“Black trans lives matter!” “Black trans lives matter!” “Black trans lives matter!” “So let me tell you something: Voguing has always been a protest. The dance itself, in all of its campy glory, has always been about, ‘Look at me. I’m here. I matter, and look what I can do.’ So doing it on the streets, doing it, you know, in front of a cop car is letting you know, ‘I’m here. I matter.’ ” “The ballroom is not just voguing. The ballroom is art. The ballroom is fashion. It’s theater. It’s political. Remember, you have all these houses. You have the House of Mugler, you have the House of Mizrahi, and we call ourselves the House of Xtravaganza, the most fabulous of all time!” [laughing] “The ballroom scene has made it through past pandemics and past protests, from police brutality to the AIDS crisis, to losing a lot of the elders of the scene, to finding spaces.” “For a lot of people, ballroom is life, voguing is life. And so, when these things are kind of shut down, you’re basically kind of shutting down the lifeline of the community.” “I had balls in North Carolina that was canceled. I had balls in Florida that was canceled due to quarantine and corona, and it’s — what do we do now?” “First, we were seeing the at-home challenges happen.” ♫ “I don’t want the corone-rone. Just FaceTime me on the phone, phone. You got to get up out my home ’cause I don’t want corone.” ♫ “Wash your hands, hands, hands, hands, hands, hands, hands.” “Then we saw the rise of the Bigo balls —” “Ready?” “— a virtual ballroom —” ♫ “Ah, giving me hands. Giving me hands. Serve your hands like this, yes. Giving me hands. Giving me hands. Serve your hands like this. I’m stuck in the room. I can’t get out. This corona’s taking me out.“ “I remember, my friends, well I had close to like 3,000 people watching. It was like people were thirsty. They were yearning for a ball. They were just like, ‘Oh my God, yes.’ “ “And there was almost like a resurgence of ballroom in a new format.” “And just like in [snaps] the whole world has just stopped.” “Layleen Polanco!” “Say her name!” “Layleen Polanco!” “Say her name!” “Tony McDade!” “Say it like you mean it!” “Tony McDade!” “Nina Pop!” “Nina Pop!” “Say her name!” “Nina Pop!” “Say her name!” “Nina Pop!” “When black trans lives are under attack, what do we do?” “Stand up, fight back!” “Stand up, fight back!” “Stand up, fight back!” “Stand up, fight back!” “Stand up, fight back!” “Especially because black trans women, Afro-Latina trans women, are being murdered in the streets, we’re here to stand up. We’re the House of Xtravaganza. We’ve always been standing up against injustice and speaking out to make equality and justice for everybody.” “With Layleen, I was the mother of her house. She was one of my kids.” “Our house has always been a very trans-friendly house. Even if I did not know her personally, as a trans man, for me, she was my sister. It’s obviously hard losing a sister.” “It’s amazing just seeing her name everywhere, her pictures everywhere, and her story just reaching so many lives and so many souls and so many people.” “She had her chosen family and her biological family by her!” [cheering and applause] “Yes!” “The House of Xtravaganza!” “Yes!” “I love you guys!” “Yes!” “I love all of you!” “Yes!” “Thank you so much!” [cheering and applause] “Yes!” “I was wearing a mask, and I was scared. But I wasn’t thinking about that. There’s an abuse of power, and people are fed up.” “What do want?” “Justice!” “When do we want it?” “Now!” “I mean, L.G.B.T. culture is rooted in the battle against police brutality from Stonewall.” “No justice!” “No peace!” “No justice!” “No peace!” “And I think in the last couple of months, the last couple of weeks especially, we are waking up people faster.” “And it’s kind of using what we do to just voice our outrage and kind of honor our L.G.B.T. ancestors, with voguing being the resistance dance.” ♫ “We have $160 for whoever wins the ball today.” “I thought it was —” “It was more, but I decided to put the rest of that money that was more — into Black Trans Lives collectives.” [cheering] “And yes I am [expletive] hype because this is my [expletive] community. What?” ♫ “All these people that were voguing during the protests, it made me feel like, we have to fight for something. And what we’re fighting for is rights, and even in the time that we’re fighting for Black Lives Matter, you have to remember. We’re black and we’re queer, too. We’re black and we’re gay. We’re black and we’re trans. So, us going out there and voguing and being unapologetically us while protesting told them that, ‘Hey, don’t forget us either.’ ” “Period. That’s it.”

The United States is one of the most unequal countries in the developed world. People who aren’t wealthy have less chance of success and less chance for their children to succeed. When you talk about fixing these things, though, people freak out. Taxing the rich? Helping the poor? To many Americans, that smells like socialism. But there’s one part of American society that has been successfully fighting inequality for years, and right under our noses, because they know just how important it is to make sure everyone gets a fair chance. That’s right, I’m talking about the National Basketball Association. [UPBEAT MUSIC PLAYING] See, in the N.B.A., there are rich teams and poor teams. The New York Knicks, the Los Angeles Lakers and other big-city teams charge more for tickets, sell more merchandise and strike bigger broadcasting deals. They’re rolling in money. Meanwhile, the Phoenix Suns and Minnesota Timberwolves are struggling to get by. Now, you may be thinking, great. That’s competition for you. Let the best team win, right? Well, no. The N.B.A. wants competition on the court. But to maintain that competition and make sure every team has a fighting chance, the N.B.A. imposes strict rules to limit competition everywhere else. Let’s take a look. Rule 1: revenue sharing. The N.B.A. makes about $2.6 billion every year from national television deals. But that money is divided evenly among the teams, regardless of how many viewers each team attracts. Popular teams, which bring in huge audiences, are actually giving up some of their earnings to help out teams that are less profitable. Rule 2: spending limits. There’s this thing called the salary cap. It’s a limit on how much each team can spend on players. Last year, it was about $110 million. And every team has to stay under that limit. So instead of a no-holds-barred free market, the N.BA. is actually stepping in to make sure the wealthy teams don’t always outbid everyone else. And that means poor teams can make competitive salary offers to top players. Rule 3: the Draft. New players enter the N.B.A. through a draft. But how do you decide who gets first dibs on the hot talent? Well, it’s not random. The N.B.A. awards those precious top draft picks to the worst teams. That’s right. Each season’s worst teams are actually rewarded for their failures by getting a better chance at the top pick. And that gives them a head start on building a better team for next season. So why does the N.B.A. do all this? Simply put, they know that unregulated competition would be a disaster. The rich teams would use their mountains of cash to buy up all the best players, and soon, they’d have a chokehold on the league. You’d start to see the same few teams in the championship every year — Lakers, Bulls, Knicks. Lakers, Bulls, Knicks. Just imagine — the Knicks. It would be a lot like the rest of America, where the wealthiest people can set their kids up with trust funds, while everyone else struggles just to pay the rent. But maybe you’re wondering, why do rich teams agree to share their hard-earned profits with their poorer rivals? Well, the answer is simple — the Lakers need other teams to play — good teams. Otherwise, what’s the point? The only reason fans show up for basketball is because we believe it’s a fair fight. We need to know that with enough talent, hard work and good old-fashioned luck, any team has a chance at the championship. Without that level playing field, it would be boring as hell, and bad business for the N.B.A. And here’s the thing — a level playing field would be good for the rest of us too. So what would it take for America to look a little more like the N.B.A.? Well, we would need higher taxes on the wealthy to redistribute money from the rich to the rest of us. And, just like the N.B.A. draft, we would need to give poor folks a better shot at opportunity, like making sure everyone has access to education and good housing. That’s what a leg up looks like. Now, obviously, you can’t run a country like a sports league. And the N.B.A. has plenty of flaws too. The rich owners keep getting richer, just like the rest of the country. And while the players are well compensated, thousands of other workers, the ones who collect tickets, sell popcorn, clean the stands, don’t make very much at all. But we can still learn a lesson from the N.B.A. They haven’t abolished winners and losers. They haven’t abolished capitalism or wealth or profit. They just keep teams from using those profits to rig the system and spoil the game for everyone. That’s not socialism. It’s just fair play. So which world do you want to live in? A society where everyone has a chance to succeed or one where the winners are always the New York Knicks?