WNBA: “Power of the Dream” documentary encapsulates the power of the W

In the summer of 2020, the entire world was in a state of stagnation and fear.

The COVID-19 pandemic was ravaging and there seemed to be no end in sight. As if that wasn’t enough, America, in particular, was in the thick of a long-overdue racial reckoning following the killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery by police. Not to mention, it was a contentious election year.

With everything shut down, everybody masked up and with very little to do, athletes took on the task of getting involved politically in a way that hadn’t been seen since the 1960s and 1970s, when the likes of Muhammad Ali, Curt Flood, Billie Jean King, Bill Russell and Arthur Ashe defined athlete activism. In 2020, athletes were in the streets leading marches, regularly using social media to call for justice, encouraging fans to vote and willingly sacrificing a pay day to take a stand.

Such activism was embodied by the 144 players in the WNBA, as captured in the new Prime Video documentary Power of the Dream, directed by Dawn Porter and produced by Sue Bird’s production company, TOGETHXR. The film features WNBA players Bird, Elizabeth Williams, Layshia Clarendon and Nneka Ogwumike, along with social and cultural commentator Jemele Hill, ESPN reporter Holly Rowe, WNBPA executive director Terri Jackson and others.

The documentary explains how social justice has been woven into the fabric of the WNBA since the league’s inception in 1997, especially regarding issues of racial justice, gender equality, and LGBTQ+ rights. WNBA players were ahead of the curve in 2016 when they called for accountability in the aftermath of the police killings of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, one month before Colin Kaepernick took a knee. The documentary then shows how 2020 was the culminating moment, when the players were galvanized into action by the likes of Natasha Cloud, Renee Montgomery and Angel McCoughtry, all of whom chose to pause their playing careers and focus on activism.

But the league’s social and political engagement went into overdrive due to the comments made by then-Atlanta Dream owner and appointed GOP senator Kelly Loeffler. She heavily criticized the Black Lives Matter movement, saying that it was a movement rooted in “Marxism,” was “anti-Semitic” and promoted the “destruction of the nuclear family,” among other things. The players didn’t take those comments lying down. As they were transitioning to life in the bubble in Orlando, they decided to use the COVID-restricted season not just to play, but to play with a purpose.

They teamed up with the Say Her Name campaign founded by scholar/activist Dr. Kimberlee Williams Crenshaw to put the spotlight on Breonna Taylor and other Black women and girls killed by law enforcement. They walked off the court before the playing of the national anthem in a statement of protest. They joined with the Orlando Magic and Milwaukee Bucks of the NBA by not playing scheduled games after Jacob Blake was shot by police in Kenosha, WI, a risky move for many of the players considering that they would have lost a huge chunk of money.

Still not forgetting the comments made by Loeffler, who, in turn, further criticized the league for its social justice stances, the players decided to get involved in Georgia run-off election, which would determine the party that would control of the US Senate.

The Democratic primary field was crowded with 21 candidates. Amongst those was Rev. Raphael Warnock, the pastor of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. After a thorough vetting process, the players decided as a collective to endorse Rev. Warnock’s candidacy. The players, including the Dream, came into the arena in Orlando wearing shirts reading “Vote Warnock,” met with him on Zoom calls and promoted get out the vote efforts on social media.

Photo by Ned Dishman/NBAE via Getty Images

The impact was almost immediate. Before the players got involved, Warnock was polling at nine percent; after their involvement, he became the Democratic nominee. On Jan. 5, 2021, Rev. Warnock defeated Loeffler in the run-off to become Georgia’s first Black senator, and along with the victory by Democrat Jon Ossoff, the Democrats controlled the Senate, in addition to the House and the White House with the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Shortly thereafter, Loeffler relinquished her Dream ownership shares and a new ownership group, led by former Dream player Renee Montgomery, took control of the franchise.

The film makes a point to highlight that it was the actions of the WNBA that made political history.

In an interview with Swish Appeal, TOGETHXR co-founder Jessica Robinson shares everything that went into the making of the film and the impact it hopes to generate.

What went into TOGETHXR wanting to tell this story? And why now?

TOGETHXR wanted to tell the story about how a group of women, in this case all 144 players in the WNBA took on a team owner who happened to be a US Senator and in turned flipped a Georgia seat and saved democracy in 2020. This, in my opinion, will go down as one of the most powerful examples of athlete activism that exists throughout the history of our culture, certainly throughout the history of sports. It is an incredibly relevant story. We are going into an election year where once again, in particular, voters’ rights, women’s rights, Trans rights and LGBTQIA+ rights are in peril.

What does this story say about the power of athletes?

This is a story about power, who is traditionally considered powerful. This is about celebrating and centering and pulling from the margins those who we don’t necessarily deem powerful and give power to. And in this case, we’re talking about Black women, we’re talking about queer women, which largely both of those communities comprise the WNBA. This also, as Terri Jackson says in the film, is a civics lesson. This is an example, a model of mobilization. This is an example for all of us who believe in democracy tomorrow.

This story not only gives power back to these women and out of the hands of a team owner who happened to be a US Senator, who at the time we would have considered more powerful than them. That’s not true. This story also speaks to the power of athletes as a collective. Athletes are massive cultural icons. They shape our culture and, in particular, female athletes move our culture forward. It is impossible to talk about women’s sports without also addressing and recognizing and acknowledging all of the cultural -isms and intersections in which women’s sports exist. You can’t talk about women’s sports without talking about intersections of race, gender, sexuality, class and so on.

These women cannot wake up and just go do their job. They can’t just play their sport. When they wake up their very existence is political. It has been politicized, governed. They wake up every single day and their existence is one that has to navigate those cultural intersections: undue inequity, undue bias and, in some cases, undue legislation that has purposely disempowered them.

I can think of no better example of the power of athletes, but, in particular, the power of female athletes, the power of women and the power of women as a collective than what you see in Power of the Dream. The director Dawn Porter did an incredible job tracing history of activism throughout the course of the WNBA and layering—step by step, example by example—that these women have been about this. They’ve had to be about this.