The Sacramento Kings developed a new pledge that will commit to combating social and racial injustice, the organization announced Tuesday.
The pledge commenced with the Minnesota Timberwolves and Lynx announcing a partnership with the Milwaukee Bucks and Sacramento to host the third Team Up for Change summit. Sacramento and Milwaukee started the initiative in February of 2019 after the tragic death of Stephon Clark and when Milwaukee police tased and arrested player Sterling Brown over a parking violation in 2018.
Members of the Kings, Wolves, Lynx and Sacramento Area Youth Speaks came together to create a public service announcement spanning two minutes and featured prominent members of all organizations.
https://twitter.com/SacramentoKings/status/1270415363499593732?s=20
Being Black in America can’t be a death sentence, Sacramento head coach Luke Walton said in the PSA.
The PSA also featured members of the Kings such as General Manager Vlade Divac, Assistant Coach Jesse Murmuys, De’Aaron Fox, Bogdan Bogdanovic, Marvin Bagley and more.
The pledge outlines several other actions the team will be taking immediately such as:
- Investing in effective violence prevention, intervention and interruption strategies to benefit local Black youth by donating $75,000 to collaborate on a series of youth and young adult-led Kings and Queens Rise workshops, launch a virtual summer Kings and Queens Rise Co-ed Youth NBA2K League in partnership with Build.Black., and support the Black Child Legacy Campaign Youth Violence Prevention Program.
- Fostering economic equity in Sacramento by committing to highlight and partner with small and large regional Black-owned businesses.
- Promoting civic engagement by hosting voter registration workshops, providing employees a paid day off for election days and continuing to lead and relaunch Rally the Vote, a coalition of professional sports teams encouraging voter registration.
This announcement comes just days after many players and staff attended Sacramento’s peaceful Black Lives Matter protest on Saturday.
I don’t know how much difference those programs will make, but it’s better than nothing. Are the Kings still paying their arena workers? That might be a bigger deal to helping the community.
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I think a big part of the point is to keep the ball rolling and keep the awareness level high. People are energized right now to work towards solving (or at least putting a dent in) this issue.
Kudos to the Kings for doing the right thing again.
If I posed it as an either/or that wasn’t my intention. Both would be great. I’m just asking the question of whether the Kings are skipping on the bigger commitment and fulfilling a smaller one.
Either way the organization’s ears and wallet are currently open and that’s great. I praised the team for getting involved the protests in the other thread.
Those are separate conversations. This is a good thing.
Anecdotal, but in my experience the Kings arena staff features a lot of POC and members of the black community (a great thing!), and I feel that supporting those communities financially by continuing to pay employees might be just as helpful if not more than giving $75k to fund this program. It’s a difficult thing to measure though.
In that way, though, I think it’s part of this same conversation.
I’m a little confused about the inclusion of the young Asian girl for the Sacramento Youth Speaks portion of this BLM(?), or are they just showing random youths?
But IMO, the team is continuing to venture into liberal politics. Being the first team in any league to rally the vote, when isn’t the issue of voting tied to last election etc?
NASCAR went hella liberal today. And the NFL–ay caramba. No one is safe!
If being against racism is against your politics, what does that say about your politics?
So, in the modern political landscape, the get out the vote isn’t used primarily by Democrats, and an indirect rebuke of how Trump was elected (and thus a slap to non liberal fans, if that’s the Kings particular inspiration)?
Thats not what comes to mind when the issue is first brought up?
Whether or not it’s a tangible issue in certain communities is another story, it’s subjective to infer why the Kings are choosing that particular community issue
If more people voting is an affront to your politics, it’s not a good look for your politics. It means that your politics is aided by voter suppression.
If one is genuinely interested in building and maintaining a strong representative democracy they shouldn’t be afraid of and should encourage more people voting whatever their political persuasion. Encouraging people to vote shouldn’t be a political issue.
Encouraging people to vote shouldn’t be a political issue
But it is now, right? And you would consider those doing it to be left wing, right?
So Kings placing themselves again politically (to the alienation of non liberal fans)?
I remember when registering to vote was considered a civic duty. Now you’re telling me that Encouraging people to vote… is a divisive issue. If so, that’s because many non liberal fans have chosen to make it divisive.
If a political group wants to support a really bad idea like voter suppression, I don’t really see disagreeing with that idea as taking a political stand. It’s being sensible and doing the right thing.
Personally, if someone thinks people voting or encouraging others to vote is controversial, I wouldn’t care about alienating them because they clearly do not have the interests of the community or society in mind anyway.
Badge Legend