Political Play: Day Laborers Stage Tournament at the Rose Bowl

by Fernando Romero, Guest Writer

Fútbol has long been used as a key organizing tool for day laborers and immigrant communities in Southern California. One perfect expression of this fact: The National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) was born out of a pickup game between two teams made up of jornaleros (day laborers). 

The game that birthed the organization has grown into an annual tournament, played this past Sunday at the Rose Bowl. Jornaleros from all over the Los Angeles region competed in the 10th Annual Day Laborer Soccer Cup, on teams representing labor centers or street corners from Los Angeles, Orange County and Inland Empire. Jornaleros, community leaders, students, activists, futbol fans (and yours truly) found themselves on the fields adjacent to the Rose Bowl on one of the mistiest days in recent memory. I was privileged enough to play with the team from Riverside.

This year’s tournament was played in the midst of one the ugliest moments in recent history for immigrants, documented or undocumented. The political climate in California and throughout the country has taken a range of horrifying shape, from the overt racism of Tea Party candidates (and the communities they purport to represent) to Arizona’s SB 1070, undocumented workers and immigrants are increasingly under attack from demagogue politicians and legal policies aimed to scapegoat and oppress. (Click here or here for information about immigration reform.)

The day’s events began with a press conference and an opening ceremony that included an introductory procession of each team. Each team held a banner with a theme relating to a current immigration issue such as the DREAM Act, Section 287 (g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, E-verify, the Safe Communities Initiative, and, of course, SB 1070. Members of each team gave a brief description of their theme and the immigration policy or issue it represented. NLDON organizer Eddie Gonzalez explained, “the banners were meant to communicate a message between local governments and media that this is what the workers are asking for.”

West Los Angeles took the championship, Laguna Beach came in second, Pasadena third and Rancho Cucamonga fourth. The true purpose of the tournament was not the distribution of trophies, but to a plant a seed of political/social consciousness for the day laborers, a demographic that for their struggles as part of the working class and their invisibility in society, seem to carry the burden of the immigration issue on their backs. 

Gonzalez said the tournament has been used as an organizing tool, but also to give the jornaleros a day to come together as a community. He said the event also allows for the jornaleros to come together and work for a common goal.  “The hardest part (of the tournament) was getting the players there. Along with the jornaleros, we organized car washes in order to fundraise for transportation and other things needed for the tournament.”

Gonzalez explained that the anti-immigrant climate is felt by the entire community. Scare tactics used by anti-immigrant groups in the Inland Empire kept regular players from participating in the tournament and some of their members had recently been deported in raids. Most notably, last Fall, a Neo-Nazi group had fixated on a day laborer site at a Home Depot in Riverside near the 91 freeway, and gathered there to stage a series of racist protests, shouting “American jobs for American people” and “white power”. 

The atmosphere of the tournament itself was removed from the everyday struggles of the workers, who must navigate such extremism just to make a living. Instead, the mood was upbeat and relaxed - like that of any other Sunday in Latin America, where the day revolves around family and fútbol, whether one be in Los Angeles or Lima.

“You can see it their excitement to play and take part in the event, “ Gonzalez observed. "For a lot of them this day is the only time when they can forget about being a day laborer. When they can wake up and not have to worry about standing in a corner and wait for a job to come around. The one day you’re able to take away from being in the shadow.”

It’s been said that in places where people are poor, and mad for soccer, a revolution could be based on the sport’s intrinsic ties to the working class. That because of soccer’s appeal to the working class along with its mass following, it could serve as the spark for social change. I’ve been present at immigration rallies here in California that have implemented chants born out of soccer stadiums in Latin America. And every time, it’s a vivid reminder of the power of soccer to bring about social and political change.

People living in exile tend to be in contact with other people also in exile and share similar experiences. The purpose of the tourney is to bring together the day laborer community, a community so invisible, and distant from each other that no other activity or past time seemed apt to motivate them enough to give up a precious Sunday and drive to Pasadena.

Most of the players would not identify themselves as “political”, but it does not matter: the tournament aims to bring a sense community to a demographic so disenfranchised and invisible that it seems that only through soccer could that sense of community ever be accessed. The revolution may not be televised, but it might just start on a soccer field. 

Thank you Fernando for sharing this story with From a Left Wing! I'm finishing a book project, and have not been able to post regularly. Fernando worked with me and Alan Minsky on The People's Game and also worked on Gustavo Arellano's much loved program "Ask a Mexican" - both on KPFK, 90.7 Los Angeles.

Notes on Nigerian Football Scandals & the Amazing Falconets

Dr. Amos Amadu

Today Naija Football 247 reposted a Sahara Reporters story about journalist Olukayode Thomas's struggle with the Nigerial football/sporting executive Amos Adamu (FIFA and CAF executive board member). "How a David Defeated Goliath in a Nigerian Court" is well worth reading, as is a more recent story on the same site about the place of that scandal in FIFA's delay of the 2018 World Cup bid ("Nigeria's Amos Adamu Offers to Sell FIFA Hosting Rights for 500,000").

As most sports sections report on the corruption in the Nigerian football association, few seem to notice that in the midst of this story, Nigeria's U20 women's squad became the first African team to play in a World Cup championship final match. After beating the always strong Japan at the group stage, and knocking out the U.S. in the quarter finals (highlights of Nigeria's defeat of the US), the Falconets took down Columbia (another great story of the tournament) to reach the championship match. There, they lost (as so many do) to Germany 2-0 (highlights of that game here).

The story of Thomas's fight with Adamu (who has sued the Guardian journalist for libel) provides an interesting context for understanding the administrative chaos that surrounds the sport in Nigeria.

Nigeria's 2010 U20 Women's Squad, "The Falconets"

It is hard to imagine how the women's program survives at all - and they don't just survive. This summer, they played very smart football - the kind of well-organized, conservative game associated with perrenial powerhouses like the U.S. and Germany. Nigeria's women's teams are always stacked with talent and play well against much more well-funded and administratively stable sides.

And the more I read about what's going on in Nigeria's sporting community, the more I want to know about these players, and the men and women who support them. These are the unheralded superstars of the sport - for they do this with no hope of riches and international fame.

(And sorry for disappearing - am finishing a non-football related project!)

Wanlov the Kubolor's "Goal Again"

Wanlov the Kubulor produced Yellow Card in honor of the World Cup - it is, start to finish, a joy. This is my favorite World Cup related music - it's actually a concept album that lives up to the complexity of its idea.  Wanlov hails from Ghana (he was born in Romania & lived for a bit in the US), Yellow Card follows Green Card - and in the move from one to the other, I think you get a sense of the connections he makes. He calls his style/practice/philosophy "Pidgin music" - it's a hybrid of contemporary Ghanaian scenes. This album is clearly inspired by the texture of the everyday intersections of music and football in his home country. Yellow Card manages to be both upbeat and grouchy - the music of a passionate and beleaguered fan. "Goal Again" appears in the background to the "Obama We Are Sorry" World Cup celebration video I posted a couple weeks ago, and I just had to track it down.  I thought I'd share it with you all. Be prepared to move.

I believe you can download the album, legally, here. Wanlov the Kubolor has been giving this music away - but check out 2007's Green Card, too, which he sells on itunes.

Why We Fight (for real sports coverage)

Fans like yours truly want sports writers to sink their nasty little teeth into better topics than irrelevant fights between amateur players, playing in matches that matter to no one but those teams and their campuses.

We would like: Nasty rants about the shit refereeing in the women's college game (because that matters nationally). Cynical swipes at Marta's Amway deal. Follow up on rumors that players have been selling Amway to make up for their crap salaries, and let's hear more about that agent of Marta's while we are looking at the business side of things. How about some paranoid writing about the UNC-Chapel Hill cult. Let's hear about who pays for retired NWT players' knee surgeries. And why not rip into AEG, for the "good will" this WPS sponsor garnered for themselves while they sold out the best team in the league. (Called it here, natch.)

How about some bitching about player development systems? The weirdness of international scouting for the WPS? And the fact that FIFA can't think of anyone who knows how to play soccer besides Marta. (I mean, she's great - amazing - but four years in a row? Seriously?) Let's push up against the milktoast vibe of the USWNT while we are at it, and call out the US Soccer Federation on its apologetic attitude that the women's team has a (MUCH) better record than the men's team in international competition, as if this was something one should be sorry for. Or: let's call out FIFA on their paternalism and test this hypothesis: FIFA's involvement with the women's game has set the development of the women's game in most countries BACK, because FIFA requires that the women's program be run by - you guessed it - the men who run national football associations. Who are mostly corrupt bastards. Why won't FIFA deal with a separately organized National Women's Football Association in those countries which have failed their women's program?  Like: India, Uruguay, South Africa and, oh, let's say Spain.

Sports fans want their sport taken seriously - this doesn't mean uncritical boosterism - far from it.  We want reports on the highs, and the lows - especially the lows! - the problem with women's soccer has been that the real lows (see above) are not reported. Instead we get nothing, and then a blip of hysterical shit about how violent the women's game is (see the men's World Cup final, anyone??), and an open invitation to the morons who never watch the women's game, ever, to give their opinions about how lame it is. 

Every now and again someone writes something real about the game - Grant Wahl and Andrea Canales's stories about Hope Solo's return to the US Women's National Team after the World Cup fiasco, for example.  Coverage like this is rare - and, frankly, that controversy would have had a very different shape if sports writers had been more critically engaged with the USWNT from the start.

Sports fans gripe and complain, we obsess and worry.  Fans of the women's game have few forums to vent about the real stuff - and it's infuriating to watch this stories go uninvestigated and unremarked upon. We deserve better stories than the "news" that women lose their tempers. Much better.

News Flash: Women Fight!!!

The Huffington Post published a sensational story on its front page - players in a college soccer match got into a FIGHT! Can you BELIEVE it? Players, shoving each other?! Throwing sneaky punches? And then they got EJECTED from the match! Damn, that's intense. Oh, wait. That's not news. 

Women get into a scuffle!  In a college soccer match! And get two red cards for it! And make headlines!  I am so sick of this shit. If it were the WPS, yes, that's news - if the fight were truly spectacular, which this is not. But hey, why cover the WPS?

(The actual event is so singularly uninteresting that it boggles the mind. This is, to my mind, even worse than the Lambert incident, because not only was the confrontation totally ordinary, it was also properly refereed! Where is the news here??? My god - how many men 's teams finish with 10 players on the pitch because of stuff like this? It's utterly banal.) 

Scuffles, fights, shoving matches - none of this should ever be news because the players involved are women. That is the only reason this is considered newsworthy here - the only reason.

If we accept that as newsworthy - well, what else should we make headlines out of?

Women are competitive! Women get pissed off! Sometimes, they lose their temper! STOP THE PRESSES!!

Actually, I mean that last bit.

Stop this sexist press, or I am coming over there with my soccer-playing harpie warrior bitches, we are going to foul the living daylights out of you. And we aren't going to be pulling no ponytails.

Oh, sorry, was that too aggressive? Did I lose my ladylike composure?

I'm so fed up with stories about women losing it on the field - this is full-on media collaboration with the worst aspects of sexism: Make women out to be monsters, all the while burying the story of the very real links between violence against women, homophobia, and the mainstream sports culture that media produces.

"Dock Ellis & the LSD No-No" by James Blagden

This is brilliant.  James Blagden illustrates Dock Ellis's incredible (true) story about pitching on acid. Courtesy of No Mas TV .

Sports Writing Blues

Lately, I find I do not have much to say. In June and July I watched all but two World Cup matches, read enormous amounts of football journalism, and contributed to the genre in my own way via this blog and daily podcasts for The People's Game.  I loved this - especially the podcasts which gave me a chance to talk with bloggers I've been reading, who define my "imagined community." But by the end, I found that I had less and less to say. My co-host's queries regarding who I thought would win the matches left me increasingly annoyed. I started off reluctant, offering up who I would have liked to see win, but by the end I just declared "I have no idea." It isn't to say that I have no expertise (I did say the final would be determined by how a team handled the other team's fouling, natch), but naming the winner and loser of a match scarcely matters to me - it's interest value is dwarfed by the question of what kind of game it would be. 

Beware of sports writers who pretend to mastery of the facts. I come across a different version of these people in academia - they can recite a bunch of dates, or quote Hegel, and for this reason they seem to think that they've figured it all out. The ones who listen, however, who have a good sense of humor and know how to hold contradiction in their head without trying to resolve it - those are the ones who are most likely to say something interesting, something insightful, something new.

More often than not, sports pundits are writing with the certainty of hindsight, finding in what they've just seen evidence of what they already know.  (The one genre in sports writing that seems to escape this problem is the live streaming match report, an emerging art.)

Reader, beware of the sense of mastery which comes at the cost of a sense of wonder.  Who can say why Gyan missed his penalty, or that "any player" would have done as [Suarez] did? Who can say why Iniesta can find his shot under so much pressure, how he can make that look like the easiest thing in the world? Why would we want to know these things, anyway? These qualities are unquantifiable, the events are inexplicable, and this is why they fascinate.

Much of the "hard" stories in sports, on the other hand, go unreported. What the hell is going on with the French FA? And Nigeria's Football Association? FIFA supervises football associations, but who supervises FIFA?  Why did AEG back out of the LA Sol? What can fans of women's football do to combat the media's indifference to our sport?

So, I am avoiding the bloody pointless predictions of the EPL's new season. And fake scandals about WAGS, and managerial ego.  Instead, I am going get back my writer's mojo by re-reading Soccer in Sun and Shadow for the umpteenth bizillionth time. And then I'll be back to explain why FIFA shouldn't have anything to do with women's football, the wonders of midnight pickup games in Los Angeles, and stuff like that.

'Obama We Are Sorry' - possibly best World Cup memory from Ghana

Flashback: This video captures the euphoria in the streets of Ghana just after the Black Stars knocked the US out of the World Cup.

Great music in the background - the two most prominent are football-inspired: Richy Pitch's awesome "Football Jama", and Wanlov The Kubolor's "Goal Again". Thank you to photographer Rodney Quarcoo for filming and sharing this.  His website: http://www.ayigbeboy.com.

Pied La Biche's reenactment of the 1982 World Cup semifinal between West Germany and France

Pied La Biche's Refait (2010) reconstructs the last fifteen of a 1982 World Cup semifinal between West Germany and France. The last fifteen minutes of that match were penalty kicks, the worst sort of tournament drama. (The Guardian gives a detailed survey of this historic match here.) For this work, the artists' collective repeats the movements and gestures of all the players, referees and staff - not on a field, but in ordinary urban spaces. The soundtrack cuts back and forth between a broadcast of the 1982 match, and guys talking about their memories of the game.

Refait from Pied La Biche on Vimeo.

This is one of the most awesome works of football art I've ever seen - and it isn't Pied La Biche's only football-centered project.

The same collective organized and documented a tournament of three-sided football for the Lyon Biennial this past year.  In doing so, they realized a 1964 proposal for an anti-bourgeois and dialectal game, written by the Danish artist Asger Jorn. 

Triolectique / Triolectics from Pied La Biche on Vimeo.

Thank you Amelia and Amanda for turning me on to these folks.

Accidents of Fate: Rättskiparen (The Referee)

Rättskiparen (The Referee) is short documentary about Martin Hansson, the referee who missed Thierry Henry's handball. A Swedish television program had already committed to this project before the infamous incident which kept Ireland from going to South Africa. The station's plan had been to track the country's top ranked referee in the months leading up to the 2010 World Cup - as fate would have it, the story of course got more complex with that one game. It's an incredible portrait - part of a wave of films looking at referees. This one has an unusually personal quality to it.

Regime Change: Africa in the World Cup Final

Fifa's match reporters seem surprised that Nigeria made it to the U20 Women's World Cup finals. They write:

Few...would have predicted that Nigeria, representatives of an African continent which had never before sampled life beyond the quarter-finals of any FIFA Women’s World Cup or Olympic Games, would be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with them. Sunday’s final in Bielefeld is therefore full of intrigue and fascination.

I must be one of the few. If you watched the women's games in the last Olympics, you might remember that Nigeria drew the toughest group - playing Germany, Brazil, and North Korea in the first round. The Super Falcons gave all three teams a tough time - they played some of the most entertaining attacking football in the tournament.  Watching Nigeria play Brazil, you couldn't help but think you were watching the future of the women's game - neither squad enjoys the institutional support they deserve from their football federations, and they compete well against teams lionized for not only the talent on the field, but for the organizational commitment behind the players. Brazil and Nigeria's senior squads would be contenders for next year's World Cup championship were they supported at even a quarter of the level awarded to their male counterparts. (Boy am I tired of writing sentences like that one.)  Both have fans in their home countries, and both play in styles that reflect the ethos associated with South American and African teams, but which seems lost in the men's game these days.

The Nigerians have not scored the outrageous number of goals that other squads have managed in some of the tournament's ill-matched confrontations.  But the Germans, who have 18 goals in their column, played the woeful French and Costa Rican squads in round one and rolled over the S. Korean squad, with 5 goals to their 1. And the Nigerians have kept the number of goals scored against them low - at 4, they have given up one fewer than Germany.  Furthermore, the Nigerians beat the US youth squad - symbolically, I can't think of a better result for the international game.

In the wonderfully titled article "Our Women Rule the World," Nigerian journalist Ikeddy Isiguzo writes,

USA is the most dominant country in global female football and its U-20 team has never failed to reach the semi-final since the competition started in 2002.

It was the defending champion, and had garnered two wins, a third and fourth place in the four previous competitions  no other country has a record close to this.

Another article, on Nigeria's semifinal win over Columbia is headlined "What Our Men Couldn't Do."  Ghana getting past Uruguay would have been historic. But Nigeria's women beating USA? Or Germany? That would be a ground-breaking victory for not just Nigeria and indeed for Africa's women's teams, but for all women's teams that aren't USA or Germany.  When so few teams play in finals so often, it makes victory for the rest feel impossible - it makes the whole system feel rigged.  It furthermore feeds the defeatist attitude that defines the approach of the vast majority of national FAs (which think: women's football sucks, women don't play well, nobody cares about it, and they will lose anyway).

So, yes, Germany should be favored in this match. But I think anyone who sees the Falconets as unlikely finalists or accidental contenders has not been following the women's game very closely. And I guess that includes FIFA itself.

U20 Women's World Cup: more questions than answers

This photograph was posted yesterday on the US Women's National Team blog, without comment. I am going to follow their lead, and say nothing about it - turning instead to the questions raised by the results of the first round of play in FIFA's U20 Women's World Cup.

Can someone please explain how the English women's U20 squad ends up in the bottom of its group?  And how Japan, which has a great senior squad, doesn't advance? Mexico made it through - this is fantastic news - is anyone talking about this? What is women's soccer like in Mexico, anyway? Columbia is in the quarter finals too? (Is it just me, or did their group look, well, like a cakewalk?) North Korea eliminated Brazil from contention - huh? What? And why did South Korea keep their superstar Ji So Yun on the bench for the first half? 

And what is up with Korean women's soccer, anyway? They have been a strong side for a while, and both North and South Korea advanced out of their groups. An educated guess: Strong support for women's soccer in the national football associations of these countries is manifesting in these young sides showing us who is developing their talent, and who isn't.  Is it just me, or do Ghana and Nigeria play a version of the game that looks, well, fun? When I see them play, I want to join the team.  Why is that?  Is it just me, or do some of these less heralded squads have unreal talent on them - where do those women play when they aren't playing for their national squads?

I am all questions - no answers, because I am on the road. It isn't like I can pick up a local sports paper to get this information. I managed to catch a few minutes of a streaming live broadcast of Japan's 3-1 thrashing of the English squad.  It was a European sports channel which had - gasp - a FEMALE CALLING THE MATCH.  She was awesome - very witty, in a deadpan girl-jock sort of way. When the guy announcer said that the English side needed to do something, she said, "Uhm, like, score?"  I split my sides laughing.  I am suffering from World Cup burn-out, and have had my fill of the utterly meaningless chatter filling up space, and I'm done with acrobatic statements avoiding the obvious. Another question: Who is she?!

Boy would I love something besides the FIFA reports to read - thank goodness for All White Kit. For some answers to the above, check out AWK.  (I'm following The Girls in the Cheap Seats, too - a new podcast covering all sorts of soccer stuff - hilarious statement about the USWNT U20 team's underwhelming performance against Ghana - "I felt like I was watching the men's team.") But before you hop over there, I am hoping a few of you will fill in these gaps in our collective knowledge in the comments section....