LeBron James and hundreds of NFL players captured the attention of the country this past weekend with tweets of outrage and dignified protests against Donald Trump’s assault on the freedom of speech. There is a more sustained role, though, for athletes and entertainers to play in raising awareness for the political and cultural change that America aches for at this moment.
Through dog whistle rhetoric, executive orders, and support for hate speech, Donald Trump is driving wedges between our communities based upon religion, race, ethnicity, and gender. His administration is dismantling our institutions, from the Department of Justice to the State Department. This President and his administration have become our country’s greatest long-term threat.
It is disheartening for citizens who are hurting, activists and advocates, and government workers to come to terms with the reality that no positive, meaningful change will take hold as long as Donald Trump is president. Make no mistake, advocacy groups and the millions of citizens who have pushed back over the last nine months have to continue to fight for better policies. However, realistically, the most important thing Americans can do is unite around defeating Donald Trump in 2020 and electing a congressional check on his administration in 2018.
Electoral victories are not a cure-all for the range of challenges we face, but the actions of this president are a reminder that elections matter. Unfortunately, that is not conventional wisdom. Former 49er Colin Kaepernick famously did not vote in 2016. After the first debate, he said, "It was embarrassing to watch that these are our two candidates…. Both are proven liars and it almost seems like they're trying to debate who's less racist."
Boycotting any election is a mistake. Whatever you think of Hillary Clinton, she would not have offered normalization to white supremacists nor unleashed Jeff Sessions and his minions upon the Justice Department or Scott Pruitt and his anti-science legions upon the Environmental Protection Agency.
Kaepernick was not alone in forgoing his right to vote. Some of the Americans most affected by the Trump administration did not turn out strongly. According to the US Census Bureau, only 55 percent of 18-24 year olds registered to vote, and ten million 18-24 year olds reported that they did not vote! 765,000 fewer African-Americans voted in 2016 than in 2012.
Hillary Clinton lost Michigan by 11,612 votes, Pennsylvania by 68,236 votes, and Wisconsin by 27,257 votes -- a total of 107,105 votes or attendance at a University of Michigan home football game. Nationwide, more than 92 million eligible voters did not vote! So, had an additional rounding error of our total electorate voted for Clinton in these three states, she would have won 46 more Electoral College votes, and Donald Trump would be an absurd footnote in reality TV history.
This is where athletes and entertainers have an opportunity to use their platforms to advance a culture of change. They can reach into communities across the country that don’t follow mainstream media. LeBron James and Steph Curry have more than 50M Twitter followers combined, and Katy Perry has more than 100M Twitter followers. 1.5M people liked LeBron James’ tweet against Donald Trump over the weekend. It is impossible to know how many among those “likers” voted, but I am comfortable guessing that there are inroads to be made in transforming that prevailing outrage into increasing the number of youth who vote.
Below are five ideas for how athletes and entertainers can help to shape a culture of change and civic participation. These are not 30-second videos or one-off concerts, rather they are a playbook for continuing efforts that target the grassroots and that will help to change our culture over the long-term while also defeating Trump.
1) Increase the ratio of social conscious messaging in your social media. Hire a ‘social justice intern’ who layers content into your feed from organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center, the National Organization for Women, and Human Rights Watch. For every 20 tweets that fall into the category of gear, your brand, or shout outs, re-tweet a link to an article that informs your followers about gender discrimination or the plight of Dreamers or another issue that lays the groundwork for cultural change beyond the defeat of Trump.
2) Commit to registering new voters. Regularly promote sites in your Twitter feed that explain how to register to vote in your state and in swing states. Make voter registration a requirement (like a health form) for the parents of kids who attend your sports camps. Message the importance of voter registration in post-game interviews and between songs during concerts.
3) Integrate the Electoral College map into your camps, concerts, and other events. Target communities in swing states for visits and events. If you are Steph Curry, visiting Milwaukee high schools and churches makes greater sense than increasing your Bay Area events. Since the Warriors won’t visit the White House, what about starting a precedent of conducting registration and “Get Out the Vote” events on road trips to Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Detroit?
4) Contribute to building a culture where civic participation is demanded. Integrate basic civic education and know-your-rights programming into sports camps. Require that every week-long sports camp include 45 minutes a day of civic education programming that varies from motivational speakers on the civil rights movement to sessions on how Congress was intended to work. You define what is cool — preach the norm that not participating in our democracy equals selling out your community.
5) Incentivize civic participation. Defeating Trump is its own reward but incentivizing civic action will help, particularly for younger voters and for kids motivating their parents to register and vote. Reward youth for registering others to vote with invitations to special events (in person and online), autographs, gear, and album giveaways. Launch your own civic corps and offer tickets to a game, concert, or meet up for corp members who register 50 or 100 voters.