Why We Love The Clash, Not The Nats

What's up? Dang here ridin' a blast of DuNord hot air off into the nerdtastic blogosphere (I am down with nerds by the way). Slainte to Bruce for the opportunity.

Today on DuNord we are going to look at a few essays articulating the decision not to support any U.S. National Team.

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We will also get a first hand report from Section 8's adventure out West. They hooked up with the Timber's Army in Portland and made their way, together, for the Fire's match against Seattle. Sorry "Shittle". Our man from Chicago will spill the wine on the so-called Allied Invasion. T.A. and Sec. 8...how long will the hot crush last?

Now on to the bully pulpit!!!


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So, for the love of Guiseppe Rossi, we're going to speak on national identity, politics and our influences that shaped the ways we see the world...both politically and in regards to soccer. If this isn't your cup of shit then mosey on down the road.

I am the grandson of an Irish immigrant who came to the South Side of Chicago to escape war and poverty. I was told I was "Irish" from my earliest days. It wasn't 'til I actually went to Ireland, when I was 19, that I figured out that I was a Yank.
For any of you that read Dan Loney's piece on Eurosnobs I have to confess that I do not come from a soccer loving family. My 1st run-in with soccer occurred while I was working at O'Hare Airport and a Latino co-worker would listen to the Mundial from Spain in '82.....Paolo Rossi and Dino Zoff !

That summer was when The Clash's monstrous mess of genius sound , Sandanista, came plowing into my earhole. It was truly overwhelming...kinda like Jeff Agoos turning a clearance into an own-goal. The diversity of styles and on-point messages had my senses well stimulated. I mean, shit man, tunes like One More Time, Ivan Meets G.I. Joe,The Call Up("it's up to you not to heed the...") Washington Bullets, and Eddy Grant's Police On My Back were straight killer. My thoughts on U.S. involvement in Central America , police brutality , and solidarity across borders were all new concepts to my(by then) suburban bee-hind.

Needless to say I was a changed kid. Local Chicago punk bands Naked Raygun and The Effigies also furthered my worldview and the beautiful for spacious skies U. S. of A. became cloudier, complicated and dangerous to me. The U.S. government was the world's biggest bully, smashing it's way from one war to the next...I mean Grenada...REALLY? Shoot, I was no longer a patriot, a nationalist or a lover of my country. How could I support that? I know, I know, love it or leave it blahblahblah...but as Joe Strummer said "kick it over"!!!


My interest in soccer wasn't fully re-kindled , as is the case for many of us, until the '94 World Cup . Now at this time I was going out with someone from Ireland who lived in my new hometown of Minneapolis. We made our way to the local Irish pub to watch Roy Keane's Irish squad take on the massively favored Italians. The pub was packed for the afternoon kickoff and I found myself experiencing, for the first time, some real hyped up atmosphere. Shit was live and I was loving it. Of course Ireland scored a wonder goal courtesy of John Aldridge . The pub went absolutely apeshit and I found myself pogoing up and down as the air around me filled with beers and cheers...the celebration continued well into the evening as the beer turned to whiskey and our clothes( well my clothes) disappeared as I rode my bike over the Mississippi River. It was an epic day . I'll never forget experiencing for the 1st time the joy and incredible energy of a celebratory soccer crowd. My connections to Ireland felt renewed. I would never watch a Nats game in the same way.

Watching Eric Wynalda score against Switzerland just didn't move me in the same way.

A few years later I became a supporter of my local club, the Minnesota Thunder. We were really frickin' good back then., winning titles and challenging for the top of the table year after year. I learned a lot about the game and enjoyed the mix of Minnesota guy's playing alongside big internationals like Bulgarian Kalin Bankov. Nowadays many Thunder supporters are avid Nats supporters but back then not so much.I don't stand for the national anthem and nobody cares.

Then in 1998 I drove down to Chicago to see the expansion Fire play the Tampa Bay Mutiny. I watched in wonder as the Fire scored 2 goals and each time the Polish Ultras lit flares and then got chased around Soldier Field in a kind of Keystone Kops routine. It was fantastic and I was hooked. The Fire won and I followed them from afar right up to their barely explainable MLS Cup victory. Then I called in sick to work and drove down for the Open Cup final which successfully secured them the Double in their first year....Seattle don't even think about it.

Over time Section 8 has grown, diversified and stayed loud in it's support of the Fire. There have been several struggles against racism within and directed towards the section. I'm proud that Section 8 has developed an anti-racist ethic and I know that it is down to the very hard work put in by many people I know as well as many I don't. Section 8 understands that we are from many cultures , backgrounds, and places . But we are united in our love of the Fire.

In my life I'd much rather hate the Revs than the Mexican national team. I come from immigrant people and the level of racism directed at immigrants today is sickening. How do soccer players and more importantly, big businesses, get to cross borders to improve their financial situation ? Yet somehow regular, hard working folks become criminalized or "illegal aliens". Really? Talked to any Native folks lately? So, no, I won't be a part of anything that deems Mexico as the enemy. I'm down with people not nations. I'm down with good folks who understand our similarities and respect or admire our differences. Not with governments who use fear, racism and lies to separate us. Not today. Not tomorrow.

I have my hands full supporting both the Thunder and the Fire. Many of you know the time commitments are lengthy and the rewards fleeting. But boy when your team hits the jackpot there are few better feelings in the world.

I'll be in South Africa next year screaming for the bhoys in green to do their thing. It's the trip of a lifetime! If you support the U.S. I'm not hating on you. Hey some of my best friends are Nats supporters! Most are not.

-Dang


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AWOL from Sam’s Army
-Kdog

Tense night at the Union hall. Months without a contract and the campaign at work is fizzling. Me and my companeros will challenge the leadership tonight. The meeting is called to order and the first order of business is the Pledge of fucking Allegiance. What are we, boy scouts? Most of the room stands, but not me. No time for this McCarthyite bullshit. My loyalty is to my class world-wide, not Bush or Obama’s banner.

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As a kid even before I tossed baseballs or kicked around a soccer ball, I would check the phone book each time a new White Pages came out. Phone books – remember those? I was looking for my dad, who I had maybe a dozen memories of that I was trying hard to hold on to. All I knew was his Irish-American name, that he had hurt my ma and disappeared from my life. He was never listed.

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I learned soccer pretty young for an American kid, and took to it fast. I played in an after-school activity program (remember those?) at Wilder Elementary (34th & Chicago in south Minneapolis). I was the best player besides one South American kid with a heavy accent. He was better than me, but the two of us were in a class of our own. Of course in those days, in upper-Midwest gyms, some simple control and a quick pull-back move made you Pele.

Back then Kix cereal was promoting the NASL, and the Minnesota Kicks were drawing tens of thousands to Metropolitan Stadium. My best friend Justin had gotten juice cups with all the NASL teams’ logos pictured on the sides; we’d have snacks and pick which logos we liked best. The Chicago Sting, LA Aztecs, Detroit Express, the New York Cosmos.

My friend’s dad, who taught African art and loved British comedies, hauled us out to the Met for the Kicks a couple times. We cheered Alan Wiley (the Englishman), Ace Ntsoelengoe (the South African), and especially Tino Lettieri (the Montrealer). I liked the Kicks corny logo, and their blue & orange was gorgeous to me. Afterward we would kick around a basketball in our narrow, dirty alley. Different from the kids in D.F. and Lagos for sure, but maybe not so different.

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The 80’s were a hard time for me and everyone else I knew. Like now, Unemployment was at 10% (which included my stepdad for a time), unions were getting smashed, and minorities blamed for being poor. Reagan’s proxy wars in Central America & the Middle East ravaged those regions, killing revolutionary hopes and a lot of people. Reagan was an aggressive, hateful politician, who promoted a jingoistic, triumphalist patriotism as compensation for a lowered standard of living. He’s been sainted by the media now, but in my neighborhood he was hated. When our liberal teachers assembled all the students at our school to break the news that the President had been shot, they were shocked and offended when we roared our approval.

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Most kids in our neighborhood didn’t play soccer - alley or street football was king. The Kicks folded in 1981. The park leagues didn’t have soccer yet and there were no adults around who knew the game enough to coach us. My soccer suffered. I still liked it enough to play, first for my Junior High team – the Folwell Falcons, and then as freshman defensive starter on the JV South High team. Our team wasn’t very good (4-8? in the city league) - mostly white boys with liberal parents (mine were actually hard left).

The immigrant wave hadn’t really hit Minneapolis yet, with one exception: Southeast Asians displaced by the Vietnam War and its after effects. On the south side most of the Asian kids (generally referred to as “Laotians”, even though they included Lao, Hmong, Vietnamese and Cambodians) went to Roosevelt High. Growing up in the multi-racial Central neighborhood of Minneapolis I always hated what I perceived as the redneck, hockey culture around Roosevelt. The maroon and gold Roosevelt jackets worn by boys of all ages south of 38th Street and east of Bloomington Ave seemed to me a symbol of white arrogance and closed-mindedness. Roosevelt must have had a hard time integrating the Asian kids; when we faced them they put two distinct lines on the field – one of white/hockey kids and one of “Laotians”. Their team appeared to have two head coaches to manage the different “squads”. They were actually pretty good, but their players didn’t seem to like each other.

I played hard but my early dominance was long gone – I could play man-to-man and pull off some nice slide tackles, but I wasn’t seeing the big picture and I didn’t know much what to do with the ball once I stole it away. I did a lot of clearing blasts and dumping out of bounds. I knew I had failed to develop. I had a lot of other shit going and so that was my last year playing soccer.

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It was during my freshman year that I got reconnected with my father’s big boisterous Irish Catholic clan. My dad had 8 siblings and most of them had kids. One set of cousins I remembered vaguely from early childhood and I sought them out. My cousin Maggie told me about my dad, stuff I never remembered hearing from my mom. He was now in a mental institution lock-up. He had been homeless. He had been in the Marines and in Vietnam. Twice. The second time as a translator. He had learned Vietnamese. He had written an eloquent story about some of the horror he saw. She told me this all on the phone.

He had organized veterans against the war and tried to unionize the cab company where he worked, before succumbing to the sorrow, anger and confusion of having participated in mass slaughter for the rich. A kind of madness, that in his case, the government even refused to neatly sum up as PTSD.

All this was hard for me to take; I was overcome with grief and rage. I boiled inside and lashed out a lot. I spent a lot of time in my basement bedroom grinding my teeth to the Clash and Peter Tosh. But it also helped me make sense of my situation and made me feel connected to the rest of the world and the long list of peoples victimized by the U.S. government or other empires.

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The United States is an empire built on stolen land by slave labor; a country that polices the world for the multinational corporations. If this sounds like radical rhetoric or hyperbole to soccer hipsters and American eurosnobs, I couldn’t give a fuck. It is elementary truth to most of the people on this planet. So, no, I don’t say the pledge of allegiance or stand for the national anthem, or wave the stars and stripes. I’m with Spartacus, not Caesar, motherfucker.

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At 38, after stints in Detroit, Chicago and in North Minneapolis, I’m back on the Southside. I coach my sons’ two park league teams, I’m a (inconsistent) supporter of the Chicago Fire and the Minnesota Thunder, and I’m even trying to play again for a rec team. To me it’s great that the base for soccer is growing in size and sophistication in this part of the world. I have come to love many of the great players from the United States.

I can appreciate some of the reasons my friends support the U.S. National team. I expect they are proud of a squad made up of African-Americans, Chicanos, sons of immigrants and suburban white boys. A team that unlike almost any other American team is actually an underdog in international play. I know that many people I respect (like some of my fellow workers at the union hall or supporters in the Dark Clouds) have a different view of patrioitism than me, based on different experiences. I get all this. But I can't get with it.

How do the chants of "USA! USA! USA!" sound to people from Iraq, Chile or Somalia? Does it matter? I think it does. And it sound like shit to me, a Minnesotan.

I don't have a different, better National team to support. All the International teams get used and abused by their respective governments. So I cheer for players I like and for beautiful football generally.

Really, I am waiting for a Muhammad Ali to come along in soccer and cause a riot, someone to unabashedly and uncomprimisingly take the side of the poor of all nationalities. Someone unafraid to go AWOL.

peace,

Kdog



much love to du Nord and the DIY spirit it expresses


(whether thats an "anarchist" or "American" trait we can have a friendly debate about)

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A View From the Same Side Of Another Fence

Watching the Aug 12th US-Mexico World Cup qualifying match from Mexico City, I felt a great sense of relief, pride and vindication in the game’s 2-1 outcome in favor if Mexico. I have lived in the United States all my life, yet my support for the Mexican side has been unwavering. Never is this fervent passion for ‘El Tri’ (as the Mexican national squad is affectionately known) more intense than when they square up against the red, white and blue of their archrival, the United States.

Why is this so? As a U.S. citizen, why do I not root for the home team? The reasons are many, complex, interconnected. For starters, I’m the grandchild of Mexican immigrants. As well as Puerto Rican and Irish immigrants. Like the vast majority of ‘Americans’ my family has been in the United States for much less time than it has been in “the motherland(s)’. I feel a strong sense of cultural pride in being Chicano (of Mexican descent), celebrating my heritage in a variety of ways, including but not limited to rooting for the Mexican (or Irish, or Puerto Rican) squad in international play. Even against the United States.

Especially against the United States! And why am I so much more passionate about defeating my own country’s team? The answer is simple: because the United States is an empire, the lone world military/corporate superpower. We stopped being simply a nation generations ago, after World War II, and became an empire and remains an empire to this day. And I am an anti-imperialist.

So what does sport – in this case soccer – have to do with globalization, war, and other global political issues? Everything! First the United States tries to flex its military muscle in places like Iraq and Afghanistan (and Viet Nam, Korea, Puerto Rico, Colombia, fill-in-the-blank…), and impose its ‘Western’ values in so many other places, using strong arm and underhand tactics, and now it wants to sit on top of the soccer world too? No thank you. I’ll take the underdogs, the third worlders, the anti-imperialists, the motherlands with long-departed children. These are the teams I will always root for over the first world imperialist powerhouses, such as the U.S. and England.

And have I mentioned that the majority of the people in the United States don’t even pay any attention to U.S. soccer? When Brazil or Mexico or Cameroon win an important match, a title, a World Cup, the citizens of those nations are in the streets, on cloud nine, absent from work. When they lose, it’s a national day of mourning. Here in the United States? There is no all night fiesta, no national holiday. The people of the U.S. don’t deserve a world champion soccer team! If we were to win the World Cup, it might make the top story on ESPN, headlines for a day, and then… it’s back to business (or war, or layoffs, or entertainment) as usual. As a whole, we here in the United States don’t deserve soccer domination. We are newcomers to the game. And yet, with our massive corporate sponsorships, our arrogant ‘ugly American’ attitude, even our refusal to recognize that the rest of the world calls the game by some other name, we are flexing our imperialist muscle.

And I just can’t go for that. Not against my beloved Mexico, lindo y perdido, not against teams – nations - who respect and revere the game so much more. Not against those who struggle for more than we, for whom the game is life, or at least a reprieve from life. I will always side with the global underdogs. I will always root against the U.S… Until, perhaps, just maybe, they play England.

-Emmanuel Ortiz
Ft Wayne, Indiana

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How I Spent My Summer Vacation

Last month I had the pleasure of travelling out west to support my team, the Chicago Fire as they took on league newcomers and ticket selling phenoms the Seattle Sounders. As it turned out the scheduling of the game allowed for a chance to visit Portland and take in the Timbers vs Islanders match. Timber’s Army and Section 8 have long held a certain affinity and appreciation for each others style and commitment. They invited us to attend a match at PGE and we invited them to join us in supporting the Fire at Qwest field. I was please to have participated in our ‘alliance’ it was very cool to share songs, talk shop, and talk soccer with another group of supporters.

We had so much in common when shooting the shit over beers, struggles with our respective team’s management and staff, the trials and tribulations within our groups over styles, preferences, participation, and personality conflicts. It was really pretty cool to sit and talk with soccer supporters who weren’t the same old Fire fans I see all season. It would be nice to this at some level with other supporters around the league, to share some experiences, and learn from each other what our expectations are and how to best support the growth of the league and supporter’s culture throughout it. Maybe we can’t all sit and have beers, but a respectful and civil exchange sure would be nice. After participating in this away trip, one of the things that I think all of the supporters groups who travel need to have a discussion about is what our expectations of away game trips are going to be.

I’ve travelled to many away Fire games in many other cities and my expectations are always the same and they are simple. I want to drink, I want to stand with other Fire fans, I want to be loud, and I want to support the team. To let them know that we are there with them. I also expect to be treated like a paying customer. I expect to not be abused or harassed by stadium security. I expect to not get into fist fights with other teams fans. I expect to have fun. Pretty simple stuff.

So why is it that so many times we are dealing with security guards who have no understanding of soccer supporters? Why hasn’t the league accepted and embraced that soccer fans travel to stand en masse to support their team on the road? Don Garber often makes comments about atmosphere and supporters, but why hasn’t the league started to standardize a realistic approach to away support? Why has it always laid on the shoulders of the volunteers in individual support groups who spend so much time and effort putting these trips together to educate security guards?

This is something that several Chicago supporters have been trying to reach out to the league about, to share our experiences, both good and bad. So far we’ve been met with apathy from the league and even mockery by other fan groups. Our trip to Seattle was a joke, their security practices were some of the most incompetent and aggressive I’ve seen in this league. We were harassed from the minute we got off the bus.

What I learned from that day was that the league really needs to get some standards in place. It can’t be left up to each team or groups of volunteer fans. The league needs to say, “we realize and appreciate that fans travel and here are some guidelines.” In the coming years the numbers of travelling fans will assuredly increase. The addition of new teams Pacific Northwest and the East coast will be providing the opportunities for travel like never before. It will also provide the opportunities for rivalry to spill over into violence. I hope that soon the league can work with supporters to prepares for it, because there is only so much the volunteering fans can do on our own. I honestly don’t think things will change or that teams will work together on a plan until somebody gets hurt. That’s a shame. It would be nice to know what to expect on the road.