Fighting For Space
Disclaimer: What you are about to read might cause you some discomfort. It may challenge, somewhat severely, what your worldview is. I hope it generates some feeling in you, and more importantly, I hope it generates some thought.
For the children, look at the children. Look again. Someday they might ask us to explain ourselves. Staring out at the world that we’ve left them they might wonder what we were thinking in those days of old. When young people look at their surroundings and read their history books they come to some sort of agreement in their minds about how things work. If we are lucky they might ask their elders to explain what we’ve done to society. I pray we can be so lucky. Far better to deal with the reality of uncomfortable questions and unsettling truths than to pretend that everything is just fine.
The Rising Point started out of a desire to make a vision become a reality. In the city of Seattle—as in the rest of the nation—there are current realities of life that are the result of complex forces that have been with us for a long time. Truthfully, it no longer really matters how or why these issues got here, it’s just crucial that we deal with them responsibly. This requires a considerable effort on our part, because in order to deal with the challenges that plague us, we must understand and be honest with ourselves about who we are and the space we live in.
Space, that word and concept has grown considerably in my mind in recent months. As a soccer educator I’m constantly manipulating space in order to train players to perform certain actions. With any given training objective, determining the amount of space to use—as well as the number of athletes—goes a long way to ensuring the quality and fidelity of the session. Ultimately, whatever my learning target is for the team to improve, each training area must be an appropriate size in order for the activity to better relate to what the players will face in the larger game.
Beyond athletics, the idea of creating and managing space is a central theme of human history. Civilizations require space, land on which they construct their temples and houses. The story of our species is a story of conquest, which is the acquisition of space. The vast country we live in today exists because some men, fleeing terrible lives where they were, saw fit to rid the "new" land of “savages” in order to make room for their own. What is important to understand here is that the value of space has always trumped (pun intended?) the value of the human lives that are deemed unworthy. By this I mean that in the cruel process of conquest, the undesirable people who inhabit any given space are considered irrelevant by the powers that be. What happens to them is of no concern. This is why indigenous Americans got slaughtered, why parts of New Orleans were allowed to drown after Katrina, and why gentrification continues to happen seemingly without limits in major cities across the nation.
Now that we’ve gone through a super condensed crash course of world history, let’s come back to the battle we face in Seattle and what The Rising Point has to do with it. The struggle we face comes down to this: What kind of space(s) are we trying to create and who will have access to them? Those are the questions before us and they have always been here. Living space is what nationalism is all about, why executive travel bans are written, why walls go up, and why chronically oppressed people remain marginalized. When we conceive of constructing new spaces, if we are to be equitable and fight for those without power, then we must be intentional about what we want that space to be.
For as long as I can remember, elite youth soccer (access to quality coaching and fields) has been a space predominantly for middle class and affluent whites. That doesn’t mean there are not exceptions or that every white child has access to things that all children of color don’t. It simply means that the high cost of the sport and the neighborhoods in which it is most salient contribute to a significant access gap that mirrors (in so many ways) the inequalities in our schools. Seattle, Washington has one of the largest gaps in the nation when it comes to the education of white children compared to children of color in public schools. The progressive label of the city is a terrible joke. Let’s be clear, we have the same fight as the rest of the nation.
The struggle is how we conceptualize and manage space. What kind of space do we want and who will have access to it? This is where we must do a very challenging thing, something that can be especially difficult for white people, for males, for able-bodied people, heterosexuals, Christians, and anyone else who has some privilege relative to others. We must analyze the space that we are currently living in and how our assumptions (attitudes), our language, and our morality contribute to the atmosphere we create in those spaces. We must be willing to wrestle with how some spaces might be toxic for certain people and why too often there are entire groups that are wholly left out of the conversation—I wonder what Native Americans think when they hear the President talk about securing borders and taking the country back. The thought alone is sobering enough and it should prompt us to see the world through a different lens.
There is a very simple reason why such a process can be difficult for people with privilege to engage in. It’s because in many cases they never have to. If you are white, male, able-bodied, heterosexual, and/or Christian, then you are accustomed in some fashion to being in spaces where some part of your identity is privileged. This means, for example, that this able-bodied writer never has to pay attention to whether or not a particular building is accessible for people with disabilities. It’s not because I’m a bad person, it’s because I’m able-bodied. My mind won't think about a condition that doesn't apply to me unless I make the effort to do so. This means that if I were constructing a building, say a place for a new soccer program, then I must consider how I might make that space accessible for people with disabilities. This is the intentionality required if I truly want to create a space where everyone is welcome.
The Rising Point was born out of a desire to make education through soccer accessible to more kids, especially those who are chronically left out. This includes but is not limited to predominantly poor, recent immigrants, and non-white children. These children are central to the vision that informs the spaces we want to create. We are driven by the belief that what makes soccer so special is the ability to bring all forms of diversity together in one place. The logo, a hummingbird in mid-flight, symbolizes high standards and the pursuit of excellence. The eleven separate lines that make up the bird represent the 11 individuals on a soccer field who come together to form a whole. Together, we can reach higher.
In order to fulfill our mission, we are in a fight for space. We are in a battle to have a space to run our programs and we are in a battle to make sure that potential partners respect the space we are trying to create. As a business owner, I respect the need to protect a brand. Nevertheless, sometimes I question the motives that drive people because I don’t see their mission reflected in their product. If we say that our desire is to provide access to a particular group or segment of society, then those families must be represented in the spaces we create. What does it say about organizations that claim to be doing that work but continue to have spaces that are, for one reason or another, completely inadequate for the people they wish to serve?
I understand this is a difficult business venture and I don’t claim to have a patent on soccer coaching or social justice issues. The Rising Point is a way to make a learning space real in a place where I have yet to see it. There are some who might get offended by the assertions I make about history, managing space, and how it all relates to soccer and education. Tough, that’s for them to deal with. The fact is that every push back against the equitable use of living space is neither original nor morally sound. The reality in this country is that for far too long, white, wealthy, Christian males have been able to dictate the living space for all people and who has access to what. It’s time we faced that music and it’s time we created spaces for more voices to rise up. One way or another, we will leave a legacy for our children. The only question is what that legacy will be. For the children, look at the children. Look again. Look.
