DAVE ZIRIN - Sportswriter, Author & Activist
by SleptOn.com
January 07, 2008
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Dave Zirin is a Maryland resident and activist in the Washington, DC metropolitan area. Dave is also a sportswriter and author having published What's My Name, Fool: Sports and Resistance in the United States and most recently, the Muhammad Ali Handbook among other titles.

Dave has been called "an icon in the world of progressive sports" and Robert Lipsyte says he is "the best young sportswriter in the United States." He is a columnist for SLAM Magazine, a regular contributor to the Nation Magazine, and a regular op-ed writer for the Los Angeles Times. Dave's work can also be found published in other independent media outlets such as our SleptOn.com, ZNet, Counterpunch and Dissident Voice. He also has an online column on Sports Illustrated’s website, SI.com.

Dave has brought his blend of sports and politics to several 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 as well as Democracy Now with Amy Goodman.

He has a sports column which can be found at EdgeOfSports.com. Also, keep an eye out for the forthcoming and highly anticipated "A People's History of Sports in the United States," part of Howard Zinn's People's History series for the New Press.

We at SleptOn Mag sat down with Dave Zirin in October of 2007 to discuss his politics, his activism and, of course, sports.


SleptOn.com: What's up Dave ... let's jump right in. What is "Jocks for Justice"?

Dave Zirin: Jocks for Justice is a loose association of athletes and obviously it’s highlighted and frontloaded by professional athletes, people you’ve heard of like Etan Thomas of the Wizards, and Scott Fujita of the New Orleans Saints, but it’s really meant to be something that anybody who’s an athlete who plays for any kind of team can bring this idea of athletes trying to unite and speak about issues that they care about. Right now it's just about me trying to organize people around specific issues so we’ve done some signature add campaigns around the Jena6 about overturning those absolutely insane criminal sentences that were put down on the 6 young men in Louisiana, but we’ve also done it around Gary Tyler who’s spending his life in prison for a crime he didn’t commit as well. Wow Louisiana keeps coming up … but we also did a "Jocks for Justice" campaign around the case of Kenneth Foster -a man who was literally hours from execution in Texas for the crime of driving a car, I mean just a ridiculous case. He was driving the “getaway car”… the person in the car committed murder in Texas, you die for that… so we actually were able to get Kenneth Foster’s execution stayed which was an amazing victory and everyone who was involved in that felt a real sense of confidence. So that’s what Jocks for Justice is, it’s just a very modest step to get athletes to try to organize together and one of the inspirations for doing it honestly was a discussion I had with William Rhoden who writes for the NY Times, one of the few high profile African American sports columnists in the country. What Rhoden said was that one of the things about athletes is that if they take a stand, they always have to do it as individuals. They have to go out there and stand alone, because the unions are set up to make more money for the players and not to take political positions. For someone like Bill Rhoden, who’s with the national assoc. of black journalists, if they want to take a stand then they can vote on it and it can be a statement by the NABJ … but for athletes they don’t really have that … an assoc. that they can stand with that would have their back. Even though they play these amazing team sports, they’re forced to go out there solo with their pants down and risk everything - their profile, reputation, commercial interests for taking a stand and it doesn’t seem right. We wanna to try to get people together to do that.


SleptOn.com: How many books have you written so far?

Dave: I’ve written 4 books, three books that are about the intersection of sports and politics. “What’s My Name Fool”, “Welcome to the Terrordome” and “The Muhammad Ali Handbook” … and I wrote a children’s book called “My name is Erica Montoya De La Cruz”. I’ve got a book coming out Spring ’08 called a people’s history of sports in the United States and I just started doing a regular column on Sports Illustrated.com in addition to writing a regular thing on the Nation’s website and being a columnist for Slam Magazine


SleptOn.com: Name some of your heroes?

Dave: You mean other than the people who run SleptOn.com?


SleptOn.com: Dave you’re too kind ... Yes, other than the people who run SleptOn.com

Dave: Honestly fellas, my heroes are anybody who allows themselves to be political in this horribly apolitical society that we live in. I think we’re raised thinking that politics is just what people with the bad hair cuts do on Capitol Hill. But actually politics are the food we eat, the health care we have or don’t have, the air we breathe and the sports we play. Politics infuses all of these things and the people who don’t let those parts of their lives to be separate, the people who allow politics to run freely and without alienation through their daily lives ... I mean that’s who my heroes are, because that’s a very hard thing to do in this country.


SleptOn.com: Apart from sportswriter and an author, husband and father you’re involved in a lot of activist work ...

Dave: As a sportswriter ... the whole thing is not keeping any of this stuff separate. As a sportswriter, I’m an activist and as an activist, I’m a sportswriter. It all runs together for me. I was invited to speak out at the Oakland Juvenile Hall. It absolutely blew my mind. I’ve spoken in front of college audiences and high schools yet these were the most focused and interested and interesting kids I’ve ever spoken in front of in my life. I think they were ages 15 to 17 and they were just showing incredible attention to the detail of what I was talking about - the intersection of politics and sports …incredible ideas about sports, the role it plays in society and some of the recent high profile examination of particularly African American athletes like Michael Vick, Marion Jones, and Barry Bonds.

They had some really incisive things to say about this stuff that I’ve been trying to get through my head because these kids come from very poor backgrounds; they have not had 1/100th of the education of some of the college audiences. So how is it that they were so smart, so focused, so brilliant? I’ve been trying to figure this out for a while and I think that the answer is really two things.

1) This is something that they live. When you talk about issues of injustice, racism, of feeling like you’re on the front lines of a brutal system …that’s people in the youth prisons … that’s what they live. So they were able to speak about their experiences and articulate them in a way that was amazingly powerful.

2) The other reason is that they’re just caught up in there without an Xbox, living in a cell. It’s a brutal isolating, alienating existence, so when you have somebody … anybody come in and show them a little attention and a little care, it’s like their focus went through the roof because they had something to focus on.


SleptOn.com: Any insight about media, the importance of alternative media?

Dave: History has proven that you need a media to keep politicians in check and you need an alternative media to keep the media in check. This is indisputable, I think and if the Iraq War hasn’t proven that, then it hasn’t proven anything. Far too often when you look at any injustice, it goes unnoticed unless it gets picked up and people get to hear about it. This is a huge country geographically, very diverse multiculturally, there’s 300 million people in it. Most people’s lives consists of working, getting by and trying to take care of their families and keep their heads up. It’s very rare that you even get to hear about something like 6 black men in Jena Louisiana who find themselves in the thresher of the system. So alternative media was absolutely critical in getting that story out. Alternative media pushed the mainstream media to speak about that story. It’s critical because we need a media that’s ours because there is no guarantee that the mainstream will report the injustice that’s right outside our door. It’s very good at reporting on things that don’t directly impact our lives but when it comes to the very direct things like healthcare and education and injustice in the criminal justice system, the mainstream media is very lacking and oftentimes they take their cue from the alternative media, if it can prove that there’s an audience out there that’s hungry for this kind of news.


SleptOn.com: So far you’ve spoken about sports, your writing, your activism and politics and how those things intercede. Did you ever play sports growing up?

Dave: Yeah, I played baseball and basketball in high school. I was the starting center for my ball team. We really sucked ... I’m 5’10 ... we actually didn’t suck that bad. I shouldn’t say that, but I played kind of a unique roll because I was asked to just go under the boards and box people out. Some guys were as tall as 6’8 so I did my best. Either that or be a backup shooting guard, so I chose to actually get some run on the court … so no regrets. Absolutely, growing up from Nerf football to relay races to dodgeball to kickball, basketball and baseball ... you couldn’t stop me. I loved playing sports growing up.


SleptOn.com: Dave, we play a lot of pick up basketball on weekends, our sports are sort of connected to our politics also. Our politics are immersed in our athletic competition as well on weekends. We’ve been inviting you out to play ball with us for the past 3 years… and we’re wondering when you’re gonna show up on the court?

Dave: No, no, no... I play a regular game up here in Silver Spring with a bunch of guys who can’t always get up and down the court. That’s just frankly more my speed these days.


SleptOn.com: Good Answer... Which two teams will be in the Superbowl this year Dave?

Dave: I’m a fan of the NFL. I know the NFL has all kind s of political problems. I think it’s the league that’s most closely tied with issues of nationalism and militarism, but I also think it’s by far the most fun sport to watch and I do not believe that football is inherently nationalistic or militaristic. So I’m a huge fan and I’m following this year close like everyone else.

You’re asking me this question after Week 6 of the season and, at this point, it would be crazy to think of anything other than a Patriots/ Dallas Superbowl … with maybe Indy able to beat the Patriots, but that’s hard to say. At the start of the year, just being very honest, I picked the Chargers versus the Saints. Now as of right now, the Chargers have finally shown themselves to be a little frisky so hopefully by the time this publishes I’ll look very smart for sticking with the Chargers. And the Saints aren’t doing very well at all, but hopefully by the time this plays the Saints will have righted their ship a little bit. I'm also a Ravens Fan.

I can’t root for the Redskins 'cause I’ve got some standards and rooting for a team with a racial epithet as their mascot is kind of where I draw the line.


SleptOn.com: What do you mean by that? Please elaborate?

Dave: The name "Redskins" was the creation of their former owner, George Preston Marshall, a segregationist. He called them the Redskins as a way to consciously market the team to the American South, because when they came to DC they were the southern most team in the U.S. There was no Miami Dolphins or Tampa Bay Buccaneers. … They were the Boston Braves, but he changed them to the Washington Redskins and it was a very clear and obvious way to try to appeal to minstrelsy and the idea of mocking a defeated people to a Southern audience that would love to be part of the fun... So, frankly, knowing that history makes it very hard for me to root for that team.

The argument for keeping the name “Redskins” has always been about tradition or whatever so I really like Tony Kornheiser’s suggestion that the best thing to do would be to keep the name Redskins, but stick a big potato on their helmet.


SleptOn.com: What kind of music do you listen to?

Dave: I‘m listening to a lot of local DC hip hop ... particularly two MC’s - one is named Head Roc and the other is named Son of Nun. I’m also listening to more local hip hop called the Blue Scholars. They’re blowing my mind. I grew up in NY listening to a lot of rap music but I’m pretty disinterested with what passes for mainstream hip hop today. It’s just not a lot out there that I feel very hooked into. So finding local groups that are trying to do their own thing and play with the form. That’s kind of where my head is now.


SleptOn.com: Yeah Head Roc and S.O.N. are great, we see them every now and then and they always rip it when they take the mic.

Dave: Head Roc is the mayor of D.C. hip hop.


SleptOn.com: Name one athlete that you could meet. Live or Deceased ... who what that be?

Dave: I’ve spoken very briefly with Barry Bonds before, but I would love to sit down with Barry and just have a completely honest conversation. I don’t know how you would make that happen, like I mean he would have to be in the right mood of course, or he might just decide to overturn a table or something. But not about steroids or any of that ... I think that’s boring but my impression of Bonds is that he’s a person with like an incredibly deep reservoir of intelligence, that doesn’t equal wisdom, nor does it equal character, but it does mean that you have a lot to say and a lot of opinions ... I would love to have a balls out honest discussion with Barry Bonds about the world of baseball, about people in baseball, world of politics, people in politics ... just his honest views about the world. I think it would horrify people if they actually knew what’s going on in his head. It would be like Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer” it would just offend a population but it would be fascinating.


SleptOn.com: Name one athlete or sports related person that you’d like to slap the hell out of?

Dave: I’m not trying to slap anybody, man ... haha


SleptOn.com: Ok, don’t slap him, but just someone that doesn’t sit right with you, pisses you off?

Dave: That would probably be Former MLB commissioner Mountain Landis. Once he was the judge who oversaw the expulsion of people like Emma Goldman, Big Bill Haywood from the United States after the anti-red raids in the late teens, early 20’s. Also for his actions regarding the Chicago Black Sox and for him enforcing the color line in MLB until 1947 when the next commissioner approved the signing of Jackie Robinson. I’d love to give a good tongue lashing to Judge Landis.

You can reach Dave Zirin on Myspace HERE.



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