The FIFA arrests mark a very high-profile, very popular, and very easy win for the U.S. Justice Department under the leadership of a new Attorney General, Loretta Lynch
Dave Zirin
Dave Zirin, Press Action's 2005 and 2006 Sportswriter of the Year, has been called "an icon in the world of progressive sports." Robert Lipsyte says he is "the best young sportswriter in the United States." He is both a columnist for SLAM Magazine, a regular contributor to the Nation Magazine, and a semi-regular op-ed writer for the Los Angeles Times.
Zirin's latest book is Welcome to the Terrordome:The Pain, Politics, and Promise of Sports(Haymarket Books). With a foreward by rapper Chuck D, the book is an engaging and provocative look at the world of sports like no other.
Zirin's other books include The Muhammad Ali Handbook, a dynamic, engaging and informative look at one of the most iconic figures of our age and What’s My Name, Fool? Sports & Resistance in the United States (Haymarket Books), a book that is part athletic interview compendium, part history and civil rights primer, and part big-business exposé which surveys the “level” playing fields of sports and brings inequities to the surface to show how these uneven features reflect disturbing trends that define our greater society. He has also authored a children's book called My Name is Erica Montoya de la Cruz (RC Owen).
Zirin is a weekly television commentator [via satellite] for The Score, Canada's number one 24-hour sports network. He has brought his blend of sports and politics to multiple television programs including ESPN's Outside the Lines, ESPN Classic, the BBC's Extratime, CNBC's The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch (debating steroids with Jose Canseco and John Rocker), C-SPAN's BookTV, the WNBC Morning News in New York City; and Democracy Now with Amy Goodman.
He has also been on numerous national radio programs including National Public Radio's Talk of the Nation; Air America and XM Radio's On the Real' with Chuck D and Gia'na Garel; The Laura Flanders Show, Radio Nation with Marc Cooper; ESPN radio; Stars and Stripes Radio; WOL's The Joe Madison Show; Pacifica's Hard Knock Radio, and many others. He is the Thursday morning sports voice on WBAI's award winning "Wake Up Call with Deepa Fernandes."
Zirin is also working on A People's History of Sports, part of Howard Zinn's People's History series for the New Press. In addition he just signed to do a book with Scribner (Simon & Schuster.) He is also working on a sports documentary with Barbara Kopple's Cabin Creek films on sports and social movements in the United States.
Zirin's writing has also appeared in New York Newsday, the Baltimore Sun, CBSNEWS.com, The Pittsburgh Courier, The Source, and numerous other publications.
The tragedy is that there are so many others who should be higher on everyone’s list of those who need to be prodded, need to be provoked… and need to be knocked the hell out
The public funds for the infrastructure that baseball demands simply do not exist, but the land required for diamonds are the crown jewels of urban real estate
We can only work with the world we’re given, and it’s a place where the trust in institutions of power is more deflated that any damn balls
Rest in Power, Mike. You have earned the rest, but we will need your power to move forward in your absence
The year ended with an unprecedented explosion of protest at the highest levels of US sports
Given the explicit calls for vengeance by the NYPD and the rush by the media to place the blame for the shooting on people protesting violence, athletes could use their stature to assert that this movement is just
Activist athletes have the power to reach people who are completely alienated from politics
Each of these actions has the effect of amplifying the impact of a new struggle for human dignity in the face of racism