When Snow Melts: Vancouver’s Olympic Crackdown
News Flash: Winter Olympic officials in tropical Vancouver have been forced to import snow - on the public dime - to make sure that the 2010 games proceed as planned. This use of tax-dollars is just the icing on the cake for increasingly angry Vancouver residents. And unlike the snow, the anger shows no signs of abating. As Olympic Resistance Network organizer Harsha Walia wrote in the Vancouver Sun, "With massive cost over-runs and Olympic project bailouts, it is not surprising that a November 2009 Angus Reid poll found that more than 30 per cent of [British Columbia] residents feel the Olympics will have a negative impact and almost 40 per cent support protesters. A January 2010 EKOS poll found that almost 70 per cent believe that too much is being spent on the Games."
Officials are feeling the anger, and the independent media, frighteningly, is paying the price. Just as Democracy Now's Amy Goodman was held in November for trying to cross the border for reasons that had nothing to do with the Olympic Games, Martin Macias Jr., an independent media reporter from Chicago, was detained and held for seven hours by Canada Border Services agents before being put on a plane and sent to Seattle. Macias, who is 20 years old, is a media reform activist with community radio station Radio Arte where he serves as the host/producer of First Voice, a radio news zine.
I spoke to Martin Macias today and he described a chilling scene of detention and expulsion. "I was asked the same questions for three and a half hours in a small room. They told me I had no right to a lawyer. I went from frustrated and angry to scared. I didn't know what the laws were or how the laws had been changed for the Olympics. I kept telling them I wasn't going to Vancouver to protest but to cover the protests but for them that was one and the same. This is bigger than me. We need to ask who is exactly ordering this kind of repression. Is it the government? The IOC? Why the crackdown?"
Then insult on top of injury when they deported Macias and insisted he pay his own way out of the country. "They wanted me to buy a $1,300 plane ticket back to Chicago. I said ‘no way' and now I'm in Seattle."
Martin's story is not unique. Two delegates aiming to attend an indigenous assembly taking place alongside the games were also detained and turned away.
For people with just a passing knowledge of our neighbors to the north, it must all seem quite shocking. When we think of human rights abuses and suppression of dissent, Canada is hardly the first place that comes to mind. But there actually is a long history in Canada of this kind of abuse of power. The latest chapter in that history has been written during the pre-Olympic crackdown of 2010. Now as protestors and independent, unembedded journalists gather for the February 10-15 anti-Olympic convergence, as tax dollars go toward importing snow, the need to silence dissent becomes an International Olympic Committee imperative.
As Chicago's Bob Quellos, who entered Vancouver successfully after accompanying Macias, said to me,
"Walking the streets, residents here are very clear about who is responsible for the billions of dollars of Olympic debt they will be paying off for generations. They are outraged that the over $1 billion that is being spent on security has placed a cop on almost every corner of Downtown Vancouver. And they are outraged by the government's priorities. For example, while Vancouver's Downtown East Side struggles with poverty similar to third-world countries and social programs continue to be gutted, VANOC is spending an untold amount of money helicoptering in snow to the Olympic venue of Cypress Mountain that would otherwise be a mud hill due to the warm weather."
It's not hard to deduce why the snow is melting: it's the heat on the street.
[Dave Zirin is the author of the forthcoming "Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games we Love" (Scribner) Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.]
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When I was deciding on where to go for grad school last year my partner and I were both given great offers from Simon Fraser University in Burnaby (a suburb of Vancouver) in programs that were excellent fits for us. One of the reasons we decided to stay in eastern Canada was because of the Olympics. Most people look at me like I'm insane when I tell them that the Olympics are the reason I am not living in Vancouver, but i had no interest in paying even more than the already insane cost of living in that city or to live under a temporary police state. I am a huge sports fan but the politics of the event make me sick. (Even beyond the politics I just find the Olympics boring as all hell)
It puzzles me that Canada with its health system can still have a police state and nobody can afford to live in Vancouver. My solution is to put all these international sporting events under the jurisdiction of the UN. Have the World Cup and future olympics played in 2 or 3 sites. I know with the UN there will be no chance of any corruption or politics taking place. It will be as pristine as the snow in DC. The only thing I am hoping for is that none of the chosen sites are in America. Power to the UN.
It puzzles me that Canada with its health system can still have a police state and nobody can afford to live in Vancouver. My solution is to put all these international sporting events under the jurisdiction of the UN. Have the World Cup and future olympics played in 2 or 3 sites. I know with the UN there will be no chance of any corruption or politics taking place. It will be as pristine as the snow in DC. The only thing I am hoping for is that none of the chosen sites are in America. Power to the UN.
Dave,
Any forthcoming comments on President Obama's comments comparing CEO investment house bonuses with MLB player salaries? Interestingly Obama failed to note most franchises are owned by the same corporations that raid the public treasury.
"Listen, $17 million is an extraordinary amount of money," Obama said in the interview. "Of course, there are some baseball players who are making more than that who don't get to the World Series either. So I'm shocked by that as well."
Solidarity,
Richard
Watched Ronald McDonald with the torch this morning in Vancouver hours after Arnold ran with it. These games are about big business with a touch of Fascist ideology and nothing else.
So many Canadians are talking about how proud they are today. All I can think about is how disgusted I am.
These Olympics don't represent Canadian values at all.
In the months leading up to the games, we were right on the edge of the rules in allowing other countries access to the venues. It was an underhanded attempt to gain further home field advantage. Now a young, promising, but under experienced Georgian Luger is dead, because of our selfishness and our pride.
This morning, I am actually sick to my stomach.
While I very much support the ideas and the facts that the Olympic Resistance Network is trying to bring to the public's attention, I was really disheartened to read in yesterday's Boston Globe of the vandalism, the threats, and the violence of protesters (and yes, police). I realize I was reading a mainstream news source and only hope the coverage is biased towards non-truth. Acting like thugs is only that, i.e. thug-like. It does nothing towards enlightening anyone to the story that needs to be told.
Acting like "thugs" is how you're going to get things done, and aversion to direct action is the reason the left has been reduced to a dog and pony show.
Get out in the streets and fight or go home. Shaking your fist will accomplish nothing.
For some, there is still a belief in the power and effectiveness of non-violent protest. There is also still very much a place for it on the streets. And we need not be told to go home.
Yes, for "some" there is a belief in non-violent protest.
These people are called lifetsylers, who attend protests to look hip and politically aware, then they go back to their nice little homes and continue sustaining the same injustices they claim to oppose.
You don't need a rifle to fight, you simply need courage. The sandwich board and singsong crowd don't have that, which is why they've accomplished the sum of jack and shit.
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Dave Zirin is the author of the book: "Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics and Promise of Sports" (Haymarket). You can receive his column Edge of Sports, every week by going to dave@edgeofsports.com.
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