Philly’s Natasha Cloud, a WNBA star and social justice activist, is ‘tired of the crumbs’

WASHINGTON — Natasha Cloud seems to have grown tired of waiting.

The Broomall native would argue that as a Black woman in America she has been waiting for equality, opportunity, and safety for most of her life.

Well, not just waiting.

In 2020, Cloud, the point guard for the Washington Mystics, opted out of the WNBA season and focused on her long-running social justice work, which earned her numerous humanitarian awards, endorsements, publicity, and praise.

Three years later, however, the former St. Joseph’s standout remains frustrated, referencing a USC/Purdue University study published in 2021 that showed women’s sports received only about 5% of total television coverage, including highlights on ESPN’s SportsCenter.

“Stop giving us half-assed investments,” Cloud said last week. “We appreciate y’all for putting us on TV, but I’m tired of being appreciative. I’m tired of the crumbs. I want the whole pie of what we deserve.”

After a Mystics practice last week in Washington, The Inquirer sat down with the seven-year WNBA veteran, who talked about what her league needs to ensure progress, where the country has regressed since 2020, and how difficult conversations bridged a divide between Cloud and her white siblings who voted for former President Donald Trump.

The WNBA plans to expand. Its commissioner, Collingswood native Cathy Engelbert, has said as much several times since 2022.

There is, however, no firm timetable for such expansion.

Earlier this month, Engelbert told Sports Business Journal that the 12-team league, which just opened its 27th season, had narrowed a list of 100 potential new cities to “20 or so.”

At an event in Portland, Ore., this month, Engelbert estimated expansion of one to two teams being two to four years away.

Last week, a sellout crowd approaching 20,000 watched the Chicago Sky beat the Minnesota Lynx at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, a night many believe was a successful audition for the city.

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For Cloud, the league’s need for expansion is part of a larger need: more investment.

“If you invest into us, there will be a return,” she said. “But if you give us one foot in, one foot out, half-assed investment, of course we’re not going to produce.”

She added: “You can start with just our media coverage. Five percent, it’s not enough for all women’s sports. TNT, I’ve never seen a WNBA game [on your network], but Candace Parker is one of your main hosts. ABC Network, I would love for you to invest more.

“And then from investments by other companies. I’ll call Hennessy out. Hennessy, you are a partner with the NBA. You are also a partner with the WNBA. You do nothing for us. Michelob Ultra does. There are so many different pieces that we can touch on, but it really just comes down to investment into women. Are you willing to invest into us? Because if you do there will be a return. ESPN, if you put our games on TV, people watch them. Our statistics have grown the last few years. There’s an increase in viewership. Why? Because you’re actually putting our games on TV. Just simple investments. Nothing too crazy.”

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Last year, Monumental Sports & Entertainment, which owns the Mystics, the NBA’s Washington Wizards, and the NHL’s Washington Capitals, purchased NBC Sports Washington. As a result, Cloud said, the Mystics now have pre- and postgame shows.

“No other WNBA team has that,” Cloud said. “That’s investment. You now have more eyes on us. … You allow people that weren’t fans or didn’t know anything about us to know our stories, know how we prepare for games, and to see our personalties. You’re going to fall in love with us if you just allow people to fall in love with us.”

Cloud also distinguished between increased investment in the NWSL, which last month announced plans to add a soccer team in Northern California, and the WNBA.

“Their demographic looks completely different than ours, and it is,” Cloud said. “We’re predominantly Black women of all different shapes and sizes. … Instead of looking at it like it’s a negative thing, I think it needs to be looked at like it’s beautiful, because that’s exactly what it is.”

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Cloud, though, isn’t just concerned about progress for her league.

She was active in 2020 during protests in Philadelphia after Breonna Taylor and George Floyd were killed that year.

Police shot and killed Taylor, a 26-year-old Black woman, after a botched raid on her apartment in Louisville, Ky. No officer was ever charged in the shooting, but last year the Justice Department charged four current and former police officers with federal civil rights violations, including lying to obtain a search warrant for Taylor’s apartment.

Then-officer Derek Chauvin killed Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, in Minneapolis. Chauvin was caught on video kneeling on Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes after Floyd had surrendered, face down on the street after a store clerk alleged Floyd used a counterfeit $20 bill. Chauvin later was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 22½ years in prison.

“I feel like you don’t need to have known either of them to feel that trauma or to fear for your life because, now I’m not even safe in my home?” Cloud said. “I’m not safe when I go out. I’m not safe in a car. Where am I safe?”

She added: “So I wanted to be in the mix. I wanted to be on the front lines and marching. It was such a surreal feeling for me to be on the Rocky steps and see for miles — I’m getting chills just talking about it — people of all different colors, shapes, sizes, religions, coming together, and it gives you hope, right? That, no, I’m not alone in this. There are so many other people who don’t look like me or that do look like me and that feel the same way about all of this. It kind of energizes you. If we can figure out how to get all of these people together on one common interest, then we hold the power. Sometimes I think we forget that — that it’s ‘We the people.’”

Are we any closer to progress?

“No,” she said. “We’ve gone backwards.”

“We are attacking women,” she continued. “It’s been a war on women for the last however many years, but specifically the last two or three. We don’t get to make decisions with our bodies, for our bodies anymore. The war on the LGBTQ+ community, our rights.”

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Cloud, who was once married to professional softball player Aleshia Ocasio, vehemently opposes legislation such as the “Don’t Say Gay” expansion law that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has enacted, which the Human Rights Campaign — the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ civil rights organization — calls discriminatory.

“You talk about the mass shootings that continually happen and we do not do a [expletive] thing. Black and brown people continuously being killed by police, the people who are supposed to protect us. We still don’t have equity. Systemic racism still thrives. We are mass-incarcerated. We have taken so many steps back.”

Cloud then referenced the work of slain civil rights leaders Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.

“It’s like we’re still fighting for [King’s] dream. We still haven’t even come close to it. Have we made progress? Yes. But when it comes to what his dream actually was, no, we’re not even [expletive] close. We are not close.”

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Cloud said she considers herself a Democrat, but her focus is more on the character of the candidate instead of loyalty to party.

“If there was a better Republican running for office, I would vote for them,” she said. “I don’t care that I’m a Democrat. I care about what you believe in as someone who is going to step into a role of power to be a voice for his or her people. So, no.

“When you ask me have we moved forward since 2020? No. We could research how many more Black and brown men and women have been killed at the hands of police since George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. We can talk about the mass shootings that have happened. We can talk about how we have the highest mortality rate when it comes to women giving birth, and Black women are by far the worst. We can talk about our health care system and how we don’t have adequate health care.

“We can go down the line. We want to talk about America being this great country, no the [expletive] we’re not. And until we come to grips with that reality, of course, yes, we have certain freedoms and rights that other countries don’t have, but the reality of this country is that not everyone gets them. You have to be white, and specifically male, because even white women don’t get the same equity that their white male counterparts do. So that in itself is really frustrating for how many steps we’ve taken backwards since Trump’s administration.”

Trump’s presidency also caused fractures within Cloud’s family. She is the youngest of five children and the only child of mixed race.

In a 2021 story by the Washingtonian, Cloud talked about being 18 when she learned that her biological father was a Black man with whom her mother had an affair before eventually reconciling with her husband, who raised Cloud as his own.

“I had everything I needed,” Cloud told the Washingtonian. “A father who loves me, who guided me through life — so there was no reason to go look for someone who didn’t want me.”

Race wasn’t discussed much growing up, Cloud said last week.

It wasn’t until she accepted a scholarship to play basketball at Maryland that she “found her Blackness,” she says. Looking back now, Cloud realizes that she grew up with privileges other Black children her age didn’t have.

“… So I was just this gray-area kid where I didn’t fit in,” she said last week. “I wasn’t white enough. I wasn’t Black enough.”

Fast-forward years later, Cloud learned that some of her siblings voted for Trump.

“I remember so many times being like, ‘Everything you just voted for is everything that I am fighting for as a Black woman, so I need you to imagine me, I need you to imagine my wife, I need you to imagine my future kid. Those are things that when you go in to vote, I need you to think of outside of yourself,’” she said.

Progress came gradually.

“There were so many times that there was screaming, crying, arguing,” she said. “I’ve left family dinners. I’ve been like, ‘I’m not coming home no more!’ We haven’t talked [for periods of time], and those are real things. Being open about that, I want to normalize that. [Stuff] doesn’t have to be perfect, but we do have to be able to sit down and have a conversation and have both sides hear each other out.

“But I’m still going to tell you that your side is wrong in a lot of different ways and I can educate you on the reasons why. So it’s been hard, but families have to have hard dialogues, so there’s a lot of love. They love me. I love them. They would give their life for me. I would give my life for them. But, yeah, we have to talk about the reality of how my life goes and how your life goes simply because of the pigmentation of my skin.”