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In last night’s NBA playoffs game, the Phoenix Suns beat the San Antonio Spurs 110-102. The team won this Cinco de Mayo game wearing its “Los Suns” jerseys, a move meant to show solidarity with the Latino community and protest Arizona’s anti-immigration law. The Rev. Al Sharpton and Phoenix officials also led a rally protesting SB-1070. Sharpton invoked the civil rights movement and said that if the law is not repealed, people will be coming to Arizona to protest “in the spirit of the Freedom Riders.”
Commenting on the issue before the game on TNT, former players Kenny Smith, Chris Webber, and Charles Barkley all praised what the Phoenix Suns were doing. The Nation’s Dave Zirin writes:
The typically blunt Barkley speaking in such terms is hardly surprising. But it was Chris Webber who upped the ante, interrupting a visibly uncomfortable Ernie Johnson with, “Public Enemy said it a long time ago. ‘By the Time I Get to Arizona.’ I’m not surprised. They didn’t even want there to be a Martin Luther King day when John McCain was in [office]. So if you follow history you know that this is part of Arizona politics.”
Watch their exchange here:
More pictures from the game and the rally:
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