WNBA Players Should Have Picketed, Not Attended, the Met Gala

Twenty twenty was only six years ago, but it feels like 60 years. It was the high point of the Covid-19 pandemic – which both political parties have decided to forget despite more than a million deaths in the United States. It’s also the year of the largest protests in U.S. history: the Black Lives Matter protests that followed the police killing of George Floyd.

Athletes were at the heart of the 2020 fight, including the courageous coaches and athletes of the Women’s National Basketball Association. W players have spent years claiming their place in the conscience of the sports world. In the summer of 2016, after the murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, they protested police brutality during the national anthem, months before Colin Kaepernick took a knee. They not only forced Georgia MAGA senator aspiring Kelly Loeffler out of her position as owner of the Atlanta Dream, but they also thwarted her political future by supporting Loeffler’s opponent, the Rev. Raphael Warnock. In 2023, one of the league’s brightest stars, Maya Moore, even retired early to fight racial injustices in the criminal justice system. Others, like Natasha Cloud, took a long time to join the fight for the idea that black lives matter.

Today, the WNBA is in a much different place than it was in 2020. Ratings are up sharply, franchise values ​​are skyrocketing, and home games are packed with dedicated fans eager to watch a new generation of stars. A second-year expansion team, the Golden State Valkyries, just became the first women’s team in any sport to surpass a billion-dollar valuation. Players, thanks to their union’s fight for a new collective bargaining agreement, have seen their wages begin to reflect this growth with massive increases in minimum and maximum salaries. For a league that sports podcast bros have talked about as nothing more than a sexist punchline, the rise of the WNBA is a satisfying counter-blow to all the assholes who made fun of these incredible athletes. But success has its own conditions, and those conditions can quickly become chains.

It was hard not to hear the clicking of those chains at the Met Gala last week. Three of the W’s brightest stars, A’ja Wilson, Angel Reese and Paige Bueckers, strutted their stuff alongside entertainers, billionaires and reality show hangers-on. What was particularly disheartening was that it wasn’t a typical Met Gala — which, even in normal times, is, to quote Tina Fey, a “parade of assholes.” There have been widespread calls to protest and boycott this year’s Gala – a boycott observed by the likes of Meryl Streep and Bella Hadid.

The call for a boycott was made because the event’s honorary chairs and underwriters were Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and his wife, Lauren Sanchez Bezos. In addition to his obscene wealth, Jeff Bezos is an anti-union moron whose company has close ties to the Israeli military. For those who care about social and working justice, this made the Met Gala a celebration of his genocide-enablement and greed, and it demanded a response.

In the days leading up to the events, activists staged several protests. And as the gliterrati marched by, demonstrators held signs with slogans such as “Tax the rich” and “Billionaires for a dead planet.” Videos about the amorality of this year’s Bezos Ball were projected onto buildings. A well-attended anti-billionaires ball was held nearby, co-hosted by actress Lisa Ann Walter of Abbott Elementary School. Small bottles of fake urine were placed around the Met, as a symbol of Bezos’ policy against bathroom breaks for warehouse workers. As the rich preened, former Amazon union leader Chris Smalls was violently arrested outside.

In such a climate, attending the Met Gala was like crossing a picket line – not to mention crossing Meryl Streep, which is almost as bad! And the people who cross the picket lines are scabs. Seeing WNBA stars, fresh off their own union victory, lash out at these protests was disheartening. It was also a sign that athletes like Bueckers are now more concerned about the business they advertise on Instagram — his page sells more products than QVC — than the humanitarian concerns of years past. This begs the question: Is a league awash in wealth now putting social justice aside in favor of commercialism?

These readers might wonder why call three WNBA athletes out of the crowd of wastrels, scoundrels, and assholes who attended the gala to honor Bezos’s America? That’s because the courageous actions of WNBA players have led us to believe that the league stands for something more. No one expects anything from a Kardashian or a Bieber, but WNBA athletes were once more than brands. That’s the problem with defending something. If you do it once, people expect you to do it again. Scabbing for Jeff Bezos has never been the goal of this league. But as the WNBA grows in popularity, we see more of it in the future. Women’s basketball and its growing popularity is an incredible phenomenon. Lending his new cachet to the Bezos Ball was a shame and a sin.