MELO OFF MARK
Anthony fails to bring attention to broken American justice system during Olympics
We didn’t know anything about the Oromo people until the final day of the Rio Olympics, until right after the marathon, when Feyisa Lilesa crossed the finish line as the silver medalist and threw his arms overhead, his wrists forming an “X.”
It was a symbol in Lilesa’s native Ethiopia, one that had been used for months by the Oromo, who have been protesting for equal rights. It was a captivating gesture for the world to see, forcing everyone to realize the ugliness of Ethiopia, where Lilesa said the government is “killing my people . . . My relatives are in prison and if they talk about democratic rights, they are killed.”
Lilesa’s was the gesture that we’d all expected to see from Carmelo Anthony. But on Sunday, there was no such powerful moment from the USA Basketball veteran. Instead, the Knick who morphed into a powerful voice for social change this summer delivered a simple message after winning gold in Rio, saying the United States has “got to be united,” and “America will be great again, I believe that.
“I’m glad we represent- ed it in the fashion that we did,” he told reporters.
Except you wished Anthony had done more with his Olympic moment; you wished that he’d been more like Lilesa. And a month ago, when Melo was delivering an Instagram manifesto calling for peace, when Melo was saying in a column penned for The Guardian, that the Olympic platform was “a chance to do something meaningful before an audience of billions,” you thought that might happen.
But then came a fortnight in Rio in which Anthony played his part as a model American citizen, and missed a golden opportunity to force change back home. No, Anthony didn’t do anything wrong, and even though he didn’t channel Tommie Smith and John Carlos, you can’t question his commitment to social change. Not after everything he’s already done stateside, not after he made a point to mention the issues plaguing these United States just moments after his Olympic coda.
But there was so much more power in Lilesa’s action, a potency that Anthony’s words lacked. Lilesa simultaneously educated us all on the Ethiopian struggle and forced his government to react, accomplishing both tasks only at great cost to himself. It’s because of Lilesa’s actions that Olympic readers now know that more than 400 Oromo have been killed while protesting in Ethiopia since November, because of Lilesa that a few more nations are aware that the Oromo are poor and marginalized in a nation undergoing a rapid economic boom.
And it’s because of Lilesa that Ethiopia had to make a statement. On Sunday, Lilesa had openly said he might need to defect, because the Ethiopian government does not treat such political actions lightly, that “maybe they will kill me, if not kill me, they will put me in prison.”
On Monday, Ethiopian spokesperson Getachew Reda told Fana Broadcasting Corporate, a state-affiliated radio station, that the runner “will not face any problems for his political stance . . . After all, this is an athlete who secured a silver medal for his country.” There could be more questions from more international media to come, too, now that Lilesa has shined a light on the struggles of his nation.
It is precisely these things that Anthony’s more trite message didn’t accomplish. He spoke strictly to Americans from Rio, missing (perhaps intentionally) a chance to captivate the entire world, to draw everyone’s attention to the flawed American justice system that he himself has called “broken” and to acknowledge the U.S. racial mess on an international stage.
Lilesa forced his nation to cautiously OK his actions.
Anthony seems interested in working through government to correct our nation’s flaws. Law enforcement was present at his town hall meeting in Los Angeles, after all. And the Knick made a point to thank everyone for “allowing me to be one of the leaders, not just of our team but of our country.”
Nobody had allowed Lilesa to be that kind of leader. On Sunday, he led by example, all by himself.