Digging out
The ripple effect of athletes speaking out against ICE, and navigating what seems impassable.
She stopped me in the middle of the intersection, both of us walking past each other in opposite directions. She motioned to the side of the street I’d just left and I popped a headphone out to hear her. Is it clear over there? She asked, a little breathless. She was pushing a stroller.
It was the kind of bright blue, sunny January day you have to squint into, gleaming double for all the snow piled up. Conditions that, if you live anywhere with five months of serious winter, you understand are deceptive; the coldest kind of day.
I was wearing a knit hood, with the hood of my puffer coat pulled over it and my coat zipped up to swallow my chin. Sunglasses on. She’d tightened the drawstrings of her own parka’s hood so only the small circle of her eyes, nose and mouth were exposed. I involuntarily grimaced before I answered and her face, what I could see, fell.
It’s a little clearer than the other side, I offered. There’s a single file footpath people have made, I said, picturing as I said it the narrow, slippery trench carved in the sidewalk’s snow. Impossible to push a stroller through.
The pedestrian sign switched from walking man to orange palm, flashing. The idling cars, with their plumes of exhaust clouding thick in the cold, inched forward, drivers impatient in their morning commutes. I watched a wave of emotions cross the exposed part of the woman’s face: frustration, anger, despair, a tinge of amusement at how ludicrous.
We parted with waves that were shrug-exasperation hybrids, made it to the corners we’d both just come from. I tightrope walked down a deep trench in the snow, one hand out for balance skimming the bank piled between me and the road. This side did seem worse but then, when it’s all bad, what’s navigable shifts to increments.
The reactions came like a rippling out, one after another. A loosening.
Breanna Stewart, Tyrese Haliburton, Victor Wembanyama, Guerschon Yabusele, Cam Johnson, Karl-Anthony Towns, Larry Nance Jr., J.R. Smith, Isaiah Thomas, Donovan Mitchell, the NBPA, Chet Holmgren, the Wolves wearing ‘Stand With Minnesota’ shirts during their warmup the other night — when I started to keep track of which athletes had spoken out against ICE killing Alex Pretti, and ICE’s ongoing occupation of Minneapolis, it was just a few names. Now I’m sure I’m missing people.
What stood out was seeing in real time the grip of fear and uncertainty stop being so white-knuckled, so absolute. And of course — power comes from articulation. From hearing and reading familiar voices describe feelings like fear, anger, pain, a specific choking quality of sadness. Common feelings, relatable whether you recognise the voice naming them or not, but the precision of separating them — difficult. At least at first.
