VIDEO: Megan Rapinoe Supports MLB’s Boycott Of Georgia

United States National Women’s Soccer team player Megan Rapinoe reacted to the growing wave of athletes and companies who’ve used sports as a platform for social justice and voting rights.

“I think everybody has a responsibility to do whatever it is that they can to you know make the world a better place,” Rapinoe said at U.S. Olympic media summit, before throwing her support behind the MLB for taking the All-Star game out of Georgia. “If we’re talking specifically about these ‘Jim Crow 2.0’ voter suppression laws in Georgia, yeah I think companies that have influence in Georgia whether it’s MLB or you know local companies or whatever it may be, if you can flex your power in that way and use your influence of a platform that you have where you have obviously black and brown players in your league, you have black and brown fans…. I think everybody, and every business, and everything should be at the disposal to make sure that we’re influencing those laws in the right way.”

“Ultimately it’s all about people’s rights,” she said, “you know, showing up, allowing people to exercise their right to vote and to be a part of the civic process is the most important thing in a democracy.”

Rapinoe called the Georgia voting laws “undemocratic” and “un-American” and shouted out the MLB “for making that step.” “I’m sure that was very difficult and financially,” she said, “I’m sure it has a lot of implications and politically for them I’m sure it does as well, but it draws a very clear line in the sand for a league who has more to do than they have less to do.”

“To see how empowered athletes are I think is the most important thing,” she said, referring to the WNBA’s push for equality and the MLB’s decision to support voting rights. “That not only we feel comfortable and we feel safe enough in this environment and in our jobs, supported by whether its leagues or federations, to say those things and to be very outward about them.

“Athletes are in a unique position in this country that is obsessed with sports that I think looks to us as a lot of role modeling, not just for kids, but for adults as well. That sort of puts athletes on this pedestal all the time,” she said.

“Athletes are from every cross-section of life at every single intersectionality,” she said, adding that this representation makes “a huge difference in the country it changes hearts and minds.”