If I can't dance I don't want your revolution! -- Emma Goldman. In my 54 years organizing since I decided to be an anarchist-feminist revolutionary I have organized more parties, salons, dances, rituals, soccer and ultimate frisbee games than marches, and sit-ins.... and I have organized a lot of marches and sit-ins... hundreds. Communities make revolutions, not political organizations, but the right kind of politics can grow strong communities.
This piece helps me understand why Indivisible feels too organized and does not connect in anyway to joy for me. Its obligatory. I thought it was just my senior citizen status that disconnected me.
Yes, definitely the Knicks win represented the politics of joy in the streets, particularly given the outrageous price of the tickets at MSG. I say that as a Knick fan since the mid 50s, with Dick and Al McGuire, Carl Braun, Harry Gallatin, Ernie Vanderweigh and Sweetwater Clifton, the Harlem Globetrotters graduate who was one of the first blacks in the NBA. I wasn't crazy enough to watch the games live at 3:30 a.m., but every morning looked to see the result, watched the 10 minute highlights, and then the entire rebroadcast of the games. While professional sports is controlled by capitalists, at least in Europe teams are still considered left and right teams. Even though the Roma soccer/football club that I root for is controlled by the American capitalist Friedkin family, they are still considered the left-wing city team, while the rival Lazio was Mussolini's team and has a neo-fascist fan base. It's the usually the fan base and not the owners that determine the political identity of the team. And of course in Israel we have only one soccer team that has refused to have any Arab or Muslim players because of their right-wing racist fan base, Beitar Jerusalem. All the other teams benefit from the 25% of the players in the top leagues who are Palestinian-Israelis, and in some cases like Maccabi Netanya, in a city which votes right, has a team captain Mahmoud Jabar who is Palestinian Israeli. And Maccabi Tel Aviv, whose fans shouted anti-Arab statements in Amsterdam at an international game, has a center forward, Said Abu Farchi, who just joined the national team. The former longtime captain of the national team, Bibars Natcho, who recently retired from active play, is a Circassian Muslim
The analysis between geniune communities and left efforts to take advantage should be a slender book full of case studies. It's real and it never gets called out or criticized because the people doing it are often people we know. But analysis is better than blindly cheering. (Remember 'Joy to the Polls'? Not much left of that today.)
The biggest protest I ever attended was in NY City, as over a million people marched to protest Baby Bush's renomination. But the happiest gathering I was ever at was in Cairo, more than a million people in Tahir Square celebrating the fall of the old regime. They won elections, which sadly the revolutionaries lost because their three candidates had the most votes, but the Moslem Brotherhood and Old Establishment (the current government) came in first and second. But in the time between the two great revolutions that overthrew Mubarak and then overthrew the Moslem Brotherhood you could feel the joy of hope everywhere... in cafes, in classes, in taxies (scariest rides I ever had)... I had felt hints of this joy in East Europe in '89 right before the wall came down... and echoes when I visited Spain after Franco died, and Portugal soon after the Revolution of the Carnations, and in small ways in may protests and parties in my long life. Revolutions are not just possible, they are inevitable. We just have to work so it isn't an elite overthrowing democracy, but rather people coming together to make the promise of democracy come true.
Thank you Micah for such an interesting take on the Knicks championship. One of the great things about the technological wonders of the current time is that I, in Israel, could experience the full drama of the playoffs and the finals, real-time, in glorious HD; watch it together, thanks to Zoom or whatsapp video chat, together with my friends (you know them all) who last enjoyed a Knicks championship when we were all in the 8th grade and John Lindsey was mayor....... and then spend nearly every waking hour since listening and watching and reading the oceanic flood of coverage on endless youtube videos, podcasts, and, yes, even text articles on the web.
(I could even watch today's parade - I was mildly surprised that it wasn't called The Knicks Pride Parade!)
So it was truly a refreshing break from the endless analyses and sport cliches, to read such an original take on the Knicks and their ultimate feel-good, bunch-of-normal-sounding-likeable-college-buddies-underdogs, led by their "Too Small to Fail" captain and their Stoic O.G., beating the cranky French Goliath, coming back again and again, against all odds. All the cliches, all the memes, all the good stuff that makes such a victory magical and perfect. Perfect! (my only regret was not making a tidy bundle betting on them before the series began).
Seriously, though - I really enjoyed your piece very much.
And yes: The politics of joy is something that I think we all yearn for.
I loved this article, but one little quibble.... the owner of the Knicks did not make the victory or even spread it. The athletes and their families and their friends and their fans made it. At least the great wealth from these sports spectacles is shared with some of those who make it happen... thanks to the player's unions in all the major sports now. But getting the exploiters out of the system is going to be a long slog... even in Germany where many football (soccer) teams are publicly owned it is a long way from the kind of sports (and other culture) that is truly democratic.
OMG, Brilliant! I'm beginning to understand why my Brooklyn grandson--graduating Brooklyn Tech today--has been on a high over the Knicks that transformed him into a giddyness and joy about being a New Yorker. His shell of cynicism and despair has cracked and he is so thrilled to be a New Yorker he intends to spend the summer learning all the communities and getting engaged in the city he had been ignoring by just going to school.
Full transparency: I'm not a fan of New York sports teams. Still, your essay captures the complicated intersection of sports, identity, and politics. Any celebration is always qualified by realities like $10,000 tickets and an owner whose wealth and influence is oligarchic. I've wrestled with the same conflict rooting for the White Sox despite disliking the owner, or the Bears when Mike Ditka's politics clashed with mine. Yet I also find myself pulling a little harder for teams with a progressive owner, coach, or player whose values I admire. Sports may not determine our politics, but they inevitably shape how we connect with teams. I still haven't fully reconciled those tensions. You're a thoughtful writer, and I look forward to reading more as you continue exploring these personal and political intersections.
When I read the text attributed to Dakota Hall, I got the sense that it was generated by an AI chatbot (and perhaps edited lightly afterwards). So I ran it through a couple of AI detectors, and both detectors diagnosed it as 95%-100% likely to have been bot generated (and perhaps smoothed a little by a human).
Good piece. The Mamdani campaign also sparked a lot of joyful efforvescence around the city and on Instagram.
Micah, I really like the Lead with Joy idea of shared experiences.
The idea of a series of non- political gatherings that allow the organic growth of shared ideas & trust cld work across many age groups.
Resist
Avance la Lucha
If I can't dance I don't want your revolution! -- Emma Goldman. In my 54 years organizing since I decided to be an anarchist-feminist revolutionary I have organized more parties, salons, dances, rituals, soccer and ultimate frisbee games than marches, and sit-ins.... and I have organized a lot of marches and sit-ins... hundreds. Communities make revolutions, not political organizations, but the right kind of politics can grow strong communities.
This piece helps me understand why Indivisible feels too organized and does not connect in anyway to joy for me. Its obligatory. I thought it was just my senior citizen status that disconnected me.
Yes, definitely the Knicks win represented the politics of joy in the streets, particularly given the outrageous price of the tickets at MSG. I say that as a Knick fan since the mid 50s, with Dick and Al McGuire, Carl Braun, Harry Gallatin, Ernie Vanderweigh and Sweetwater Clifton, the Harlem Globetrotters graduate who was one of the first blacks in the NBA. I wasn't crazy enough to watch the games live at 3:30 a.m., but every morning looked to see the result, watched the 10 minute highlights, and then the entire rebroadcast of the games. While professional sports is controlled by capitalists, at least in Europe teams are still considered left and right teams. Even though the Roma soccer/football club that I root for is controlled by the American capitalist Friedkin family, they are still considered the left-wing city team, while the rival Lazio was Mussolini's team and has a neo-fascist fan base. It's the usually the fan base and not the owners that determine the political identity of the team. And of course in Israel we have only one soccer team that has refused to have any Arab or Muslim players because of their right-wing racist fan base, Beitar Jerusalem. All the other teams benefit from the 25% of the players in the top leagues who are Palestinian-Israelis, and in some cases like Maccabi Netanya, in a city which votes right, has a team captain Mahmoud Jabar who is Palestinian Israeli. And Maccabi Tel Aviv, whose fans shouted anti-Arab statements in Amsterdam at an international game, has a center forward, Said Abu Farchi, who just joined the national team. The former longtime captain of the national team, Bibars Natcho, who recently retired from active play, is a Circassian Muslim
The analysis between geniune communities and left efforts to take advantage should be a slender book full of case studies. It's real and it never gets called out or criticized because the people doing it are often people we know. But analysis is better than blindly cheering. (Remember 'Joy to the Polls'? Not much left of that today.)
If I’m not mistaken, Joy to the Polls was never intended to be an ongoing operation, nor funded for that.
The biggest protest I ever attended was in NY City, as over a million people marched to protest Baby Bush's renomination. But the happiest gathering I was ever at was in Cairo, more than a million people in Tahir Square celebrating the fall of the old regime. They won elections, which sadly the revolutionaries lost because their three candidates had the most votes, but the Moslem Brotherhood and Old Establishment (the current government) came in first and second. But in the time between the two great revolutions that overthrew Mubarak and then overthrew the Moslem Brotherhood you could feel the joy of hope everywhere... in cafes, in classes, in taxies (scariest rides I ever had)... I had felt hints of this joy in East Europe in '89 right before the wall came down... and echoes when I visited Spain after Franco died, and Portugal soon after the Revolution of the Carnations, and in small ways in may protests and parties in my long life. Revolutions are not just possible, they are inevitable. We just have to work so it isn't an elite overthrowing democracy, but rather people coming together to make the promise of democracy come true.
Thank you Micah for such an interesting take on the Knicks championship. One of the great things about the technological wonders of the current time is that I, in Israel, could experience the full drama of the playoffs and the finals, real-time, in glorious HD; watch it together, thanks to Zoom or whatsapp video chat, together with my friends (you know them all) who last enjoyed a Knicks championship when we were all in the 8th grade and John Lindsey was mayor....... and then spend nearly every waking hour since listening and watching and reading the oceanic flood of coverage on endless youtube videos, podcasts, and, yes, even text articles on the web.
(I could even watch today's parade - I was mildly surprised that it wasn't called The Knicks Pride Parade!)
So it was truly a refreshing break from the endless analyses and sport cliches, to read such an original take on the Knicks and their ultimate feel-good, bunch-of-normal-sounding-likeable-college-buddies-underdogs, led by their "Too Small to Fail" captain and their Stoic O.G., beating the cranky French Goliath, coming back again and again, against all odds. All the cliches, all the memes, all the good stuff that makes such a victory magical and perfect. Perfect! (my only regret was not making a tidy bundle betting on them before the series began).
Seriously, though - I really enjoyed your piece very much.
And yes: The politics of joy is something that I think we all yearn for.
I loved this article, but one little quibble.... the owner of the Knicks did not make the victory or even spread it. The athletes and their families and their friends and their fans made it. At least the great wealth from these sports spectacles is shared with some of those who make it happen... thanks to the player's unions in all the major sports now. But getting the exploiters out of the system is going to be a long slog... even in Germany where many football (soccer) teams are publicly owned it is a long way from the kind of sports (and other culture) that is truly democratic.
OMG, Brilliant! I'm beginning to understand why my Brooklyn grandson--graduating Brooklyn Tech today--has been on a high over the Knicks that transformed him into a giddyness and joy about being a New Yorker. His shell of cynicism and despair has cracked and he is so thrilled to be a New Yorker he intends to spend the summer learning all the communities and getting engaged in the city he had been ignoring by just going to school.
Full transparency: I'm not a fan of New York sports teams. Still, your essay captures the complicated intersection of sports, identity, and politics. Any celebration is always qualified by realities like $10,000 tickets and an owner whose wealth and influence is oligarchic. I've wrestled with the same conflict rooting for the White Sox despite disliking the owner, or the Bears when Mike Ditka's politics clashed with mine. Yet I also find myself pulling a little harder for teams with a progressive owner, coach, or player whose values I admire. Sports may not determine our politics, but they inevitably shape how we connect with teams. I still haven't fully reconciled those tensions. You're a thoughtful writer, and I look forward to reading more as you continue exploring these personal and political intersections.
When I read the text attributed to Dakota Hall, I got the sense that it was generated by an AI chatbot (and perhaps edited lightly afterwards). So I ran it through a couple of AI detectors, and both detectors diagnosed it as 95%-100% likely to have been bot generated (and perhaps smoothed a little by a human).