By Yogi Acharya of No One Is Illegal – Toronto
BASICS #17 – Jan/Feb 2009
It was a rather chilly evening, December 17th was. It was an evening when about 300 people, both native and non-native, ground the Olympics Torch rally to a halt as it attempted to pass through downtown Toronto.
The reaction from on-lookers was interesting. It spawned a range of emotions from benign bewilderment to not-so-benign expressions of hatred that would be unfit to print. Whatever the emotion, the underlying question on people’s minds was the same – why on earth would anyone oppose the Olympics? Aren’t they all about unity, peace, and athletic excellence, with an added rhetoric these days of promoting “green” business?
Well, there is a short answer, and then a long one. The short answer is no.
The long answer, as is usually the case in life, takes a little more effort and space to convey. Because the truth is that the Olympics could be about all those wonderful things such as peace and unity. But there is a difference between what could be and what is. And there is precisely nothing in the Olympic Games’ history or contemporary reality that would suggest the games indeed are about their professed rhetoric.
Since 2003, when Vancouver landed the Olympic Games contract, homelessness has more than doubled in the city. The downtown east side of Vancouver, one of the poorest off-reserve neighbourhoods in Canada, has seen increased police violence and ticketing of the poor for things like jaywalking and sleeping outdoors – all in an effort to “cleanse” the downtown of the poor, to make it look “pretty” for the incoming visitors. Billions of dollars of taxpayer money has been spent constructing Olympic venues, stadiums and villages, construction that has destroyed several fragile local ecosystems, and has been responsible for some 3.5 megatonnes of carbon dioxide emissions. This same construction routinely uses migrant labour under highly exploitative conditions and treats them as disposable commodities.
The Olympics are not just about games; they are an industry – the Olympics industry. And just like every other industry within a capitalist system, they are about profit, not for the local communities who host them, but for the huge corporations who move in to capitalize on their massive market potential. So essentially, taxpayers foot the bill for hosting and building infrastructure, while corporations rake in the revenues – socialization of cost, and privatization of profits. Naturally, this leads to dissatisfaction among people, so there is also a massive “security” budget – approaching a billion and counting.
And of course through all this, we can never forget that British Columbia is unceded indigenous land. The games are happening without the consent and without any benefit to the people whose land British Colombia actually belongs to, according to treaty. The games are happening on stolen native land using stolen migrant labour and will essentially culminate in stolen local resources from the poor and working class.
So why do we oppose the Olympics? Well, it’s an opposition that stems from a crucial difference between rhetoric and reality.
Reality matters, rhetoric doesn’t.
Visit No One Is Illegal Toronto at http://toronto.nooneisillegal.org
For more information on the Olympics: http://no2010.com
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