Athletes who speak up for justice and liberation

Jelani Cobb reflects sensibly in the New Yorker on Nike's advertising decision to highlight Colin Kaepernick. He gives the monster athletic goods company credit for taking a (calculated) risk:

Nike gambled that a greater portion of the world understands where Kaepernick is coming from.

The communities that drive our understanding that Black Lives Matter will determine whether that gamble is a good one. I bet yes.

Cobb's article reminds us that Nike's original "Just Do It" campaign which launched in 1988 highlighted

... Walt Stack, an eighty-year-old man, ebulliently trotting across the Golden Gate Bridge as part of his daily seventeen-mile run. “People ask me how I keep my teeth from chattering in the wintertime,” Stack says. “I leave them in my locker.”

Cobb's article neglects that Walt Stack and Kap are figures who have something deep in common. These are two exceptional athletes. But also, they are both exemplary justice heroes.

Walt Stack worked as a construction worker, a hod carrier who lifted bricks all his working life, a loyal union activist, and a convinced socialist who stood against big employers who exploited their workers. He was an evangelist for amateur running, especially for women who, back in the day, weren't expected to go out and "just do it." In their own ways and times, both these fighters were about breaking the rules to construct a new and better world. Let's honor Kap as a hero for our times; Walt Stack too is worthy of our respect.