Happy Birthday, Kyrie Irving!
Thank you for being the radical voice that the NBA needs.
Dear Kyrie, I know you are currently missing games for the Brooklyn Nets due to a family matter. The last time you missed games for personal reasons in January you were allegedly at a family birthday party. Your sister Asia’s birthday is January 12. However I don’t want to scrutinize your activities. You are awesome to me. Sequently you’ve said “the Earth is flat,” “fuck Thanksgiving,” and “I’m not with the systematic racism and the bullshit.” The more you speak the more I agree with you. The Earth is round but the earth is flat. Thanksgiving represents the slaughter of Native Americans by colonial settlers. Systematic racism led to the murder of George Floyd and the disproportionate deaths of Black Americans to COVID-19 last summer.
“I’m willing to give up everything I have for social reform,” you said in June 2020. That statement highlights the “About” section of my Medium page. We have commonalities. We are Black men who love basketball and social reform. The only major difference between us is that you’ve deep into the basketball world while I’m shallow in the world of politics. Our experience levels are reflected in our pay. We are both working-class but your salary is much higher than my $10 dollars an hour. Thanks for committing $1.5 million to your WNBA sisters. A high salary affords you to be outspoken and occasionally miss work.
My wage does not yet reflect my gift. My gift is my selection of revolutionary Black politics over sellout Black politics. Perhaps you’ve seen or heard of the recent film Judas and the Black Messiah. “We don’t fight capitalism with Black capitalism,” said Black Panther Fred Hampton, “we fight capitalism with socialism.” Revolutionaries of the civil rights era like Hampton and Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were socialists.
Mark P. Fancher of the leftist, socialist Black Agenda Report compares Jesus to Black messiahs like Hampton and King. They all “instructed [their] followers to arm themselves for self-defense and to address the community’s survival needs by providing health care, free meals, therapeutic counseling, and of course spiritual guidance.” Their movements emphasized sharing and brought material changes to the Black community. They were destroyed by the state and its informants. The Roman government and the FBI. False prophet Judas and fake Panther William O’Neill.
Does this narrative sound familiar to you, Kyrie? Last year the Black Lives Matter movement combined with the white community for the largest protest in U.S. history. You were among players who were reluctant to play in the Orlando bubble in June and again in August. Then capitalist informant Barack Obama told Chris Paul and LeBron James to keep playing, to vote and to preserve NBA dollars. But few arenas actually became polling places. Paul secured HBCU dollars but the Biden administration and the Democratic party haven’t passed a $15 minimum wage that would lift 50% of Black Americans out of poverty. They haven’t relieved student debt which would especially help Black women. And they haven’t passed Medicare for All which would support Black health through the pandemic. They do these things to protect corporate money. Corporations and the billionaire class have capitalized 1.1 trillion while the Black masses get nothing. As MLK said we need a mass redistribution of wealth.
Symbolic changes like a Black President Obama or a new Kobe NBA logo aren’t enough. It’s time for systemic change Kyrie. The NBA has huge sway because people venerate Black athletes. It amazes me that white fans fill NBA arenas nightly but then vote for racism against the will of every other group. Some people will become player allies but history shows that it’s best if you boycott on your own for concrete results. MLK’s house was bombed for the Montgomery Bus Boycott. You were ridiculed for attending a Zoom call launch party for Tahanie Aboushi a Democratic candidate for Manhattan district attorney. It is not popular to be Black in America. However as an NBA player you know how to ignore ridicule and win games.
With your Twitter platform and the media platforms of other NBA players you can demand a $15 minimum wage, relief of all student debt and Medicare for All from the White House. Obama knows what’s up; he destroyed the Bernie Sanders campaign that planned to implement these pro-Black policies. There’s no need to warn or else. You’d force the White House with your skilled Black hands alone.
As long as my gameplan works I’m happy. For now enjoy your birthday and your mental health break.
Peace,
Brandon
