The Korean News Agency reported Jan. 8 that Korean leader Kim Jong Un and other sports fans gathered at Pyongyang Indoor Stadium to watch a basketball game between a team of ex-NBA stars, including Dennis Rodman, and Korean players from the Hwaebul team.

Minneapolis, MN – Over 800 people gathered here, Nov. 7, to demand the Washington Redskins change their racist name. Marching from the Minneapolis American Indian Center on Franklin Avenue south of downtown to the Vikings stadium, the protesters rallied in front of the Metrodome chanting, “Hey hey, ho ho, little red Sambo’s got to go!”

Saint Paul, MN – Members of the Welfare Rights Committee (WRC) ‘huddled’ in front of Governor Mark Dayton’s mansion Sept. 25. After a rally and speeches, low-income people hurled footballs over the locked fence. Written on streamers attached to the footballs were messages such as, “Help poor kids, not millionaires,” and “Raise the grants now!” Before they left, the protesters taped signs to the outside of the fence to hammer home the message.

Major League Baseball’s place in the history of the battle for equality and civil rights is an embarrassment. Black ballplayers were banned from the major leagues for over 75 years until 1947 when Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier. Nothing can make that right, but people of conscience are demanding that Major League Baseball (MLB) move the 2011 All-Star Game from its currently scheduled site in Arizona to “Anywhere else!” in protest of the recent passage of the racist anti-immigrant SB1070.

The World Cup has caught on here in the USA. The soccer matches are on flat screen televisions in sports taverns across the country. The right wing xenophobes that denounced soccer find themselves in a pickle. Americans, like everyone else in the world, actually enjoy the game.

Joy. Not just for communists, but anyone. You could see it when New Zealand’s Winston Reid surprised everyone with his first international goal as time ran out on the match against Slovakia. It was a good goal, but his joy, that of his teammates and ‘Kiwis’ everywhere was unsurpassed. Celebration at its best! This is repeated over and over at each World Cup.

The Palestinian National Football (soccer) Team functions, or barely functions, under more difficult conditions than any other team in the world. Players from Gaza cannot travel to the West Bank or Jerusalem, West Bankers cannot travel to Jerusalem or Gaza and neither Gazans nor West Bankers can enter the 1948 Palestinian territories (now called ‘Israel’).