Can Seattle’s progressives finally learn how to play ball?
by Alex Gallo-Brown
Seattle residents find themselves in a period of austerity and reaction. The public, weary of progressives’ seeming inability to deal with issues of public safety and homelessness, has turned to the right in recent years, electing a business-friendly mayor who once played football for the University of Washington. The City Council is the most conservative that it has been in decades, its newly elected members content to defer to the prerogatives of the Chamber of Commerce. The city’s baseball team insists on reducing payroll while earning some of the highest profits in the league.
Sports do not usually bring to mind egalitarianism or social justice. From billionaire team owners to millionaire athletes to fervid, fanatical fans, professional sports often exist at the intersection of toxic masculinity, corporate predation, and capitalist spectacle. There are exceptions (female basketball players’ promotion of LGBTQ rights; some football and male basketball players’ support of Black Lives Matter; college athletes’ recent efforts to unionize), but the rule generally holds. So why has Shaun Scott, activist, author, and former socialist candidate for Seattle City Council, devoted an entire book-length work to the history of Seattle’s sports?
Continue reading In ‘Heartbreak City,’ Shaun Scott Uses Seattle Sports as a Window Into Our City’s Politics and Culture