More than Just a Game: A conversation on sports and politics with Dave Zirin and John Carlos

Next Thursday, the Women’s Resource Center, the LGBT Resource Center and the Office of Multicultural Affairs will host left sportswriter Dave Zirin and 1968 Olympic athlete John Carlos.

John Carlos, along with Tommy Smith, was part of an organizing effort called the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR). This campaign involved numerous athletes who were attempting to draw global attention to racism and other human rights violations.

The OPHR was not only protesting South African apartheid, they were demanding the re-instatement of boxer Muhammad Ali and condemning the 1968 student massacre in Mexico City that took place just prior to the 1968 Olympics.

This was the backdrop to the action that John Carlos and Tommy Smith took, when they raise their fists demonstrating Black Power.

More than four decades later Carlos, along with sportswriter Dave Zirin have written an autobiography entitled the John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment that Changed the World. Carlos and Zirin bring their message of how sports and politics have always intersected to the downtown campus of GVSU, where Carlos will tell his life story and Zirin will talk about his most recent film, Not Just a Game: Power, Politics and American Sports.

This event is free and open to the public.

Not Just a Game: Politics and Power in American Sports

Dave Zirin & John Carlos

Thursday, February 2

4:00PM

Grand River Room, Kirkhof Center

GVSU Allendale Campus