In Minnesota, chicken lives matter more than Black ones.
Over the past few weeks, animal welfare activists have disrupted three of the Minnesota Timberwolves playoff games in two cities in an attempt to bring awareness to the serious matter of poultry. In a state in which its professional basketball team is making only its second postseason appearance since 2004, activists have decided to use this stage to get the public’s attention due to a cruel and unjust system that mistreats (check notes)…chickens.
“To have (Glen) Taylor and other extremely powerful factory farming businessmen getting these taxpayer bailouts flies in the face of the values of ordinary Americans,” Direct Action Everywhere media contact and activist Matt Johnson said. The animal activists want the Timberwolves owner to step down and donate millions, as they’re upset he owns a factory farm that caused an outbreak of the bird flu from chickens in March. Because of that, more than 5 millions birds were killed by a ventilation shutdown that the group deem inhumane. “Taylor should set a powerful example by stepping away from NBA ownership and refusing to take any subsidies related to the HPAI outbreak, and donate funds previously received to help repair some of the harm of the most destructive industry on the planet.”
So far, protestors have tried to glue their hands to the court, chained themselves to the basket stanchion, and tried to run on the court.
Where were these people when Philando Castile and George Floyd were killed by the police?
I guess their deaths weren’t “inhumane” enough for them to take such actions.
Working for change has always been, and will always be, a constant struggle. But, far too often, there’s a certain group that many people won’t fight for. And that group is Black people.
Because do you know what does more harm than the bird flu?
A systemic and racist system that allows the police to do whatever they want to Black bodies.
Bad behavior by the police in Minnesota started long before Taylor ever bought a chicken farm or we knew who Floyd and Castile were. According to The Guardian, a police chief in the 1980s called his officers “damn brutal, a bunch of thumpers,” in a story the site published last year about the decades of police violence that have occurred in Minneapolis that failed to spark reform before Floyd’s death.
It’s that same kind of thinking that’s led to a former high school football coach receiving tons of support, and the U.S. Supreme Court hearing oral arguments around his case this week, because he used to kneel in prayer on the field at the end of games. When Black people kneel on football fields to bring awareness to police brutality they get blackballed, not taken seriously by the highest court in the land.
That’s why an uproar occurred when Black people dared to say that their lives mattered, as so many in white America tried to hijack that movement to make it include their lives, as if they haven’t been the only ones that ever mattered in this country. That was followed by police declaring that their blue lives — which is a willful profession, not their race — mattered.
And now we’re at a point in which some are acting like chickens are more important than the people that eat them. Ya know, given that old stereotype that all Black people love to do is eat chicken. But, the most ironic thing about these protests are that they’re taking place on courts in a Black league that used to have “Black Lives Matter” on it just two years ago.
I guess that’s why the protestors picked this sport. Because if Black lives don’t matter to them anymore, they might as well try to get them to focus on the lives of chickens.
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