The power of speaking up and speaking out
Another View
Sports documentaries on television these days have become a regular fixture. Watching them on a streaming service is often a treat because you can watch them in their entirety, or stop and start it to fit your viewing schedule.
“Power of the Dream,” now on Amazon’s Prime Video, is a perfect tutorial for those of you who thought the WNBA is only about basketball. Dawn Porter directed the film in which she, current W player Nneka Ogwumike, actress Tracee Ellis Ross, and retired player Sue Bird also are producers.
It uniquely documents perhaps for the first time how an entire league toppled a team owner and helped elect Georgia’s first Black U.S. Senator that “forever changed the landscape of their sport and the course of U.S. politics,” noted a press release from TOGETHXR, a media and commerce company that greenlighted the film.
The film isn’t your typical hoops piece but instead a candid look at America’s majority-Black women’s pro league that takes seriously their place in a society that too often devalued their athleticism and their skin color.
WNBA social activism didn’t start in the “Wubble” during the summer of 2020 in the throes of the pandemic and upheaval due to police killings and other violence. Then-Atlanta Dream co-owner and Republican U.S. Senator Kelly Loeffler spoke out publicly against the players’ support of Black Lives Matter and wearing T-shirts supporting anti-police shootings when she was also in a primary election fight against many candidates, including Rev. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat.
What happened that summer four years ago was a watershed moment in the WNBA’s long history of speaking up and speaking out when other pro leagues often stayed mute. Remember when local police officers walked off their off-duty security jobs after the Minnesota Lynx wore T-shirts protesting recent police killings of Blacks in 2016?
“The Lynx have paved the way in terms of our activism and our social justice work, whether it was fighting for marriage equality, whether it was what happens with the [police] shootings,” recalled Carley Knox, Minnesota Lynx president of business operations. “We’re the first team to wear Black Lives Matter shirts and have the press conference talking about how we need to do better as a community, as society, and have some uncomfortable conversations.
“I’ve been in the WNBA for 20 years,” added Knox. “It’s so much bigger than basketball.”
Porter, a Black filmmaker, also pointed out how unified the 144 WNBA players were despite major concerns of backlash from the public and league officials.
“I think that was a major point of it, just seeing the unity of the WNBA come together for a cause like that,” noted Washington’s Myisha Hines-Allen. She and Ariel Atkins were in the Wubble that 2020 summer and also wore Vote Warnock shirts.
“We weren’t just playing basketball,” added Atkins. “A lot of people don’t understand the power of the vote, in the power of the voice. And I think that was something that we’re able to show. If there’s anything that people can get from [watching the documentary] it is that the power of your voice is so powerful.”
Especially in this election year, all of us can use a reminder on how important elections are, how important our voice is. “Power of the Dream” serves just that.
“The voice is powerful,” concluded Atkins. “Do your own research and be your own advocate when it comes to the polls.”