The 68 Olympics: remembering Peter Norman

LtoR Norman, Smith, Carlos

 I am so lucky to have grown up during the 60’s.  What an incredible decade. The colonial revolutions were driving out direct occupation anyway.  Ten million French workers struck and occupied factories.  The music and art scene was flourishing. The Women’s rights movement was in full swing as was the civil rights movement and the Black Panthers in the US, influencing the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland.

I wouldn’t say I was consciously political but even the blues that I listened to was political as while Big Bill Broonzy or T Bone Walker weren’t known as political figures, if you were black and from the US and sang about life, you sang about politics, racism, injustice, lynchings (Strange Fruit).  On of my favorite singers, Nina Simone, didn’t pull too many punches. I was just a bit juvenile that’s all, but it did sink in.

Like many young working class guys at the time though, I was a bit afraid of the likes of Malcolm X and some aspects of the Panthers, mostly because the media demonized them but I also didn’t understand the whole situation and hadn’t yet been introduced to the political ideas that would have helped me understand more.  Malcolm X didn’t help with some of his comments about white people, putting us all in the same boat. And we should not fail to recognize that Malcolm X was killed when he was moving towards working class unity and socialist ideas, not when he was attacking white people as whites---all the same.

In 1968 at the Mexico Olympics, the two hundred meters gold medal was won by the American Tommie Smith and another American John Carlos won the bronze.  Smith and Carlos were both black.  On the podium with them was the silver medal winner, the Australian Peter Norman.  Smith and Carlos had decided to make a statement at the medal ceremony.  They raised their fists in the air, wore no shoes to protest poverty and beads to protest lynchings. Smith and Carlos paid for their actions with a suspension and removal from the Olympic village. They were vilified by many who said that their actions brought disgrace on the US and they received death threats as well. 

I came to recognize them for the heroic figures they were.  But I remember back then seeing the white guy Norman standing there and I wondered what it must be like for him.  After all, wasn’t this black power salute an attack on all white people? I was sure that the black guys would never have included him in their plans. But they did. It was only recently I found out that Smith and Carlos had discussed their plan with Norman after the race. Norman suggested they wear the black gloves which is why Smith is raising his right fist and Carlos his left.

They asked Norman if he believed in human rights and if he believed in god.  He told them he would stand with them and wore an Olympic Project for Human Rights badge on his chest in solidarity. It is one of the most powerful scenes of the 20^thcentury, these two guys standing there, fists in the air, heads down and Norman with them. Norman said afterwards, "I believe every man is born equal." 

Smith and Carlos were demonized in the media and suffered racial abuse and name calling on top of their suspension for what they did. Norman’s solidarity cost him his athletic career. He was excluded from the Australian team at the 1972 Olympics despite running qualifying times. The Australian media airbrushed him from history despite being one of 

Smith and Carlos lead pallbearers at Norman's funeral

that country’s greatest athletes. This is how they react to a young man who said afterwards,

“I couldn’t see why a black man wasn’t allowed to drink out of the same water fountain or sit in the same bus or go to the same schools as a white guy. That was just social injustice that I couldn’t do anything about from where I was, but I certainly abhorred it.

Avery Brundage, the IOC chairman attacked these men because he didn’t agree that political statements belonged in the Olympics.  This is the man who was at the 1936 Olympics as the president of the US Olympic Committee and raised no objection to the Nazi salute.

Peter Norman died in 2006 from a heart attack.  He had suffered with depression and alcoholism. Tommie Smith and John Carlos were pallbearers and spoke at the funeral, Carlos told Australian television:

"Peter Norman let me know that regardless of what your ethnic background is it has nothing to do with your principles".

And on his treatment he said:

"I think the pressures that the nation put on him and the disrespect that they showed him, I think it wounded him. "I think he was hurting and I don't think he ever recovered from the hurt that they put upon him. Unnecessarily hurt."

In August 2012, the Australian government which had racial exclusionary laws similar to South Africa’s at the time of the famous salute, finally issued an official apology to Norman and his family who were harassed and persecuted for his actions.

I am sure there are many people that know this already but I didn’t so I felt a need to comment on it.  I have to say as I write about this I feel very emotional about these three people.  What courage they had to do what they did. The civil rights movement and actions like the protest in Mexico halted the most openly brutal racist practices in the US including blatantly racist laws, but the institutionalized racism of the system is still very much with us.

For Norman, it would have been easy to step aside, to avoid the confrontation but he didn't, and there’s no way any of them would not have understood the response that would follow the protest.

As I think about it, all those who are not directly victims of the cause they stand up to defend but know it has to be done no matter the cost, are heroic figures.  The state and its minions have dragged an apology from Manning after years of physical and mental torture, maybe his lawyer said it might knock a few years from his sentence, I don’t know.  But he has nothing to apologize for; neither do Smith, Carlos and Norman.

There’s some good people out there.

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Lance Armstrong: Cocaine dealers lining up for Oprah interview.

The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth

Thousands in prison see hope for reprieve.
 

by Richard Mellor

On hearing that two millionaires, one the confessor, the other playing the role of priest, will be having their little get together televised in the US Thursday and Friday, I wondered if Oprah might start a bi-weekly “Confess to Oprah” show. There are thousands of petty dope dealers languishing in US prisons, some will be there for decades and some dealt merely to feed their own habits and might get off with a few years in the slammer, but surely Oprah can find the time to give them the opportunity to come clean.

It turns out Lance Armstrong was more than just a hapless user of illicit drugs: “The evidence is overwhelming that Lance Armstrong ………supplied them to his team mates” a US Anti-Doping Agency report claims and is “…alleged to have bullied team-mates” in to taking drugs and to participate in the cover up. Armstrong has denied for years that he took such drugs on his way to seven Tour de France victories.

Big business made lots of money from Armstrong’s successes as the capitalist mass media brought this hero in to our homes and in to the hearts of young people throughout the world. Armstrong himself has made millions that he may well have to pay back as numerous lawsuits are in the works from organizations and businesses that sponsored him including the US post office.  That comes on top of his profits as a supplier. He might have to return the libel award he won from a British newspaper. 

We are talking about a major player here, “He as not just a part of the doping culture, he enforced and reinforced it”the USADA report states adding that, “..the doping report on his team, designed in large part to benefit Armstrong was, massive and pervasive”

The advertisers will make some big bucks with the televising of the confession as the coupon clippers that run these corporations seek to make some money back on Armstrong’s misfortune.  Oprah has announced that she was “satisfied” with Armstrong’s honesty during the interview.  Well that’s nice Oprah; would that some poor slob in San Quentin received such praise.  According to reports in the media, Armstrong has “expressed interest”in finding some way to compete again, in triathlons and other events so honesty will help him now and so will Oprah.

The movers and shakers at firms like Nike that have accumulated great wealth off the backs of the factory workers of Bangladesh, Vietnam and China don’t like negative publicity that will tarnish their image as wholesome, principled businesses that care about their workers, consumers and the “American Way” of fairness and Christian living.  It is inconceivable that they don’t turn a blind eye to this stuff as long as the money keeps rolling in. They all may go after him financially but it remains to be seen. The confession is designed to show how remorseful he is, how ashamed yet courageous in sharing all with the world after ten years of falsehood and the possibility of making some bucks on his rehabilitation seems possible.

I don’t have much sympathy for Armstrong as thousands of workers and poor people, the majority of them people of color, languish in the American gulag. But Armstrong is also a victim.  The pressure to succeed, to stay ahead of the rivals, to win at all costs, to make money for the coupon clippers, this is overwhelming.  This is what destroys artists, athletes and workers alike.  Sport is a commodity, art as film is a commodity as great films are determined by how much they take in at the box office rather than what they express about life.  The players are only useful as long as they can make their masters rich.  This is why so many young artists are finished at 30, or hooked on drugs as they try to maintain an impossible schedule and keep ahead of the pack.  For women in this filthy industry the pressure is even greater. 

Armstrong found the help he needed but he is just another fallen hero until the next one comes along.  Remember Hertz kept OJ as a draw, running through airports when it was known to many he had domestic violence issues. When it could be ignored no more, he was let go. As big a dope dealer he is, him and people like Barry Bonds, are small potatoes when it comes to the real criminals.

There will be many more fallen heros like Armstrong as long as sport and healthy competition, a vital part of human society and culture is a business serving the interest of a corporate elite whose sole purpose for participating in it is the profit motive.

If we want to get the drugs out of sport we have to get the capitalists out of it. The same with the workplace.

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