Update: espnW has since yanked the poem and issued an apology.
ESPN, the sports network that’s hemorrhaging viewers and purging much of its on-air talent, on Tuesday published a poetry tribute to a woman who was convicted of killing a police officer.
One day before the network laid off many of its employees, it published five poems about feminism and political resistance on its website geared toward women, ESPNW.
The first poem in the series is called “Revolution” and it’s dedicated to Asatta Shakur, an icon among black power enthusiasts who was convicted of murdering a police officer in 1977. She escaped from prison in 1979 and fled to Cuba in 1984, where she’s been hiding ever since.
An excerpted portion of the poem, written by DaMaris B. Hill, a creative writing and African American studies professor at the University of Kentucky, reads:
Revolution is the impulse
that follows. It’s a relative that
wrings you ’round the elbow,
a human leash to snatch you
from dreaming. The last time
I saw revolution, she was being dragged
on her tip toes and screaming
Shakur, whose real name is Joanne Deborah Chesimard, was the first woman to be named on the FBI’s Most Wanted Terrorists list and the FBI is currently offering a $1 million reward for information leading to her arrest.
