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Message to the NBA: Slaves Make Your Sneakers
The sneakers you wear and promote are made by Asian women virtually chained to their sewing machines for a day’s wage that couldn’t cover the cost of a small popcorn at The Wells Fargo Arena.
How much is Nike paying (you) again? Is this money they could be paying the people who actually make the product? Because they are underpaid. Like, really. Like less than Mc Donald’s. And much much harder work. Much harder. In very bad conditions with no rights. So here you are a privileged American, making millions off their labor.
So what’s your economic theory on this? Is it capitalism? Because I can understand that. Theoretically, the woman at the sewing machine is doing the best she can under her direct circumstances, and if not for the sewing operator job for a contractor for Nike, she would have to work in the rice patties and deal with foot fungus for even less money. But youse guys sound like you are advocating for a much less ‘capitalistic’ system for us in America, and promoting a draconian slave labor system from which you profit spectacularly in distant lands.
You’re the star, you endorse and promote, and people buy, and these other people just make. With every three-pointer you sink, another poor woman in the Philippines or Malaysia has to make 100 more seams.
Sounds like slavery to me.
Oh, but the difference is they aren’t bought and sold, one can say is the one remaining distinction.
Except it’s now even worse.
These people (actually soon-to-be all of us) are so disposable they aren’t worth buying or selling. They (we) are replaceable. An abundant commodity.
Or just…. please…make the distinction about the nuances of slavery for us? What’s the difference? I understand these are challenging concepts. Maybe your expertise lies in another domain.
Then maybe just play and be a player, be respected and loved by fans, and not get involved with things beyond your expertise?
My question for these spoiled millionaires:
Do Asian Sweatshop Lives Matter?
Published in General
Saw this on Outkick’s website this afternoon, where I have to give props to ESPN for running an exposé on the abuses at the NBA’s Chinese basketball academies — given how much parent company Disney has been courting the Xi regime, it’s really a shock this made it online (assuming Bob Iger et al weren’t sandbagged, in which case a lot of people at ESPN are in trouble right now). The story even mentions the Hong Kong protests and the NBA’s awful reaction to Daryl Morey’s tweet right at the outset.
This is probably the first time in years ESPN has slammed the NBA for its actions in anything close to the way they’ve gone after the NFL, MLB, college football, or other sports, since the league and the network have their multi-billion dollar deal ex-ESPN boss John Skipper signed, that had the network going all in to shill for the NBA as the sport that would overtake football in the 2020s as America’s No. 1 spectator sport.
You probably have to go back to the Pistons-Pacers brawl in the stands 16 years ago, and the discussions of a ‘thug’ mentality in the NBA (back when that word wasn’t on the no-go list) to find the last time the league’s gotten nailed like this by a broadcast partner. The full ESPN story is here. For a network that’s been going full-on woke the past couple of months, it’s a major change in direction.
Addendum
As long as the slavery happens elsewhere and not an example of white American‘s exploiting or oppressing black people, it uninteresting to them.
It’s like pollution. The regulations here and the EU encouraged companies to offshore manufacturing to places with different laws and different standards. It turns out to be cheaper to ship goods across the Pacific and back, so all the dumping and pollution can happen elsewhere, and then continue to maintain this is a global issue.
There is actual slavery going on today. So why the focus on the results of slavery from last century while ignoring modern slavery, or slave-adjacent.
, slavery is a spectrum. But I define it as this : if other entities are taking more than 49% of my earnings in taxes, fees and other municipal revenue requirements, they make more money offa me than I do.
And it’s quite close to that level as we speak.
This is not acceptable, and I stand with MLB BLM WNBA NFL NAACP NHL WHO UN CDC FCC FBI CIA AARP DNC RNC FEC LBTQ MAGA SNAFU people!
Thanks for the insightful article.
The Left is all about the compassion “that we feel in our bones” as long as it doesn’t actually affect anyone’s actual lifestyle. On the Right, we realize what it would take to have the ideals come about. Then we either decide to make a way to have some of our ideals come true, or else we drop the trappings of continuously pointing to how much we belong among the virtuous saints on earth.
So many of these big time sports “heroes” are arrested for various felonies including domestic abuse of their girlfriends or spouses, that it ironic to think the public should look to them for their moral take on things.
Jay Leno and Dave Letterman both used to keep a running tally of how many of the NFL were felonies by the end of their first year or two of being in that league. It doesn’t seem that basketball players are quite as bad, but still, they do need to realize how silly it is to consider themselves paragons of virtue.
Man, that makes sense. Even so, some NBA players (most notably Lebron James) have called working for a team owner “slavery”.
Yeah, right. Slavery at a gazillion dollars per year which you can walk away from any time . . .
Great Post.
When will America wake up to the fact that not only does the NBA feed off slavery, but so do at least 83 other multi-national corporations like Google, Apple, Microsoft, Walmart, Nike, and many. many more.
President Trump has a very big stick he can use: his Executive Order 13818 which allows him to go after any Company doing business in the US that abuses Human Rights in foreign countries. President Trump should:
A. Use his Human Rights Executive Order to freeze the assets of all the executives of those companies benefit from Chinese Slavery.
B. Demand that all those companies that have benefited from Chinese Labor bring back all their worldwide foreign manufacturing back to the US within the next six months or all their assets will be frozen.
They don’t care. All those men have demonstrated they have a price.