Charles Barkley said he wasn’t a role model. But when sports stars like Chuck speak up, people listen.

In the autumn of 2014, from the NBA to the NFL to the Olympic movement, athletes striding up to the dais of public discourse are finding a confident tenor in their voice. !Five St. Louis Rams entered the field of play field last week with their arms held up in the “hands up, don’t shoot” gesture. This week Derrick Rose donned a shirt reading “I Can’t Breathe” during pregame warmups. !Following in Rose’s footsteps, LeBron James, Kevin Durant, and other members of the Cleveland Cavaliers and Brooklyn Nets wore

the same shirt to honor Eric Garner before a game in the Barclays Center. !"It was a message to the family," James said. "That I'm sorry for their loss, sorry to his wife. That's what it's about. !"Obviously, as a society we have to do better," James added. "We have to be better for one another." !For far too long, the struggle and courage needed for life outside of sport has been seen as inappropriate to express inside the athletic arena. Perhaps no athlete, ever, cast a shadow as large as Michael Jordan. Perhaps no athlete, ever, did so little with this forum. !When asked why he didn’t endorse a candidate running against a long-time opponent of civil rights in his native North Carolina, Jordan said Republicans bought shoes, too. !No matter where you stand on the divide going on in the streets of St. Louis or Cleveland or New York City, the awakening social conscience of athletes is refreshing. They're evoking an earlier, transcendent time. !

“Once the record was mine, I had to use it like a Louisville Slugger,” Hank Aaron wrote in his autobiography, "I Had a Hammer." Aaron had a higher purpose than just having his name atop the home run record list. It was his duty, he said, to carry on where Jackie Robinson left off. !Nothing is more American than Americans respectfully exercising their right to free expression. This marketplace of ideas isn't shared around the globe. Having this, though, is what makes our country great. !

As a member of the 2014 U.S. Olympic team, I sat down with the top Olympic brass the night before heading off to Sochi, Russia. !The USOC said that while they didn’t agree with Russia’s human rights laws, if any athlete or coach spoke out on human rights issues while at the Games we would be dealt with swiftly and severely. !If we did, we were sure to be on the next flight out of town, the officials said. The U.S. and the international Olympic committees would not fight back against the host country on the issue of human rights. On Monday, the IOC rewrote the Olympic Charter’s non-discrimination policy, making the Games more inclusive. While there is still work to be done, the strength of the Olympic spirit is in the effort, the struggle, and the refusal to never give up. Slowly, the tide is falling on the sanitizing and de-politicizing (if not the hyper-commercialization) of sports. !These last couple days some of the biggest names in sport have gone against the Jordan brand ethos. Instead, these stars are acting more like Tommie Smith, John Carlos and Peter Norman.

!!!!!!!Walking up to the center of the athletics arena at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics during the 200 meter dash award ceremony, medal winners Smith and Carlos took off their shoes, unzipped their jackets and extended gloved fists overhead in a silent statement of support for human rights. The third medal winner, Peter Norman, wore a human rights badge like the other two. !The punishment for all three was severe: athletic careers left in ruins and death threats were the start. After that, Carlos and Smith were treated like traitors in America, and so was Norman in Australia. Now, in the limelight of their lives, their demonstration today is viewed as courageous and principled. !"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice," Martin Luther King Jr. said. !What those three did in the arena hardly cheapened the competition. Instead, their actions eclipsed the sports arena. Smith and Carlos and Norman had the guts to stand up when everyone was telling them to sit down.