Al and Jesse preparing to shakedown Little League International for reparations.
Via WISTV
A Little League team that captured the attention of the nation and the hearts of its hometown was stripped of its national title Wednesday after an investigation revealed that team officials had falsified boundaries so they could add ineligible players to the roster.
Only last summer, the all-black Jackie Robinson West team was the toast of Chicago and was honored with trips to San Francisco and to the White House.
But the sport’s governing body announced that team officials had engaged in a Little League version of political gerrymandering. Instead of politicians redrawing district maps to pick up votes, it was local league officials who changed the boundaries that determined where players must live. And after learning that their scheme had been exposed, they scrambled to convince surrounding leagues to go along with what they had done.[…]
Venisa Green said the move was especially disheartening because the team was part of efforts to keep children safe and prepare them for college in a community better known for gangs and drugs than any kind of achievement.
“What would you have us do, Little League, for them to be killed on the streets of Chicago?” she asked.
She wondered if the fact that the players were black had any role in the ruling, something that the Rev. Jesse Jackson and others questioned as well.
“Is this about boundaries or race?” Jackson asked.
Jackson did not discuss whether he blamed any league officials for what had happened, but in Washington, White House spokesman Josh Earnest suggested that it was the adults who let down the boys.