Soros, PUMA helped anti-U.S. athlete qualify for Tokyo

FPI / June 29, 2021

A radical organization founded by a prominent Obama administration official and funded by George Soros induced one of the largest sports apparel corporations in the world to provide funding for the activist U.S. athlete now making headlines for snubbing the national anthem during Olympic trials.

“While the music played, [hammer thrower Gwen] Berry placed her left hand on her hip and fidgeted. She took a quarter turn, so she was facing the stands, not the flag. Toward the end, she plucked up her black T-shirt with the words 'Activist Athlete' emblazoned on the front, and draped it over her head,” ESPN.com reports. The act occurred June 26 as Berry was successfully qualifying to represent the U.S. at the Tokyo Olympics.

Berry has a long history of mixing political protest with her athletics. In 2019 she raised her fist on the podium in a dramatic Black Power gesture after winning a competition at the Pan-Am Games.

Berry is a U.S. athlete who considers the national anthem a personal affront.

"I feel like it was a setup, and they did it on purpose,'' Berry said of the anthem playing as she was standing on the award podium to receive a bronze medal at the Olympic trials. "I was pissed, to be honest.''

"My purpose and my mission is bigger than sports,'' Berry said afterwards, ESPN reports. "I'm here to represent those... who died due to systemic racism. That's the important part. That's why I'm going. That's why I'm here today.''

"They said they were going to play it before we walked out, then they played it when we were out there,'' Berry continued. "But I don't really want to talk about the anthem because that's not important. The anthem doesn't speak for me. It never has.''

Just five days before this all went down, Berry was funded by German multinational sports apparel goliath PUMA to the tune of $15,000 to help her qualify for the Olympics. PUMA was matching funding provided by the radical organization Color of Change.

From a Color of Change June 21 press release:

Color Of Change, the nation’s largest online racial justice organization, today announced PUMA will match the organization’s $15,000 sponsorship of Olympic hammer thrower Gwen Berry. Berry will be a part of PUMA’s She Moves Us platform, which highlights some of its female brand ambassadors and athletes who have moved culture and sports forward to inspire other women around the world.

The announcement comes after a series of corporations withdrew their support in response to Berry’s public display of protest against racial injustice during a gold medal ceremony at the Pan American Games in 2019. Since then, Berry, who has continued to be outspoken on racial and social justice issues, has lost more than 80 percent of her income due to the corporate sponsorship withdrawals.

On its website, Color of Change implores corporations to step up and help Berry after she lost corporate sponsors after her Black Power stunt at the Pan-Am Games:

Today we’re asking corporate sponsors to stand with Gwen Berry, the Pan-American gold medalist who was abandoned by sponsors and lost 80% of her income after she raised her fist on the awards podium. And we’ll keep fighting for Black athletes’ right to raise their voices without sacrificing their careers — demanding the International Olympic Committee drop Rule 50, the rule punishing athletes for speaking out. This is an important marker towards justice and equality within sports.

PUMA jumped into the breach, fully aware of Berry’s radical beliefs and past actions. In short, a major big-brand corporation deliberately sponsored an American athlete’s disrespect for the national anthem. Welcome to the exciting new world of Woke Corporate Sports.

PUMA reportedly made 5.23 billion euros in revenue in 2020, the equivalent of $6.2 billion in U.S. dollars.

According to the watchdog site Influence Watch, Color of Change was founded by Van Jones, a former key part of Barack Obama’s administration:

Color of Change is an online organizing organization created by the Obama administration’s former “green jobs czar” Van Jones and the former director of grassroots mobilization for MoveOn.org, James Rucker, in 2005.

There are no donor reports on the Color of Change website, but Influence Watch notes the organization has been heavily funded by progressive globalist billionaire Soros in the recent past:

In 2016, Color of Change’s executive director said that neither Color of Change nor Color of Change PAC takes money from big corporations. However, the Washington Times reported that liberal billionaire George Soros gave $500,000 to Color of Change in 2015.

Gwen Berry hates America and she will be representing this nation in Tokyo later this summer. And PUMA is the proud corporate supporter that helped make this happen.

Free Press International