On Friday night, the Portland Thorns posted a video of the incident between Morgan Weaver and Kristen Edmonds with the words “Morgan Weaver is innocent.” Both fans and media called them out, pointing to the fact that framing a white woman as “innocent” in an on-field altercation with a Black woman perpetuates racist stereotypes that frame Black women as aggressors and white women pure and incapable of harm.
The Thorns organization also responded to a tweet from Sarah Gorden, who criticized the initial tweet, saying “the intent of [their] post had an unintended impact.” That’s an acknowledgement that the post caused harm—to whom or how isn’t made clear—but nothing more.
The club deleted the initial post this morning, but has yet to apologize for the language it used.
The intent of the tweet may have been simply to support Weaver as a Thorns player and to dispute the official’s decision, but it became clear shortly after it was posted that the choice of words had an unintended but very real impact on Black players and fans. Language matters, and good intentions don’t absolve us of responsibility.
The Rose City Review is calling on the Thorns organization to issue an apology for the language they used in Friday night’s tweet. Deleting a post after five days of fan pushback—and dismissing those who called it racist during that time—is not good enough. Last summer, when conversations about race in America were in full force, the club repeatedly expressed its commitment to racial justice. The first part of such a commitment always has to be listening to and believing those harmed by racism.
We stand with the Black players, fans, and media of the NWSL and will always strive to hold ourselves accountable to this same standard.
Darren Green is a junior at Franklin High School and plays for the boys’ soccer team, which won the 6A state championship in 2019. He wrote the following essay about making the team, winning the championship, and being a Black teenager in Portland.
It all started when I was 11 years old.
I was really confused on what I wanted to do with my future and hadn’t found my passion for anything. Fortunately though, while I was growing up, I realized I could be great at anything I put my mind to.
At this time, I was in 7th grade, and I was having a hard time at home. We didn’t have everything we needed as a family. Sometimes I wouldn’t have dinner because it would be the end of the month and food stamps would be low.
My troubles at home got in the way of school. It was hard staying focused in class when things at home weren’t going as planned. I had a lot of people in my life that wanted to help in a positive way, but I also had a lot of friends that were holding me back from being a good person and picking the right thing to do.
I kept finding myself in trouble, no matter how hard I tried to stay out of it. I would never pay attention and was always the class clown. Regardless of what happened, I always found myself in the principal’s office for one thing or another. I was suspended tons of times, which took away my motivation to even go to school every day. This really disappointed my mom, because she knew I was better than that. Eventually, I noticed that one of the only things that motivated me to go to school was soccer. I wasn’t on a team, but I got to play at recess and I loved it.
As my 8th grade year started, I was still going through the same family and school hardships, but I had met new friends. I also had the support of my mentor, Justin, who I met through Friends of the Children when I was in the 3rd grade. Justin is a really big positive influence and role model for me. He led me to God, which has had one of the biggest impacts on my life, helping me find my identity and purpose. Justin played that father figure for me. Whenever my mom couldn’t be there for me because of work, Justin would always be by my side. Justin and God both helped me be more motivated, and that’s when I began thinking more about what I wanted to do and what I wanted to be great at.
Unfortunately, change takes time. I didn’t grow up with very much positivity or people who influenced me in positive ways, so sometimes it was hard for me to be around the new friends I had made. I found it uncomfortable, because I wasn’t used to being surrounded by people who were not getting in trouble and who cared about school. Even though I had lots of motivation to be a good kid, I continued to always end up in the same place… The principal’s office.
The biggest life lesson I learned in 8th grade was that people come and go from our lives, but only a handful of them truly make a difference in our future.
Photo courtesy of Darren Green
The next year, freshman year of high school, was a fresh start. Unfortunately, I had a terrible start to high school. I didn’t know what to expect or what classes I wanted to take, and it was hard for me to adjust from being essentially locked down in middle school to having so much freedom in high school.
I spent about the first six months skipping school and not participating in anything. It was fun at first, but I also struggled internally because I knew I was better than this.
One day the soccer coach asked me, “Darren, why don’t you play soccer for us?” I wasn’t sure what to say. I hadn’t really thought about playing on an actual team before. Partway through the season, I ended up asking the coach if I could join the team, and he had told me, “Yes, you can come to tryouts.” I was excited, but also nervous, since I didn’t start the year with them.
Unfortunately, when I showed up for my tryout, I was told I couldn’t actually play or even try out because my grades weren’t good enough.
I went home and cried. I had gotten so excited about playing soccer for my school. I had been feeling motivated about high school for the first time. But I couldn’t play.
In the end, not being able to try out was a learning experience. It ended up being just what I needed to help me decide that I was passionate about soccer and wanted to do everything in my power to be able to play. I learned that no matter how good you are on the field, you will always need the grades in order to play high school sports. From this point forward, I knew that in order to play soccer, I needed to also be a good student.
I buckled down and worked really hard in school to make sure I would be able to play the following year. This decision was one of the best decisions I made that year. It was hard, but playing soccer was what I truly wanted.
Fast forward to sophomore year. The year I had been looking forward to because I knew I would be able to play soccer—if I kept working hard in the classroom.
The school year got off to a great start! I had passed all of my classes the previous semester, making me eligible to play, and I was looking forward to the soccer season. I started playing lots of soccer on my own to make sure I was ready for the tryouts, which were just around the corner.
The tryout wasn’t an easy process at all. It was seven days long. The first three days, I trained with the JV players because of my age. I understood why, but I believed I was good enough to make the varsity team.
I pushed myself every day. I was being more selfish than usual because my skill set was better than the other players I was playing with, and it showed. Then the coach brought me over and told me to go train with varsity. I knew it was up from here. And I was right—thanks to my hard work, I exceeded my goal and made the varsity team. Not only did I make the team, but I earned the right to play the position I wanted—attacking center mid—and I was going to be a starter!
As the season started, we were definitely the underdogs—my school, Franklin, had never had a strong soccer program—but we kept figuring out ways to win. Our coaches helped us keep a positive mindset, and we went into every game believing that we could beat whoever we were playing. As the season progressed and we kept winning, our confidence grew and I learned more about what I was capable of doing on the field.
We ended up having a great season! Beating our biggest rivals—Cleveland and Lincoln, both of which were whiter and wealthier schools—were big turning points for us. Doing so was not easy at all. We had skilled players, but we had a lot to overcome mentally. Our team didn’t have experience winning in this way; we had never played in front of big crowds. We needed to believe in our abilities in order to reach our dream of reaching the playoffs.
We went on to win the league. It was the first time in decades Franklin had done so.
Photo courtesy of Darren Green
Then the playoffs came. We were seeded high, so we started off playing teams that had worse records than us. Our team was happy to be in the position we were in. We came out strong, won our first three games, and ended up making it to the state finals! This was the first time in 56 years that the Franklin men’s soccer team had the chance to win a state championship.
With every win, our belief in what we were capable of grew, and my understanding of what I could contribute as a player grew as well.
The day of the state championship: lots of adrenaline and lots of excitement. On the way over to Hillsboro Stadium to play Summit, everyone is super hyped. Some people are nervous, but I’m not. It feels like the whole school is behind us. They even paid for three busloads of students to come cheer us on.
We have a great start and get a 1–0 lead within the first 10 minutes, which we hold for most of the game. Then, in the last 10 minutes of the second half, Summit equalizes. We regather as a team and put some motivation into one another. We were in the same position in the semifinals against Cleveland—they equalized in the last four minutes of regular time—so we know we can come out on top if we keep a positive mindset. We go into overtime, with the fans chanting like crazy.
With two minutes left, our goalkeeper, Gael Salas-Lara, has a goal kick and sends it straight to me. I chest it down and play it to our right mid, who sends it into the box. Andrew Reed, our left winger, finds the end of it and scores to put us up 2–1. Finally, the whistle blows.
We did it! We won the 2019 Oregon State Championship! It was hard on so many levels, but we got the job done. When I think back on what we accomplished, I think it is one of the best things that I have been able to experience. And it helped me to become more clear about what I wanted to do with my life.
The biggest thing I learned from my sophomore year was, no matter how hard times get, there is always a way.
And then COVID-19 hit.
Going into my junior year, I knew that I wanted to continue playing soccer. I had a new goal: I wanted to play soccer at a Division 1 college. This meant I needed to get into better shape, train to improve my skills, and raise my GPA, which was still low from my freshman year when I skipped so many classes and earned so many Fs. I was focused and ready to do anything I needed to do to reach my goal.
COVID-19 brought many challenges to my life, but also made a lot of things easy for me. It is hard not being able to just hang out with my friends whenever I want to. Over time, it’s gotten a lot easier and I have adjusted. A lot of tournaments where I would have had a chance to showcase my talents for coaches from across the country were cancelled because of COVID. The good thing about COVID, however, is that it has made it a lot easier for me when it comes to school. I like doing online school from home. I have a lot more time to do my assignments, and I can do it on my schedule. I also have more time to train, which has been really helpful.
Image courtesy of Darren Green
Of course, COVID-19 wasn’t the only challenge 2020 brought. It was also a year of police brutality and protests.
I am a Black teenager. Sometimes it can be hard being a black teenager in Portland, Oregon which is a mostly white city. Sometimes I get treated differently just because of my race, which is frustrating and really unfair. Sometimes I get scared around police officers, and that should never happen. Police are supposed to be here to protect us. I should not be afraid of them. I never want that time to come where my life is in danger because of my race.
I just want white people to at least care about how we are being treated and do the best they can to show empathy in some way. A lot of Black lives have been taken for no reason at all. No one deserves to have their life threatened just because of the color of their skin.
A bunch of great protests happened over the summer, which is hopeful. Through the protests, a lot has been recognized about the need to call out racism in our country. Even though we are not where we want to be as a Black community, if stuff like protests and teachers teaching more about racism continues to happen, things like police brutality and people thinking badly about Black people will get better.
Through it all, I’ve stayed focused on my goals of earning a scholarship to play Division 1 soccer, and then becoming a professional.
Soccer has been an outlet for me. It has brought many great things to my life and has helped me surround myself with positive people that want to see me be successful. As I continue to work hard, I know a lot of doors will open and I will be in the position that I want to be in within the next few years. I hope that I can do this for the rest of my life, or at least until I retire from being a professional soccer player.
Life can be really difficult. We all have our own challenges and struggles. I am working hard, setting goals for myself, and having my faith in God to help me along the way.
Disclosure: Jennifer Ingraham, a 107ist board member, also serves as a copy editor for Rose City Review. She was not involved in the creation of this piece in any way.
Last summer, a number of Portland soccer fans came forward about their experiences with the 107ist, the organization that coordinates both the Timbers Army and Rose City Riveters. The first was Milo Reed, a Black capo in the TA. In a Medium post, Reed wrote that the 107ist board had repeatedly ignored and spoken over him when he tried to weigh in on a discussion about a blog post some on social media were calling racist.
Following Reed’s post, two members of the 107ist talked with Rose City Review about their own experiences in the TA and RCR. We also spoke with the founders of Black Fires, a Black supporters group in Chicago. All four echoed Reed’s sentiment: self-proclaimed inclusivity and anti-racism isn’t enough if BIPOC don’t feel like their presence and voices are valued.
Fans called on the 107ist board to actively listen to and engage with fans of color, make the structure of the organization more accessible, and for board members to step down and create space for BIPOC to take their place. One person specifically said the board needed at least three BIPOC members before she believed they could move forward. Then-newly named 107ist President Gabby Rosas predicted that those resignations would take place in December 2020, in accordance with the regular 107ist election cycle.
Over the summer, the 107ist also formed a BIPOC committee to provide independent oversight of the 107ist and evaluate why fans of color had the experiences they did. However, all of the BIPOC committee members are also 107ist members—a requirement for any committee position within the organization.
“We were not going to solve the board’s diversity and race problem,” the committee said via email, “but we could, out of love for the community we were part of, help point out areas they needed to address change and to call them out when they failed to meet expectations.”
Since the BIPOC committee formed, it has held regular meetings to discuss race in the TA and the police presence in Providence Park, advocate for better representation within the 107ist board and committees, and create better pathways for the general community to get involved with the 107ist.
When election season came around, three of the current board members—including Rosas—were reelected to three-year terms.
“We’re seeing that as a big red flag,” Rosas said, “because we recognize that as an organization we need to be doing a better job of soliciting for new board members and making sure that everyone who’s interested knows enough about what it is to be on the board and what the organization needs and can feel comfortable running.”
The one new member, who is white, filled the seat of Ray Terrill, who had stepped down over the summer and asked that his position be filled by a person of color.
The 107ist also created a new election pathway that allows for members of the RCR and TA steering committee to each nominate a representative to a one-year term on the board and the BIPOC committee to select two candidates. The TA steering committee and BIPOC committee took advantage of this new pathway and appointed three representatives in total.
“We’re very focused on making sure that we’re listening first,” Rosas said. “And listening to not only our new board members, the two that were nominated by the BIPOC committee, but also that committee as a whole.”
However, Rosas said there’s a learning curve for new members, which makes it hard for new representatives to make an immediate impact. The board is looking to make that transition easier for members who are elected to one-year terms. Rosas specifically pointed to ensuring that one-year representatives have information early and said the board is making an active effort to prioritize those members’ central goals. “It’s creating a sense of urgency that I think we needed,” she said.
The board is also trying to lighten its workloadby allocating tasks to its various committees—something that will allow members to spend less time on paperwork and more time on the initiatives they want to carry out—and expanding overall committee membership. Rosas said she hopes this will make board positions more accessible to prospective members, since up to 12 hours of work per week is a lot to ask of a volunteer position.
Rosas said breaking down those barriers and building out all the 107ist committees to encompass a wider range of ages, backgrounds, religions, and cultures can also help inform 107ist practices. “As we diversify all of our committees, we’re able to better understand who we’re representing,” she said.
The BIPOC committee also pointed to the time commitment as a barrier to soliciting engagement. “BIPOC are already carrying the burden of this in our daily personal lives,” it said, in the form of explaining racial bias or navigating systemic racism within work, school, or community spaces.
“We are volunteering our time and knowledge to ensure the 107ist is a more inclusive organization where all members’ voices are heard and respected,” the committee said.
The BIPOC committee said COVID-19 also presents a barrier to outreach; the 107ist, TA, and RCR are primarily united by a love for Portland professional soccer, which makes engagement more difficult when everything is virtual. On top of that, many members generally have less free time, as they’re prioritizing safety and job security during the pandemic.
Still, the committee has created a pathway to anonymously present member grievances to the board by acting as a mediating body. Rosas said the 107ist is getting different feedback now that the BIPOC committee exists, although neither she nor the committee wanted to expand on the specifics of these complaints due to privacy concerns.
The BIPOC committee is also working to create a more formalized grievance process and engage with members. Due to the volunteer nature of 107ist positions, the committee said everything moves a little slower than a regular, paid workplace, but it expects to have more updates later in the year.
When asked about how it is dividing its focus between individual grievances, structural issues, and fostering pathways for representation within the 107ist, the BIPOC committee said it was “an ongoing discussion” and that more information would be available at a later date.
Rosas said trying to enact change while the BIPOC committee is still working to establish itself has added another layer of difficulty to enacting change within the 107ist. “I think what some people were expecting—and some people on the board were expecting—was that the BIPOC committee would just tell us what to do,” she said.
To Rosas, it’s been a balance of ensuring the 107ist is soliciting feedback from those outside the board, including other organizations, and taking responsibility to act on its own. The board recognizes that the autonomy of its position comes with responsibility. “We can’t wait for the BIPOC community, we can’t wait for any underrepresented community to come up with the words to tell us, ‘We’re not represented’,” she said. “We as a board, we as a leadership group have to figure out how we can represent our members without them telling us.”
Currently, the board is focusing on its annual general meeting for members—to be held at the end of February or early March. Rosas said that’s when the 107ist will share more detailed plans for its 2021 initiatives.
“We are not dropping any of our focus from last year,” she said, “but increasing the ways we want to make meaningful impact with our members and in our communities.”
Last weekend, Thorns defender Kelli Hubly took to Twitter to voice her support for Black lives and her opposition to racism.
Black lives matter today & everyday.
I’ve been trying to find the right words to say. I’m sad to live in a world with so much hate. Where people refuse to have an open mind and refuse to educate themselves. pic.twitter.com/OUmZeJO32l
She’s in the minority—most white NWSL players have not spoken up on their Black teammates’ behalf. I was curious to hear how Hubly got to this place. As much as we should all focus on listening to and elevating Black voices, I also think it’s crucial for white people to talk to each other about race, because at the end of the day, white supremacy is our problem. Our conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity; the full audio version is available on our Patreon for supporters at the $10 level.
Katelyn Best: You said in that first tweet that you had been trying to find the right words to say. What was going through your head, and what was the thing that finally pushed you to say, “I’m going to say something even if it’s not perfect”?
Kelli Hubly: I have a lot of close people to me in my life who are Black, so I’ve had a lot of harder conversations where I’ve felt uncomfortable, they’ve felt uncomfortable, but afterwards it ended up being a great talk that I think has helped me grow, and they grow. Before Utah, I had a couple good talks, and then in Utah, I got that picture [from the tweet] and I was like, “I really want to post this.” And at that point, I know—back and forth people on Twitter, some people say, “I don’t want a white person saying stuff,” and some are like, “I would love white people to be saying stuff.” And my thought process was, I didn’t want to say something that drew too much attention to me versus the real issue, which is Black Lives Matter. So I was in a dilemma of what to say that would make it all about Black Lives Matter and not just like, an Instagram post where I look like a good person.
So I actually have a note in my phone of like, all different thoughts that came into my head, because this was over a month where I would be like, “okay, I want to say something, but it needs to be the right wording.” Finally I condensed it, and it kind of came after—our team does these talks. Like, we do them every week or so, usually on a recovery day, and we either read something, or watch something, and we come back and talk about it as a team, our coaches are there, everybody’s there, and everyone’s engaged. We’ll do a big team talk and then we’ll go into like, smaller groups. So we’ve been bringing more attention to just, everyone educating together and educating each other.
We just had one last Sunday, and it just like, really made me feel like I should post. We haven’t had games, we haven’t had really anything that we could be showing the world, like, this is how we feel. We had Utah and we kneeled, we wore the shirts, we were doing that. But we haven’t really done anything since. So it just felt like the right time for me to post, and I confronted one of my really good friends from home and asked her, “hey, how do you feel about this? Be honest with me. Do you think this is the right message getting across?” And she was like, “Kelli, I love this, this is amazing, I love seeing you use your platform.” So I ended up posting it and I got like, a lot of close friends of mine in the Black community who were like, “thank you so much, you don’t understand how much we love hearing a white person use their platform.” So it was just nice to kind of get my view on things out, because I have a lot bottled up and I haven’t known what to say or when to say it.
Take me back—you said that you guys had a bunch of conversations in Utah, and I know that some of that started even before Utah, but where were you at on these issues going into those conversations, and what did you learn?
So, yeah, we started these conversations before Utah, and I actually started the education process even before those conversations with my team. Like, watching the Meek Mill documentary or 13th before 13th kind of like, really blew up recently.
I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, in a white area. So a lot of that was so new to me, and I had no idea. I was kind of just like, shocked that this was actually going on. And I felt a lot of shame for a very long time, because as the white person, I’m like, “how are we doing this to other people?” So yeah, a lot of shame, and I kind of just realized like, I have to turn this shame into something better and like, do better, and have conversations with people. When I went home after Utah, I had amazing conversations with my parents about it, because they also weren’t as educated, either. Like, defunding the police, what that truly means—it doesn’t [mean exactly what it sounds like], there’s deeper meaning to it. And just bringing attention to what actually has been going on, because I’ve been so sheltered.
The conversations have been great, because we’re hearing different stories from different players who have had different experiences, and we’ve been super open with each other, and no one’s really judging, everyone’s taking everybody in, and we’re growing together. I’m learning a lot. I’ve read two books about it, and it’s just very eye-opening, and it’s sad that it took me this long to know what truly has been going on.
If it’s taken me, who, I’m a pretty open person—[I’m] open to learning, I want to do what’s best, I want everything to be right in this world. After hearing and seeing, even in Utah, like, us kneeling, people writing comments, these comments are unreal to me! My bubble is so like, “Black Lives Matter!” and then I go onto Instagram or Twitter and these comments are like, insane! I’m shocked that people are still thinking this way, and it’s like, what can we do to change these people’s minds, just get them to educate themselves a little bit? It’s just crazy.
Yeah, that’s interesting, and I think that I am kind of in a similar bubble to you in that everybody I know sort of is on the same page: kneeling is good, Black lives matter, we agree something needs to happen about police brutality, and then you see people on Twitter or whatever, disagreeing with that, and it’s hard to wrap your head around.
I get furious. I’m like, I need to say something! But I can’t just be replying to all of these people!
I don’t know how much of this you saw or heard about, but during the Challenge Cup there was a lot of discourse around the kneeling. And it’s striking to me that the Thorns are the only team that every single player and every single staff member kneeled that whole time, and—I don’t want to make it about a soccer team—but to me, that seems to say something about the conversations that you had within the team, that were maybe not happening in the same way on other teams. I’m just wondering if you have any insight as to why things might have gone different for [the Thorns].
Yeah, so we, in Utah, had talked about kneeling, and basically said like, how do we feel? Because we kind of wanted it to be us unified together. And basically, we’re a very close team, like I’m sure you’ve heard through people’s interviews. We’re very close and we all really trust each other, so we can have these hard conversations, and if someone felt uncomfortable, we can have that conversation.
So we kind of all decided together. Our coaching staff has been amazing, because they’re supportive of everything we’re doing, and through this whole process they’re learning so much, because a lot of them are foreign, so this is different because they’re not even from America. They’re learning about all of our history, and they’re trying to figure out, “ok, what are we doing, what do you need us to help with?”
So basically, we made a decision, like, if we’re all going to do this, we’re all going to do it, so we decided that we all were going to kneel, and we also decided after the first game, that we were all going to do it in a line together. I feel like we’ve just been really unified, and we have a really good culture, and it’s nice to see and be a part of.
I don’t want to pry into any conversations, but was there any reluctance, were there folks on the team who were like, “ah, I don’t know, I want to respect the anthem and respect the flag,” or whatever? Was there any of that kind of conversation happening?
Yes and no. Some people, it’s family, or just having people, veterans, in their family, so I think that was the hard part, but then when we talked about it, they knew this was the best thing for us to do and they felt good about it. They were able to, say, if their family member said something to them, they were able to have that conversation and express how they were feeling. It’s just been, like, a crazy time, and people from different parts of the country, it’s interesting to see different parents’ views versus like, my parents’ views. So for the most part, I think we were all pretty much on board and felt comfortable doing that.
I don’t know if you watch the WNBA, but they’ve done a series of pretty impressive, very unified, strong statements on these issues. It’s been striking to me how much more unified and I think, frankly, more effective they’ve been as a league, than the NWSL was during the Challenge Cup. I’d love to get your thoughts on this, but I think about the whiteness of the sport of soccer. Do you think that plays a role in how some of these conversations go down?
Definitely. We’ve actually talked about this in our last talk, last week. Basically, soccer’s a super white, privileged sport. It’s expensive to play growing up. You’re traveling, you need support, you need money, basically, to play soccer at a high level. So that’s why I think you see a lot more white soccer players.
But still, it doesn’t give us an excuse for not doing as much as the WNBA. I think what they’re doing is great, and I think looking at what they’re doing, I think it’s sparked a lot of conversations within our team to see what can we do with these games coming up. We’re on CBS our first game. What can we be doing? Can the announcers be giving out facts during our game? Could we like, think of something to put on pregame instead of when the anthem’s playing, we have something else playing, like players talking about stuff going on in the world? What can we be doing to do our part? Because they’re definitely doing way more than us, and it’s been effective. There’s a picture that I saw of the players in the shirts with the seven bullet holes, and I was like, “wow, that is really powerful.” So it like, makes us want to do more when it’s our turn to be on TV.
When you say that you want to continue to support your Black friends and your Black teammates, what does that mean to you?
So, just knowing that they can come to me whenever there’s something going on, because I know times are hard and it’s frustrating, and it’s exhausting, and I just want to be able to support. Not pry, but just know that I’m always here. And to just pay attention more. I think everyone needs to pay attention more. And everyone just needs to be more kind! Like, I don’t know, the world is just crazy right now. It really bothers me, because I just see so much hate going on, and I’m just the total opposite. I have so much love to give to people.
So, support, educate, and be able to spread knowledge to people. When I went home, being able to talk to my parents more and give them a deeper meaning to things that I’m going through here. My parents are like, “oh, you’re so liberal! It must be Portland!” I don’t even think that way, I’m like, this is what’s right! This is, you know, human rights here. So just being able to support and be the best person I can be and do what I need to do to help. If it’s posting more, if it’s donating, whatever I need to be doing to make things better.
Do you have any highlights from the stuff that the team has been reading, or the stuff you guys have been listening to that you might recommend to people?
I think a great place to start is [Ijeoma Oluo’s] So You Want to Talk about Race, the book. That was the first book I read. A couple of my other teammates have read it because we were going to do a book club type thing, so a bunch of people got the book. So we’ve talked about it, and that’s a great place, I think, for people to start, because it touches on a lot of different subjects, and then basically if you want to know more about that subject then you know, like, this is what I want to zoom in on next time I read a book or something. And it gives facts, which you can’t, like—facts are facts.
It gives great stories, which are sad at times. Like she talks about being pulled over, and like, last year I got pulled over. And not once did it cross my mind that I would be scared. I’m just like, “oh my god, no, I’m caught!” My biggest thing is like, is my dad going to be mad at me? That’s what’s going through my head, but when I read this, I’m like, oh my god, people are scared for their life, where like, they’re tweeting that they got [pulled over]. Like that is so crazy to me, because that’s never once crossed my head. I’m so privileged. So that’s a great book.
13this great because it’s just eye-opening. I really recommend the Meek Mill documentary [Free Meek], especially if you follow Meek Mill, he’s a rapper. So his story is unbelievable. I watched that and my jaw was just like, dropped. I think it’s six episodes and I watched them all in a day and I was just like, there’s no way this is real.
Then I read another book, it was a memoir of Mychal Denzel [Smith], The Invisible Man. It was interesting reading a memoir, and with voting all going on right now, it was really interesting, because in the book he talks about how when he was able to vote, him and his dad woke up at like five a.m. so that they could go wait in line for two or three hours, to make sure they could vote. And to go through like, those depths of waking up, waiting in line for two hours, to just be able to vote? I was shocked because I don’t think my parents have ever waited that long, I don’t think I would ever have to wait that long if I was at home voting—because I vote by mail-in ballot—but I was like, that’s crazy! I don’t know. It’s just really eye-opening and the memoir was really cool to read, because it’s in his shoes, and it’s just a totally different perspective, because it’s also a male perspective. It’s just been really interesting to read and just know more about.
I think the last thing I want to ask you is, how do you approach conversations with people who you feel are less aware of what’s going on, or a little bit less open to learning? Do you have a strategy that you’ve used?
Well, I haven’t really come across that many people that have not been open to it. I think, because yeah, even with my parents, if they weren’t sure about stuff, like, my mom didn’t know the term “defund the police.” And so she’s like, “Kelli, but like, we’re still going to need police officers!” And I’m like mom, that’s not the point! So like, bless her heart, she’s so cute, and then once I told her, she’s like, oh, that makes so much sense.
So I think not like, attacking people for not knowing, and not making fun of them or not thinking they’re a bad person because they didn’t know. It’s more if they’re willing to be open and learn, you just have to start wherever they’re at, and then build from there, but you have to do it in a growing way. You can’t be negative, because then they could feel bad about it, or go into a shell. We’ve talked about this on our team. And Gabby actually said, “I would give them the book So You Want to Talk about Race.” And I think that’s a great starting point for people. And she was like, there’s facts. You read those facts, like, you can’t really argue them. So I think that’s a great way to start, and then it kind of sparks the conversation.
It’s definitely hard, and you don’t want to start an argument over it. But you also need to have the conversation. So, yeah. It’s interesting, but I try to, you know, just be nice about it. Start slow and then get into it. Like I had a couple conversations with my parents, and then I told them to watch 13th. They didn’t understand like, the war on drugs and stuff. And I mean, I wouldn’t probably, either, if I didn’t watch this.
Disclosure: Jennifer Ingraham, a 107ist board member, also serves as a copy editor for Rose City Review. She was not involved in the creation of this piece in any way.
On June 1, Milo Reed published a post on Medium, detailing his experiences as a Black capo in the Timbers Army and member of the 107 Independent Supporters Trust—the nonprofit organization that coordinates both the TA and the Rose City Riveters.
Reed describes an instance from 2018, in which the 107IST Board of Directors deleted a blog post that they, a group of non-Black people, deemed to be offensive to the Black community. However, Reed, “felt that the post was not problematic & urged the 107ist board to consult communities of color before speaking for them.” He also requested the Board share a copy of his email; Reed points out that, a couple of months later, a white capo was allowed to share their own thoughts about race “on the same website [Reed] was denied access to.”
According to Reed’s post, the Board asked him to explain his requests to them at their next meeting, less than 48 hours in advance. Based on the context of the invitation, Reed believed it to be “disingenuous” and “like [the meeting] was going to be an interrogation as opposed to a conversation.”
“I can’t count the number of times I have brought a plan, concern, or proposal to a 107ist board member only to be given a metaphorical pat on the head, a terse rejection or worst of all ignored,” writes Reed. “This has only intensified in the last couple of months. I have told several people they have behaved in ways that were disrespectful & patronizing since March, only to be told ‘I’m sorry you feel that way.'”
Three days after Reed published his story, the 107IST Board shared a response, acknowledging their failure to listen to BIPOC voices in the TA and RCR—although doing so without explicitly mentioning Reed or his own blog—and declaring a commitment to publicize a detailed anti-racism plan within the next 30 days.
Reed’s post came in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, in the midst of global protests against police brutality and systemic racism and calls that Black lives matter. (“If Black Lives Matter what about Black voices?” Reed asks.)
The outcry—and wave of public statements from their Black members—has pressured many organizations to examine the role of race within the spaces they inhabit.
When examining the role of racism within these spaces, it’s important to first acknowledge that we live in a society that’s systems of power and organization were created by white people who often strove to exclude people of color. Whether through the institution of slavery, segregationist policy, or simply hostile attitudes that targeted BIPOC, they conveyed that people of color were not welcome.
Although many of these laws have been repealed, these spaces cannot be separated from their racist origins. When those in charge do not attempt to reconcile with and actively combat this racist past, those same systems of inequity remain unchecked. We see them perpetuated in the racial wage gap, in the small number of people of color—especially Black and Indigenous people, especially Black and Indigenous women—that hold leadership positions in companies, in the over-policing and mass incarceration of BIPOC, and in countless other areas of everyday life. As Simone Charley points out, these “power structures [are] so ingrained in society that to question them is to question yourself.”
Like many organizations across the United States, the TA and the 107IST are a product of the society that they belong to. Regardless of self-proclaimed anti-racism and anti-fascism, members not immune to intrinsic bias; Reed’s story shows as much. And, as tends to be the case with systemic racism, his experience is not an isolated occurrence.
“When I first moved to Portland in 2016, I didn’t know a single person there,” says Chelsea Waddell, a member of the 107IST, “definitely not anyone in the soccer community.” She recalls going to the 107IST website and reading about the group. Something stuck out to her on the 107IST’s “About Us” page: “We have always said that if you want to be Timbers Army then you already are […] Since 2013, the same has been true for the Rose City Riveters.”
“I was like, wow, what a cool sentiment,” Waddell says. “You don’t have to be anyone special or do anything to be part of this organization.
“I think you’re immediately accepted when you walk into that group,” she continues. “There’s no prior judgment of who you are because of who you are. If you’re a member of the LGBTQ+ community, which I am, and a person of color and a woman—I’m really hitting the triple threat there—you can walk in and really be embraced, but I feel like only if you agree with everybody else all the way through.”
Anabel Ramirez, who was a regular presence in the North End for roughly ten years, feels similarly about her experience in the TA. “I got hooked into it,” she says. “It felt like a cult fervor when you first join in, and you want everything: you want all the scarves, you want all the patches, you know all the chants. You get really clicked into this idea that it is a collective, and then it doesn’t feel so collective in certain aspects.”
Both Ramirez and Waddell believe that this sense of collectiveness is enforced by the unspoken expectations in the TA, and, to a lesser extent, the Riveters: standing and chanting together, cheering on the team, and staying off your phone. For those involved outside of games, it’s volunteering your time and money, helping in the creation of tifos, and contributing to 107IST fundraisers for other nonprofits around Portland.
Photo by Matthew Wolfe
However, unspoken rules can lead those who are unaware of them, or simply wish to express their support in a different way, to feel as if they don’t belong. This is only accentuated for BIPOC fans who are already navigating a very white space.
“In trying to be this cohesive North End voice, they stamp out a lot of other voices,” Ramirez observes. “I don’t think a lot of them see themselves as stamping out specifically Black and Brown and Asian voices, but it happens.”
Ramirez points to the fact that many of her BIPOC friends don’t feel welcome in the TA—from those who simply don’t want to acknowledge the group after they displayed the Sunshine Flag, to the large numbers of Latinx families who show up at Timbers 2 matches, but not Timbers games. She, herself, felt uncomfortable in the TA unless she was with a certain group of friends.
As a Black woman, Waddell perceives the racial diversity of the TA and RCR to be similar to that of Portland, a city that is known for being very white.
To Jake Payne and Phil Bridges, this problem isn’t exclusive to Portland. The two are co-founders of Black Fires, a Black supporters group for both the Chicago Fire and the Chicago Red Stars. “You see this with a lot of supporters groups around the league,” Payne points out, “of saying that you’re inclusive and diverse, but your stands don’t really reflect that. I think that’s something that more than Section 8 or Timbers Army or anyone need to look at […] like, okay, if we’re that inclusive, why don’t our stands reflect what our values are?”
Bridges points to the fact that, in Chicago, it took over 20 years for a real push to make the stands more diverse—both in terms of LGBT and BIPOC fans—to actually happen. “You have just a lot of people who love the idea of saying that they’re diverse,” he says. “They love the idea of that, they seem open, they love talking about it, they love feeling that way, but when it comes to actually putting in the work to make sure that happens, it’s totally different.”
One of the factors is how a club markets itself. “There is the reality of soccer’s not as big as it should be in the Black community in the United States,” Payne acknowledges. On the other hand, he notes that Chicago’s clubs weren’t actively trying to engage with the Black community until Black Fires called on them to do so.
“It’s really liberating to be able to make the experience what you’ve always wanted it to be,” says Payne, “but it’s also very frustrating, because you have to constantly almost drag people to care about this in a genuine way.”
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, one of the ways Black Fires was working to reach prospective fans was through watching games with them. Payne explains that the majority of the bars that Fire supporters frequent are in the north side of the city, which is more white. “What’s a bar [where] we can watch in the south side?” he asks. “What’s a bar where we can watch that’s Black-owned or in a Black neighborhood, so that we can be more present?”
Payne thinks this engagement is an important step beyond a trap that many fall into—fans or otherwise. Too often, he points out, “donating takes the place of actually reaching out to communities that need it and making a connection.”
Both Ramirez and Waddell notice this within the TA and RCR. “I don’t feel like they are actively fighting for people of color,” Waddell says. “I think they are passively allowing them to be a part of it, and openly embracing different people, but never going any deeper than that.”
As an example, she and Ramirez point to the 107IST’s donation drives for other nonprofits in Portland.
“I do think that the organization can be a little bit show-y, white savior-y, performative,” acknowledges Waddell. “In football culture, being antifascist and fighting for marginalized people is really, really cool, but I feel like we do it just because it’s cool […] There’s just not a lot of substance there.
“It doesn’t really matter if you can fly a certain flag or wear or display a certain symbol if you’re not doing other things to support that fight. It’s just a symbol.”
Photo by Matthew Wolfe
In her time with the 107IST Outreach Committee, Ramirez notes that the group would donate to organizations without making any effort to engage with the communities that those organizations represented. She explains that this was one of the main reasons she ended up leaving the committee. At the time, Ramirez said as much to the 107IST, but didn’t feel like anyone was paying attention.
“I feel like every time I would go and try to make a suggestion of some sort—it was either because I was female or because I was Latina or probably the combo—that I wasn’t getting listened to,” she says.
For Waddell, this failure to listen to BIPOC voices became evident during the discourse around the Iron Front last summer. “Obviously, this was a really passion-driven discussion, but from where I sit, part of that fight was to ‘protect’ me,” she says. “I feel like there was no space given to the people that people were fighting for.
“I just, as a person of color, didn’t see how displaying a symbol would change anything for me,” Waddell explains. “I think that’s kind of the discussion we’re at this summer, on a bigger scale, is that it’s not displaying a symbol that makes people feel safer; it’s action and words and listening to them.” While she wanted to express this at the time, she was afraid of the backlash she would face for presenting an opinion that differed from the group’s.
That fear of retaliation was validated by Reed’s post, by his stories of trying to speak up and the resistance he faced. “It was brave of him to even try,” Waddell says, “and still no one listened.”
When Reed was offered an opportunity to communicate with the 107IST Board, it was on short notice and in a space of the Board’s own creation. “[It’s] like, ‘yeah, we will listen to you,'” describes Payne, “‘but only in these predefined structures that we feel work, this is how we’ll listen to you.'”
Payne acknowledges that a refusal to listen to BIPOC voices unless they’re speaking in white-created spaces is a systemic issue: “I think that’s how a lot of places operate, not just in soccer, and it’s just not right.”
To Payne, now is a perfect time to examine the ways in which any organization perpetuates systemic racial inequity—intentionally or not. “[The] Timbers Army is just in the spotlight because they had the most public thing about it,” he says. “Plenty of other groups operate like this right now, and I think this is a good time—with it being a ‘break in society,’ with not many supporter initiatives happening—for any group, NWSL, MLS, USL, to really be thinking about, ‘okay, how are we operating?’ Especially the older groups, like Timbers Army or like Section 8: ‘this is how we’ve been operating, but is it the right way to operate?’ I think that really needs to be a big question going forward.”
“We are […] evaluating the different committees within the organization, looking to create more transparency and points of entry,” says Gabby Rosas, the newly-appointed president of the 107IST Board.
In the follow-up report from the 107IST, she shared the Board’s plan to reevaluate different areas of their operations. These include a BIPOC committee, a list of the specific places the Board is hoping to address, a summary of the outside groups the Board has formed partnerships with, and a handful of suggested books, podcasts, and movies.
“Personally, I have been reflecting on my own pathways into the organization, my own decision to run for the board, and advantages I’ve had as a white-passing person in Portland,” says Rosas, when asked about the work she’s done to examine the role of whiteness in the 107IST. “This is a large organization with many people who care passionately about the Timbers, the Thorns, supporter culture, and the community. It can be very intimidating, and I have not done a good job of recruiting and sustaining their participation, I should have been more extroverted when it comes to getting others involved in all aspects of what this organization does.”
She points to the barriers of entry that exist within the organization focusing on the time commitment asked of those involved. “There are many barriers to entry and advancement, from the supporter group involvement to the board election,” she explains. “I have been and will continue to identify barriers and address them.”
For Waddell, the hours asked of the BIPOC team was a major reason she didn’t join when invited. “I don’t really have time to volunteer to teach this Board how to just listen to people of color,” she says. “And I think there’s a lot more going on within the organization that they need to do to support people of color, but […] there’s no class you need to take or book you need to read or podcast you need to listen to to understand how to just listen to someone when they speak.”
The other factor was money. The BIPOC committee, like other 107IST committees and Board positions, is run by volunteer work. However, Waddell currently does diversity, equity, and inclusion work for her job, and felt it wasn’t worth taking on additional emotional labor—especially, for free.
Photo by Matthew Wolfe
The BIPOC team shares that they now have 20 members on board, 10 of whom are currently actively involved. According to the 107IST update post, the committee has met twice so far. They “plan on meeting again soon while we work on our mission statement and other tasks that include the board.”
When asked about how the member-led BIPOC committee will remain impartial in their evaluation of the 107IST, Rosas says: “Everyone’s experience with this organization is valuable, be it positive or negative, or if they are a member or non-member. We are also not opposed to working with other local groups for guidance and insight as this committee is formed.”
The committee is not following a specified timeline, but Rosas explains that the Board isn’t planning to sit around and wait. “The hope is that as we work to remove barriers for entry and highlight different pathways in our organization, we can do so in such a way that will address the needs of marginalized groups,” she says. “As we work on change, we will be doing so at a pace where we can check in with our community, including the BIPOC team, and local organizations that have offered their support. Our goal is to be able to incorporate the feedback and tasks from the BIPOC team as they want to provide it.”
One of the ways Rosas hopes to do this is by increasing the accessibility of Board meetings. “We have never had the attendance at another board meeting like we did the June meeting,” she shares, a meeting that happened virtually to accommodate for the COVID-19 pandemic. In response, the 107IST is moving their monthly meetings to online, accessible spaces. Rosas points specifically to Google Meet, which offers closed-captioning.
As another area of focus, she hopes to more actively work with local organizations that serve BIPOC communities and other marginalized groups. “If we can increase our engagement, both through volunteering and by inviting them to 107ist events, we will hopefully be able to improve the accessibility to joining the Rose City Riveters, Timbers Army, and 107ist,” she says.
To open up space for BIPOC voices, former 107IST Board member Ray Terrill stepped down from his position and asked that his spot to be filled by a person of color. Sherrilynn “Sheba” Rawson also resigned her presidency to Rosas, although Rawson remains on the Board.
For Ramirez, those changes aren’t good enough. “Until there are at least three seats on the board filled by BIPOC, I don’t think they can move forward on this,” she says.
Rosas believes that we’ll see that shift later in the year. She explains that, as advised by Western States Center’s Eric Ward, many members have chosen “to not resign but to work on the changes until BIPOC appointments can be made or elected.”
Come Board elections in November and December, Rosas thinks the leadership changes will materialize. “I imagine that a number of board members will either choose to not re-run or step down at that time,” she says. “We will actively work with the BIPOC team should individuals want to join the board. We not only want BIPOC members on the board but also on all of the committees throughout the organization.”
Key to this will be accountability; the 107IST will have to prove that they’re seeking out and paying attention to BIPOC voices going forward. “I think a major way to prove the 107ist board is actually listening is to make changes based on what is heard and then to keep checking in to see if the changes have had an impact,” says Rosas. “I expect that many aspects of the change that is needed will not be one and done.”
Whether or not those changes play out in meaningful ways remains to be seen. However, BIPOC fans speaking up now hope that, this time, listening to their stories is a first step.
“I really love this organization,” says Waddell. “I love the team, every single player, everybody who’s at the games, everybody who’s watching from home. It means a lot to me, and that’s why I do want to speak about it. It’s not out of hate, it’s out of we can do better, and we need to do better, and we have the passion to be better […] I really do love this organization and these groups, and everything I’m saying is out of the understanding that we can be better. We have to.”
There was a tweet today, from a certain talking head/professional troll in the soccer space, about how we’ve reached the point—four years after Colin Kaepernick lost his job for declaring his life mattered as much as those of his white teammates, four years after US Soccer prohibited its players from publicly standing with him—where athletes find it hard not to kneel for the anthem.
It’s an incredibly inane, annoying take, engineered to provoke outrage, and that’s why I’m not linking to it here. Still, I think it expresses a line of reasoning that appeals to broad segments of white America, and that line of reasoning is worth unpacking.
To get the obvious out of the way: being wrong about this issue, or any human rights issue, is not brave, merely evil.
To dig down a little further: if you were an alien just finding out about human customs, seeing the photo at the top of this article with no further context, you probably would come to the conclusion that human beings kneel on one knee before sporting events, and that not doing so is a breech of custom that takes a certain amount of courage. This is how our species is wired, for the most part; it’s difficult for us to do things other than what people around us are doing.
But that conclusion willfully erases context. These players didn’t all show up to the stadium and put on their Black Lives Matter shirts because they saw everyone else was wearing them; nobody scrambled to take a knee when the anthem started to avoid looking out of place. This was a concerted, intentional effort by players on both teams—across the whole league, even. They had talked about this. They had listened to each other. This was not an easy decision.
Conversations within teams didn’t all start right away. Simone Charley talked to The Equalizer about how hard it was, in the days after George Floyd’s murder, showing up to training and deciding to act like soccer mattered, and seeing how easily that decision came to her white teammates.
In Portland, it took a few days for those conversations to start—prompted by both Black and white players, but in particular, according to Sophia Smith, by AD Franch—and nobody should take for granted that they started at all. They happened because Black women on these teams did the work of talking to their white teammates about experiences those same teammates haven’t always been willing to listen to. This sport is as white as it’s ever been, and many of the players who kneeled today come from backgrounds that haven’t forced them to ever think critically about racism—that have, in fact, actively discouraged it.
So while it’s true there’s been a massive, sudden shift in public opinion over the last month on the acceptability of publicly opposing racism, don’t think for a second that this show of support for Black lives was a foregone conclusion. It wasn’t the brands that brought us here. It was Black players fighting for their lives and finally being heard by their teammates.
Furthermore, there are stark facts here, facts that will be recorded in history: these players took their stance in an empty stadium, but that empty stadium was on broadcast television. As the first American sports league to return to play. That’s the biggest platform women’s club soccer has ever been on.
The players knew what this platform meant. It meant they were opening themselves up to criticism that no doubt would also have been directed at male athletes doing the same thing, but which, no doubt, will be more vicious thanks to their gender. Have things changed since 2016, when Crystal Dunn didn’t kneel because she was afraid—for good reason—USSF might “rip up her contract“? Of course. But you’d have to be an alien to sincerely believe there won’t be backlash.
But this is what can’t get lost in the noise: the players also knew how significant the moment was, and they knew they had to take it, and use it to say something. It’s okay for us to be proud of that.
The danger is in letting this gesture exist as a mere gesture, and in deciding once the tournament is over that we’ve all done enough. It’s great that we’ve finally reached the point in this league where players can express solidarity against racism and police violence without fearing for their jobs. Now it’s on us, at home, to commit to standing with them and doing the actual work of putting an end to those things.
