	It was the place where Zinidine Zadhan, the French star of Algerian descent,
2:13.6	scored two goals with his head in a stadium built in the poor Paris suburbs by his own immigrant
2:19.6	father to win the World Cup for France in 1998. Now the actions by security guards at the French
2:26.1	National Stadium and some of those security guards were of Muslim descent to repel the bomber
	...

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