Residents of Washington D.C. can’t vote for a member of Congress or the Senate. The city itself doesn’t have the authority to pass its own budget without Congressional oversight. Even when D.C. residents overwhelmingly pass referendums to shape their laws, members of Congress — from any other state — who don’t agree can thwart the effort.
In recent years, though, D.C. United, the District’s Major League Soccer team, has worked alongside an organization that wants to change all of that. And now, the message that D.C. residents deserve full representation and voting rights may be coming to MLS fields across the country. Last week, one of the team’s Twitter accounts dropped a hint of unexpected news: the team and DC Vote, an organization that advocates for full Congressional representation and budget autonomy for the District, had met to discuss a collaboration on a design for the team’s 2016 primary jersey:
Great to sit down with @DCVote this morning and discuss our 2016 #DCU primary jersey design
— DCU Team Store (@dcuteamstore) April 30, 2015
What exactly that means is unclear: asked in an email for more details, a United spokesperson said only to “stay tuned,” while DC Vote Executive Director Kimberly Perry said she couldn’t offer specifics beyond that they were collaborating. But something is up, and United fans and supporters of expanded democratic rights for the 600,000 residents who still can’t choose their own voting representatives to Congress would be forgiven for entertaining big possibilities. Namely, their home soccer team taking the pitch each night draped in a D.C. flag and “Taxation Without Representation,” the iconic American protest the city long ago adopted as a means of pointing out America’s hypocrisy, scrawled across their chests.
It’s not that uncommon for teams and athletes to weigh in on local and national political issues, as the last year alone has shown. But even if it’s too early to know exactly what United and DC Vote have up their sleeves, using a jersey to make a political statement — whether overtly or through an issue-inspired design — might be a step farther than any American sports team has ever gone.
“I’m not aware of anything like that in American sports, at least not of any recent vintage,” said Phil Hecken, a contributor at Uni Watch, a web site that covers uniforms and their histories. “I can’t think of anything in American sports that would even come close to falling into this category.” Uni Watch founder Paul Lukas, who also covers uniforms for ESPN, couldn’t recall anything similar either.
The uniform collaboration is a result of a budding partnership between the two organizations, and on the surface, it makes sense for both sides.
Perry, the DC Vote director, said that both organizations are “targeting similar audiences” — particularly young residents — in their efforts to continue growing. Given MLS’s national reach, DC Vote hopes that United’s broadcast audiences and the international appeal of soccer will help create broader awareness of the fact that D.C. residents aren’t allowed to fully govern themselves. “Our challenge is that we need people across the country to join in with us,” Perry said. “This platform will allow that.”
United, meanwhile, makes sense as a local partner. The team already utilizes local symbolism in a way that has tied itself to the community. It is the only one of the District’s five pro sports teams that uses D.C. in its name, and along with its traditional black, it borrows the red and white of the D.C. flag, which it has used as a design element on past uniforms. The flag itself is ubiquitous among supporters’ groups at its home matches. And beyond mere symbolism, United has perhaps taken a more active role in the community at the grassroots level than any of the other local teams.
United has long been “interested and passionate about this,” Perry said, and using its jersey to tie itself to one of the city’s deep-rooted political battles in a way D.C.’s other four sports teams haven’t (none of them, at least, have worked with DC Vote, Perry said) is an extension of that. There’s a potential benefit for United too: further public support for a cause that permeates D.C. and is incredibly popular among local residents could foster even deeper ties to the community in a way that helps expand its own fan base.
Regardless of what the jersey ultimately looks like or how overtly political it is, though, it will be the result of efforts to grow the already-existing partnership between the two organizations. United and its representatives have supported DC Vote’s cause since at least 2012, when manager Ben Olsen, a Pennsylvania native who played 12 seasons for United and became its head coach in 2010, appeared in a DC Vote advertisement supporting D.C. budget autonomy. “Don’t be silenced,” the ad urged local residents, the text laid over a picture of Olsen with a scarf tied around his mouth.
In the years since, the two sides have “worked on expanding the partnership in different ways,” Perry told ThinkProgress this week. In recent seasons United has blared DC Vote’s message on its video boards and sponsored packages for the organization’s members to attend matches. At its annual 3 Star Ball in Washington on Thursday, DC Vote honored United and Olsen as Democracy All-Stars for the work both have put in on the issue.
Any way I can support something that could help boost D.C., I want to be a part of that.
The event itself was a sign of how the partnership between United and DC Vote continues to expand: it featured United goalkeeper Bill Hamid, one of the team’s most prominent faces, as a host. Defender Kofi Opare attended too.
“They’re giving D.C. citizens a voice, helping promote democratic equality,” Hamid said when asked how and why he got involved. “Looking at their message, looking at their work, it’s inspiring. That’s what made me come out here today. Any way I can support something that could help boost D.C. and its people, its residents, the people who care about this city, I want to be a part of that.”
That ethos has already helped create the type of partnership that is uncommon in American sports. Now, it may help expand that partnership into one that is wholly unique. As for what it will look like in jersey form? We have no choice, it seems, but to stay tuned.