MuseumDESCRIPTION:
Joey Cheek is a 2006 Olympic gold medalist speed skater. Recently, he has turned in his skates to bring an end to the crisis in Darfur, Sudan through his organization Where Will We Be?. He speaks to Jerry Fowler about covening an international coalition of athletes with a shared common belief to make the world better by raising awareness of the genocide in Darfur and other countries facing a dire humanitarian crisis.
TRANSCRIPT:
JERRY FOWLER: My guest today is Olympic gold medalist Joey Cheek. He made headlines last year when he spoke out on Darfur after winning a gold medal in speed skating at the Torino Olympics. Now he has a new project called Where Will We Be?. Joey, welcome back to the program.
JOEY CHEEK: Thank you for having me.
JERRY FOWLER: Okay, Where Will We Be? Tell me about the project.
JOEY CHEEK: Yes, it is an athlete coalition, as we are moving towards Beijing, working to continue to raise awareness and apply political pressure on nations so that we can get a meaningful, hopefully, political solution but for sure we hope to get protection and civilian protection with troops on the ground in Darfur.
JERRY FOWLER: Let me just ask, the name Where Will We Be?, where does that come from?
JOEY CHEEK: Well, I was sitting around with some friends of mine and we were kind of trying to hash out a way to build this organization and what we could do that would be useful and actually meaningful. And what we were asking, we were thinking about the Beijing Olympics and the connection China has to Sudan and the connection Olympics have with this tradition of human rights and with some amazing issues. And we were thinking, all of the athletes in the world, we know they will be in Beijing; we know the media will be there and the eyes of the world will be there, but where would the people of Darfur be and where would these millions of internally displaced people and refugees be? And so that was ultimately the question was we said, you know, “Where will we be as a world, where will we be as an organization when the Olympics come around?”
JERRY FOWLER: Yes, that is interesting. There is a song that Emmylou Harris recorded that I think was written by Julie Miller, which is Where Will I Be?, it is where will I be when that trumpet sounds. It is kind of a religious song.
JOEY CHEEK: Really? Well, I am sort of an off to the side Emmylou Harris fan. I have heard some of her stuff. I will have to check it out.
JERRY FOWLER: Oh, it is on the Wrecking Ball album.
JOEY CHEEK: All right, yes.
JERRY FOWLER: Which is a great album, so you should check it out. Well, so you are building this coalition of athletes. Where do you stand on that? How are athletes responding?
JOEY CHEEK: Well, we are really working on the initial phases, and I have reached out -- Of course, the easiest people for me to reach out to are U.S. athletes first, but the goal is for it to be a worldwide effort. We want this to be not just another U.S. effort at a bunch of, you know, whomever celebrity types saying, “Oh, you should do this” and wagging their finger at other nations. We really want this to be an international effort. So far, the people that I have reached out to have overwhelmingly been supportive and said this is a great thing and they want to know more. The big problem that I found is despite the fact that all of the coverage has improved and there is so much more information out there, so many people all over the world have no idea any of the facts or any of the details that is happening in Darfur and in Sudan and any of the relations. And as I am sure you can attest, it is such a big, complicated issue, trying to boil it down to sort of explain what is going on has sometimes-- that is been probably the more difficult thing-- not finding people who are interested.
JERRY FOWLER: Yes, well one thing that is always a challenge is kind of being respectful of the complexity of the situation but not losing sight of the moral contours, which is, hundreds of thousands of lives at stake.
JOEY CHEEK: Exactly, and that is really how we try and frame it. We say, all politics aside, this is about, people who without humanitarian aid and without protection are at danger every day of, horrible, horrible mass atrocities and beatings and rapes and all of these crimes that, people within the community are aware of are happening, but people outside of this activist community really have sort of a vague notion that something bad is happening, but they are not sure what.
JERRY FOWLER: And to what extent do you find athletes - I mean, to be a world class athlete takes a lot of focus, and not having a life in general is my impression, I mean I do not know maybe you had a life--
JOEY CHEEK: It is pretty serious business, yes.
JERRY FOWLER: And to what extent do they say like “Oh, that is really sad but that is not going to help me win my medal or do my best.”
JOEY CHEEK: There are probably-- there are a few of those. Obviously, as we start getting away from, as you start getting iterations away from people that I have met personally and personal pleas and you start getting into “I’d met you through this person and we really want to bring you on board with this,” I expect that it will be a bit harder sell. What I am finding with Olympic athletes and what I have always sort of found with Olympic athletes is that most of us compete in sports that are sometimes at best obscure. And of course there are some of the popular ones, the big ones that everyone in the world watches, track and field and swimming and of course speech skating, but some of the other sports, they are much more obscure. Most people make no money doing it. Most Olympians will never make even close to what they put into it coming out of it. And generally we compete in nations around the world that are not, you know, not our home countries. Sometimes our sports are more popular in other nations. For speed skating, for example, I competed mostly in Asia and Europe. So it seems that as Olympians, we do not have necessarily the ego to think that we are the only things that exist in the world. Also we have had the opportunities to see other countries and to meet other athletes from around the world, and I think when you start meeting people in other countries and you start really becoming close friends with these people. You begin to realize that, sort of just a twist of fate that you happened to be born in a country where you are for the most part protected from any of these sorts of horrible things happening. So, there is a different perspective, and I think amongst most Olympic athletes, there is a different perspective.
JERRY FOWLER: Now one focus obviously has been the government of China because of its connection to Sudan and the fact that it is going to host the Summer Olympics next year. Have you talked to Chinese athletes?
JOEY CHEEK: I have. I have got a friend who completed in short track, and we have chatted about this. Before I started this organization I had talked to her about it, and she actually donated money from her medal, some of her winnings to write the play, which is what I did after the Olympics. Now for her it was not the same sort of political-- she was not making any political statements that one government should do this or that, she was merely saying, you know, kids, no matter where they are, deserve to have some sort of normal childhood, some sort of normal development things. I think she would be of anyone most willing to say, “We should really step up as a nation and do this,” however, it is really tough to get a read. Most of the Chinese athletes, I have only met a few and they are very friendly-- It is a big language barrier, so getting into deep political things, I would certainly have kind of a personal problem asking too much of any kind of commitment from someone who might, legitimately be given a rough time or Lord knows what could happen within China. So as far as-- I think if you approach it from a humanitarian side-- I think your chances are much better at drawing in athletes, even from a nation like China.
JERRY FOWLER: You talk about possible repercussions for them, I was wondering about the kind of level of government involvement in the sports programs and, you know, retaliation if someone does.
JOEY CHEEK: Right. I do not know any personal examples of retaliation. I know that the Chinese team oftentimes traveled with escorts who are not members of any sort of, they did not have sporting functions, they were not massage therapists or they were not coaches. They were just sort of overseers and even there were some athletes that lived in Canada and trained in Canada with a Canadian coach as they are trying to build up their speed skating programs. And there was always the sort of older, much more communist nation-looking guy who sort of just hung out and just kept an eye on things. So I know that that is a consideration. I have no clue ultimately what sort of repercussions athletes would have or if they enjoy a bit more of a protected status because they are something of perhaps a celebrity over there, but it is-- yes, I feel very fortunate.
JERRY FOWLER: And what is the bottom line for athletes if they want to take part in Where Will We Be?, what are you going to be asking them to do?
JOEY CHEEK: Well, we are asking them to make a commitment. The commitment really has four parts. The first is that you spend some time becoming educated on the issue. We obviously have some materials for athletes that will sort of explain a bit generally what is happening. I hope that if anyone is interested beyond that that they would take the time to go and research more on their own, because ultimately, I do not really want someone who wants to be part of this just because I am doing it or because it seems like, “Wow, this seems like a great thing, but I don’t understand what is happening.” They would not make a great spokesman or a great advocate. Secondly, we ask them to become leaders within their community, and that is within the sporting community but within their nation as well. A French athlete might, of course, have a much different role in this than an athlete who is living in a Muslim country or an African country; they might be able to be more vocal within the nation. We can connect them with other groups that are doing events, and we would ask them to sort of participate in this open letter that, you know, goes to the Olympic committees and the Chinese Olympic committees to say, “Look, this is completely anathema to the Olympic ideal.” We would ask them to recruit other athletes to sort of lead other athletes in on the fight as well and find ways that these other athletes can take roles and become active. And ultimately we ask that we all sort of operate under one voice when we talk about this, that we really, be it a symbol or be it a phrase or whatever that we have yet to really hit upon, that we all speak as one group. I think that has a lot of power if you have a group of people from many different nations who, when they step on the field of play, they are going to fight like hell to make sure that they are coming out on top. But when they are done, when they are finished with competition that we can say we are still part of a world Olympic community.
JERRY FOWLER: Now, when I talked to you last year just before the big rally in Washington, you were planning on starting school last fall. And you deferred for a year, and what have you been up to? There has been a lot of Darfur campaigning.
JOEY CHEEK: A lot of Darfur stuff. I would say about, again, probably half of my time since then, maybe by this summer it is actually quite a bit more than half of my time was spent working on activism, doing speeches, doing rallies, fundraising, and then the other half was spent doing corporate gigs, the kind of stuff you actually get paid for and will help pay for college as soon as I start in a couple weeks here. So, this summer though has really been all trying to put together this Where Will We Be? campaign and bring in athletes and really put the infrastructure in place. I guess we talked right after the D.C. or around the D.C. rally?
JERRY FOWLER: Just before the D.C. rally.
JOEY CHEEK: Okay, wow, boy, I feel like two or three lifetimes have passed since then. At that point, you know, it was only a month or two after the Olympics. I was just beginning to learn about some of the political causes and some of the, the details of this sort of big humanitarian crisis. I was really starting to become more involved with it, and I was ultimately asked to be mostly a spokesman. I would travel to universities and speak to college kids as an Olympic gold medalist who donated money to help alleviate hopefully some suffering of refugees from Darfur, and that was it, that was all that was really asked of me. I was traveling a lot. I was doing many speeches within a few weeks, but as a spokesman, you stand on stage and everyone claps for you and you talk about a little bit of your Olympic life and you talk about, why you think this is important and why you think people should care about this issue. Then people clap for you and tell you how great you are and that is it. And as someone who is now trained to work on the organization side, and thank goodness I have got Martha, Martha, I know you are listening, Martha Heinemann now Bixby, who has taken over executive director role of Where Will We Be?. There is so much more work that goes in behind the scenes that has to be done for an organization to function efficiently. And I for one having been on the public side of things and having had cameras and spotlights on me, have much more respect and thanks for all of the people who work behind the scenes every day, all of the people who do policy and all the people who do political advocacy, and all of the volunteers who spend their days doing this because they believe that this is right. It is a very difficult job, and I certainly have much more respect for those folks as I have tried to take on more of a role.
JERRY FOWLER: Now one thing that you did, you took a trip to China and Egypt with George Clooney and Don Cheadle and there were a couple of other athletes.
JOEY CHEEK: Tegla Loroupe, Tegla, who was world record holder in the marathon for a bit. I don’t think she holds it anymore but a marathon runner from Kenya.
JERRY FOWLER: I have to ask first, I mean that is a very substance oriented program, but what is it like traveling with George Clooney and Don Cheadle, I mean Hollywood?
JOEY CHEEK: Oh, that is funny. Everybody asks what is it like traveling with Don Cheadle and George Clooney, and I think that actually kind of sums it up, it does not matter who you meet, it could be, the biggest politicians in the world or just a normal guy in the street, and they want to know what it is like being with George Clooney and Don Cheadle. And so, if I get asked that much and I am not a celebrity, imagine what it must be like to actually be them. So, both of those guys are amazing guys, Don Cheadle especially. I was just blown away by how with it and how, just how on top of issues he was. It was sort of like as we were traveling around, we would sort of sit down and debrief after these meetings, and we had some incredibly bright policy guys with us from Save Darfur. We would talk about, what we would have just done, meeting with Chinese ambassadors or with, Egyptian members of the family, not quite royal family but members of the presidential family, and, we had all sort of had our say and then Don would speak up and just sort of basically cut through all the nonsense that we had all put out there and just basically lay out points. I was really impressed with how much he knew about so many things. George is just super cool. He makes you feel like he is your best friend in the world and really popular and also incredibly passionate. He was doing this on his own time and, brought all the rest of us, and I do not know who paid for it all, but, someone paid for this huge trip for us to travel to these places. And it is amazing to see that level of celebrity, to see people mob somebody wherever they go. It is unbelievable.
JERRY FOWLER: And is he a celebrity in Beijing?
JOEY CHEEK: He was approached every time we were out by a few people. Now, when we traveled in Egypt or when we were in New York afterwards, we were meeting at the U.N., there he was just mobbed. It is like everywhere he goes it just crushes of people trying to meet him or take pictures or say hello. In Beijing, it was much quieter but he really could not sit at a restaurant for more than just a minute or two before people started coming up and asking for autographs even there.
JERRY FOWLER: Wow that is the power of globalization.
JOEY CHEEK: It is unbelievable, yes.
JERRY FOWLER: Well, tell me about meeting with Chinese government officials, what was the response?
JOEY CHEEK: Well, they received us and it was a very, it was a warm reception. They brought us in and they listened to, our requests, which at the time were really, you know, we hope that you will take an active role, we think that you have enormous leverage being such a major financial partner with Sudan, you have major leverage with that Sudanese government, and we hope that you will take a role and sort of, helping along U.N. resolutions or really not obstructing the work that needs to be done to protect those people. And they were, the diplomats we met were just unbelievably sharp and, you know, really slick actually. It was frustrating. When we were in meetings, I felt like we were making real progress and that these people were telling us yes, they are interested, yes, they want to help, we will see, we think we make a difference behind the scenes, and we are going to really try and make an effort. Now, looking back seven or eight months later, it is frustrating. There is just a new resolution passed of course in the Security Council, but there are still no troops on the ground. There are still humanitarian workers being attacked along with the thousands and thousands of displaced people. So, looking back on it now, it seemed very satisfying that we were really pulling something off, but you are not sure. Seven months later and nothing has changed on the ground. It is sometimes very frustrating.
JERRY FOWLER: And what about the Egyptians?
JOEY CHEEK: Again, I mean, it was a huge reception. We met with Gamal Mubarak, President Mubarak’s son. We met with his wife and we talked with their foreign minister and they were very vocal about wanting to commit humanitarian aid and commit doctors and people to be able to move into the region and help support the civilian needs on the ground. But, again, it is sort of frustrating because lots of, “Oh yeah, we definitely want to help, we will do something” and then you leave and you kind of feel warm and sunny and you look back and you go, “Wait a minute, did we really accomplish anything?” Now, as this resolution was passed and as nations were beginning to fulfill their commitments, their troop commitments and what not, we may see something different. I hope we see something different. But ultimately, it was my first lesson in diplomacy. I realized that the wheels move agonizingly slow, especially when you have got people in peril, but I think ultimately it was not a net zero. I think ultimately it is like these million little efforts and hopefully one of them will be the difference, but you are not sure which one, but you know you just have to keep doing them.
JERRY FOWLER: Yes, that is one thing that it is always hard to keep in mind. You want to see immediate gratification and feel like you can see the ball moving and the fact is, the ball moves but it is just a bunch of little steps and it is people doing things all over that eventually add up into something big.
JOEY CHEEK: Yes, it is sort of the exact opposite of athletics, I think. We have a set goal, a set end point, you know if that day you are prepared well than anyone else and you, fulfill your potential better than anyone else, then you win and the mission has been accomplished. If you get to that point and you do not accomplish what you want, you look back and you say, “All right, which strategy worked and which strategy did not?” And I think that same mentality has helped me as I have started to work in a bit of a humanitarian field and really trying to move this. But there is no end point, there are a million different people’s opinions and beliefs, there is the will of nations, so it is sort of like some of these issues, you look at well, why is Sudan able to flout resolutions in the past? It is because it is gotten all of this income from oil sales and from, presidential palaces and weapons, small arms sales that it is getting regardless of the U.N. So you begin realizing that sometimes you have got these giant nations that sort of grind against each other, and it is I think the people are sometimes the stuff that keeps them being ground, or they just get ground in between these two shifting plates. And sometimes it is overwhelming, but then you go, “Well, there is nothing I can do but continue to work towards the goal and see what I did wrong last time and try and improve it for the next time around.”
JERRY FOWLER: When we talked last year it was, as you said, just shortly after the Torino Olympics, and you had announced your retirement from speed skating, ready to move on to other things, and you are starting Princeton in a couple of weeks. Are you still happy with the decision to retire? As time has gone on, has that seemed more the right thing or have you had second thoughts?
JOEY CHEEK: No, I am very happy I retired.
JERRY FOWLER: I can not believe I am talking to someone in his mid-20s who is retired.
JOEY CHEEK: Yeah, yeah, well I am retired but it is not like I am...
JERRY FOWLER: Retired from speed skating.
JOEY CHEEK: ...yeah, I am retired from my sport. Being an athlete, especially in the last couple years as I was winning, became an Olympic champion and then began consistently winning medals at an international level, it is a great life. Obviously there are the long hours of training, and that is true no matter what, you are putting in these huge efforts, but I remember, especially the last year, I knew I was going to be retired. I knew I was going to be done after the Olympics, and I said, “This is my last chance doing this, I want to really enjoy it.” And it used to be I hated bike riding. We would cycle thousands of miles a summer and I would hop on the bike for three or four hours and I was just miserable. I could not stand it, and for some reason it would be--I was living in Park City, so I lived in a ski resort. The team would meet, we would go off riding at 9:00 in the morning, and it is beautiful, it is in the mountains. And I realized that a lot of people do this for vacation, and I am getting to do this for my job, and I am really good at it, and if I am successful of course and win Olympic medals, then I will be remembered, at least in one tiny little vein, I will be remembered in at least one field forever. And it is a great way to live. You have got all these people who are there focusing only on you, and I think I have said a million times since then, it is also a really selfish way to live, because all I do is think about me. All my family does is, “Well, how can support Joey in his cause?” All of my coaches and trainers, all these people, all they do is support me. Even my girlfriend put up with me for four and a half years. She has to deal with my scheduling. She has to work around that, and that actually a really comfortable way to live, but it is so nice now that I am working on something that is satisfying in a different way. Because you go, “You know what, I am doing this and I think this is the right thing, and I think,” I look at this and I go, “I have an opportunity, people for some reason still listen to me, and if I do and I can reach out and really magnify that with other athletes, then maybe we can do something enormously positive.”
JERRY FOWLER: Joey Cheek is the Olympic gold medalist in speed skating from Torino and a tireless Darfur activist. Joey thanks for taking the time to come by.
JOEY CHEEK: Thank you for having me. I hope everyone will be able to check out wherewillwebe.org.
JERRY FOWLER: I should have asked you.
JOEY CHEEK: Yeah.
JERRY FOWLER: All one word, wherewillwebe?
JOEY CHEEK: wherewillwebe.org, it is all one word and you can track our progress and drop us a line and let us know if there is any athletes you want us to approach and we will.
JERRY FOWLER: Or if you know athletes.
JOEY CHEEK: Or if you know athletes, yeah, send them our way.
JERRY FOWLER: Or if you are an athlete.
JOEY CHEEK: If you are an athlete, come my way, we will be able to connect you; we will get you doing some great work.
JERRY FOWLER: Thanks a lot, Joey.
JOEY CHEEK: Thanks for having me.
NARRATOR: You have been listening to Voices on Genocide Prevention, from United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. To learn more about preventing genocide, join us online at www.ushmm.org/conscience. There you’ll also find the Voices on Genocide Prevention weblog.
