“Many athletes visit kids in hospitals, start
foundations that fix inner-city playgrounds,
create scholarship funds to help poor students
attend college and make commercials urging kids
to stay in school and say no to drugs. But when
it comes to political dissent, few speak out on
big issues like war, sweatshop labor,
environmental concerns or the increasing gap
between rich and poor. While Hollywood
celebrities frequently lend their fame and
fortune to candidates and causes, athletes are
expected to perform, not pontificate. On the few
occasions when they do express themselves, they
are often met with derision and contempt.”
~ Kelly Candaele and Peter Dreier, “Where
Are the Jocks for Justice?” in
The Nation, June 28, 2004
In
conjunction with its exhibition “The Times They
Were A-Changin’: Baseball in the Age of
Aquarius” at the Burbank Central Library, the
Baseball Reliquary will present a lecture by
noted journalists and educators Kelly Candaele
and Peter Dreier. The lecture program will be
held on Wednesday, October 6, 2004 at 7:00 PM in
the Burbank Central Library Auditorium, 110 N.
Glenoaks Blvd., and is open to the public and
free of charge.
Entitled “Where Are the Jocks for
Justice?,” the lecture is based on Candaele’s
and Dreier’s provocative article of the same
title which was published earlier this year in
The Nation. The authors contend that
while the 1960s and ‘70s found some prominent
athletes using their celebrity status to speak
out on important issues, particularly civil
rights and Vietnam, there has been a significant
drop in activism among contemporary athletes,
due in part to cultural changes and lucrative
endorsements.
Kelly Candaele has written for the
Los Angeles Times, the New York Times,
The Nation, and other national
publications. His writing has largely focused on
the peace process in Northern Ireland and on Los
Angeles politics. He has produced and directed a
number of documentary films, winning an Emmy for
A League of Their Own, about his mother’s
years as a player in the All-American Girls
Professional Baseball League in the 1940s; he
also wrote the script for the feature film of
the same title. In 1996, Candaele was elected to
the board of directors of the Los Angeles
Community College District. He served as board
president in 2000 and was re-elected to a second
four-year term in 2002.
Peter Dreier is the Dr. E.P. Clapp
Distinguished Professor of Politics and director
of the Urban and Environmental Policy Program at
Occidental College in Los Angeles. He joined the
Occidental faculty in 1993 after serving for
nine years as Director of Housing at the Boston
Redevelopment Authority and senior policy
advisor to Boston Mayor Ray Flynn. For more than
two decades, Dreier has been involved in urban
policy as a scholar, a government official, a
journalist, and an activist for reform. He is
co-author of the forthcoming book, The Next
Los Angeles: The Struggle for a Livable City
(University of California Press). He has written
on a variety of baseball subjects for both local
and national publications. Although a lifelong
Democrat, Dreier allowed his parents to take him
to a Richard Nixon rally in his New Jersey
hometown in 1960 for the sole purpose of meeting
Jackie Robinson.
For further information on the
lecture, contact the Baseball Reliquary by phone
at (626) 791-7647 or by e-mail at
skpubs@earthlink.net. For directions,
contact the Burbank Central Library at (818)
238-5600.
This program is supported in part by
a grant from the Los Angeles County Arts
Commission. |