Victory! Glenn Burke Pride Night

Petition starter Sterling Hardaway fought to honor and celebrate an athlete often overlooked in baseball history. Sterling is an MLB fan who campaigned for the Oakland Athletics to honor Glenn Burke – the first openly gay player in Major League Baseball. And he won.

Glenn Burke was a trailblazing, openly-gay African-American outfielder who played for the Oakland A’s in the late 1970s. Burke was later forced out of a league that was not ready to accept LBGTQI athletes. But thanks to Sterling’s campaign, The Oakland A’s have renamed their annual pride celebration the ‘Glenn Burke Pride Night’.

Sterling said after his win, “You do have opportunities to leverage your voice and the voice of others, to say ‘these things matter to us’”. And that's exactly what petition starters around the world do everyday on Change.org.