On Thursday morning, the WNBA levied fines against three teams and their players for donning uniforms worn to protest the recent spate of police killings of black people.
On Thursday afternoon, the players responded.
Following their game at Madison Square Garden, players from the New York Liberty and Indiana Fever, two of the teams that received the fines, refused to take questions about any subject other than Black Lives Matter, and the WNBA’s response to their protests.
“We feel like America has a problem with the police brutality that’s going on with black lives around here, and we just want to use our voices and use our platform to advocate for that,” the Liberty’s Tanisha Wright said according to Deadspin. “Just because someone says ‘Black Lives Matter’ doesn’t mean that other lives don’t matter. People put out this imaginary ‘black lives only matter’ whenever people say, ‘Black lives matter.’ What we’re saying is, ‘Black lives matter, too.’ Period.”
Wright continued:
We really feel like there’s still an issue here in America. And we want to be able to use our platforms, we want to be able to use our voices, we don’t want to let anybody silence us and what we want to talk about.
It’s unfortunate that the WNBA has fined us and not supported its players.
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