Drive-By Body Pierce

@Cramarossa

What I really loved with sports players reacting to racism was both teams' entire rosters intermingled with each other, on both sides of the ice (or field) for the anthems.

To me, that had far more of an emotional impact than teams or players looking like they just want to say, "I'm taking my ball (or puck) and going home."

this ain't it

Although all those issues you mentioned are important conversations to have, now is the time for racial equality. By eliminating the systemic racism that has existed in North American culture since it’s inception it will be  the first step in combating all the issues you’ve mentioned.  
 

Poverty disproportionately affects black people and people of colour. As does all the crimes that prey on the financially vulnerable. 
 

Police in America for example evolved from slave patrols, the war on drugs targeted black communities with absurd sentences with laws like three strikes and mandatory life sentence. Or felony possession led to the inability to vote. So when we take a hard look at the system, emancipation never happened, slavery evolved.

Black lives matter has to be the starting point for all the social change that is meaningful. 
 

When an unarmed black man can be executed in the street while a machine gun toting white murderer is allowed to walk past police there can be no progress towards positive social change on any issue. 
 

Now is the time for action and maybe cancelled games won’t amount to much of anything but professional athletes play sports not make laws, so they are taking the action they can. I for one support them and feel they have a valuable platform in which to make a difference. On top of that I am sure it’s not lost on the NBA players that they make billions of dollars each year for rich, mostly white businessmen, who no doubt have connections to those who do make laws. 
 

Unfortunately in this world money is the way to enact change, hit the bottom line of mega corporations and that is how you get them to give a damn.
 

Taking a stand for BLM now is the only path to a future where human rights means anything at all.