[A-List] Opposing the Winter 'Games'

[Tony B.]

http://mostlywater.org/vancouver_groups_release_statements_opposing_games_0


Vancouver Groups Release Statements Opposing Games
Contributed by blackandred on Thu, 2009/12/17 - 5:12pm.

While the 2010 Olympics are still a short time away, many are well aware of 
the devastating impact they are having on our communities. From traditional 
Indigenous territories to the impoverished Downtown Eastside (DTES), and 
from migrant workers to low-income families, thousands are being evicted, 
displaced, and exploited. It is undeniable that the Olympics is causing the 
devastation of the environment, creating homelessness, perpetuating the 
theft of Indigenous lands, exploiting migrant labour, forcing greater 
privatization, accruing massive public debt, and resulting in increased 
state criminalization.

As stated by historian George Monbiot, the Games are less about sports than 
"a legacy of a transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich. Everywhere they 
go, the games become an excuse for eviction and displacement; they have 
become a license for land grabs."

For anyone who maintains any illusions of Olympic prosperity, recent Olympic 
budgets make clear that there is no projected profit. Instead, while 
thousands are losing their jobs and access to public services such as 
education and arts are being cut, Olympic corporate sponsors are getting 
bailed out. These sponsors - such as oil and gas company Petro Canada, 
military aircraft producer General Electric, chemical manufacturer Dow 
Chemical, and Alberta Tar Sands financier Royal Bank of Canada - have some 
of the worst environmental and social practices on record.

According to a report by the Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions, the 
Games have displaced more than two million people around the world over the 
last 20 years (not including the one million displaced due to the Beijing 
Games). Meanwhile over 16,500 RCMP, military and security personnel will be 
in Vancouver during February 2010. This $1 billion security operation is the 
largest one in Canadian history and has been dubbed "the Surveillance Games" 
by sociologist David Lyon.

No One Is Illegal has been increasingly active in the anti-Olympic movement, 
offering our support to DTES residents and anti-poverty efforts, as well as 
to Indigenous land and urban defenders and their allies in the "No Olympics 
on Stolen Native Land" movement. While many people are being impacted by the 
Olympic Industry, one of the most significant effects is on Indigenous 
people.

Indigenous people are impacted by the long-term plunder of their lands, 
disproportionately experiencing poverty in urban areas, and are the primary 
targets of repressive policing and surveillance resulting in countless 
arrests. This glaring reality is what the Vancouver 2010 Organizing 
Committee (VANOC) is trying to hide by desperately selling the idea of 
Native consent to the Games through the creation of the corporate and 
state-sponsored Four Host First Nations body.

In light of the extreme levels of state repression including surveillance, 
intimidation, and attempts to create divisions in the movement, we invite 
activists to get informed, get involved, and express their public solidarity 
with this growing resistance. Over the upcoming months, No One Is Illegal 
will be focusing our energies to building an effective, inclusive, and 
disruptive anti-Olympics movement with our allies. Based on the call by the 
Indigenous Peoples Gathering in Sonora, Mexico to boycott the Games, the 
Olympic Resistance Network has called for a global anti-colonial and 
anti-capitalist convergence between February 10th-15th 2010 in Vancouver, 
Coast Salish Territories. While working towards this convergence, we have 
been encouraged to think of human interconnectedness rather than social and 
political isolation in building long-term alliances beyond 2010 to 
strengthen our shared struggles for justice, dignity, and liberation.

No One Is Illegal-Vancouver is a grassroots anti-colonial and anti-racist 
migrant justice group. We strive and struggle for a world in which no one is 
forced to migrate against their will, and where people can move freely in 
order to flourish. We place ourselves within the broader movement against 
capitalism, militarism, oppression, poverty, imperialism, and other systems 
of domination and exploitation. As a movement for self-determination that 
challenges the ideology of border controls, we actively offer our support to 
Indigenous peoples across Turtle Island.

Visit us at www.nooneisillegal.org