I didn’t touch on native rights in this article which is something that should be considered as well, seeing as BC is largely unceded territory.

Also, it was recently discovered that Leni Riefenstahl’s footage is being used in the torchrunner’s promo video. Hitler used the 1936 Berlin games as a way to legitimize fascism across Europe, using the torch as a symbol of his reign. Leni was his head propagandist and helped formulate the Olympic connection with fascism through video and documentary. While I was writing this article I chose to leave out the fascist links to the Olympics, assuming they had been successfully buried, but, alas, here they are again.

Anyway, I understand that the problems voiced in this article have existed before, but the Olympics have been serving to make them significantly worse. Even if the government is already in debt, that does not excuse furthering this debt by billions of dollars, which only serves to make a bad situation worse. I know from personal experience that the money used to pay off debt is usually taken out of programs that help people, as when the City of Niagara Falls had debt issues several years ago, it resulted in cuts to mother’s allowance and government assistance that made me and my mother lose the apartment we were living in. If more debt means more people will have to suffer like this, then we should clearly avoid things that severely increase it (and I’d definitely call several billion dollars a severe increase)
Also, there are a large number of people who do work year-round to help improve issues in Vancouver. The reason that the Olympics are being protested so harshly is not simply because of press coverage or scapegoat ism: it is because they have significantly worsened issues that the people have been working so hard to fix. 850 units of housing is quite a large blow to both the people who rely on them, and the people who have worked so hard to help these people find housing. The Olympics may not have caused the issues with downtown eastside, but they are making them significantly worse, and it is becoming harder to help the people who need it. Therefore, people feel the need to stop the situation from continually worsening, in order to continue trying to help fix it.
And although the government does often spend money on funding arts and amateur sports, i highly doubt that they spend enough to put themselves billions of dollars in debt for one single entity like they have with the Olympics. And if they do, then I would certainly consider it worthy of resisting, but since I have not come in contact with any information related to this, I still stand by resisting the Olympics, as they are currently the most damaging thing for the economy and well-being of Vancouver.

Re: debt and morality – governments run up debt all the time, frequently by spending money on programs aimed at less noble causes than curing illness or relieving student debt. (Because, you know, the latter is really a high priority – even for governments in the black…) The Olympics is more high-profile, certainly, but is it all that different in its moral quality than government-funded programs for the arts, amateur sports at the grassroots level, or any other program not aimed at the public’s most basic needs? Should every government with debt (um, nearly all of them) refuse to spend a penny on anything but essential services until the debt is gone? And, the question of “should” aside, is over-spending on the Olympics anything exceptional here, or just standard operating procedure for all sorts of governments all over the world? Somehow I’m not sure I’m the one lacking perspective on how government money is used, here.

As for homelessness, sure, I read that section. But the problems in the Downtown Eastside have been around for a long time, the Olympics didn’t create them, and while the Games may well have exacerbated the troubles of the residents there, that section is a little low on links to reliable sources (and contains the words “rumors” and “growing fears” a few too many times) for me to be sure. Insite just won a major court case protecting its ongoing existence – and the threat to Insite was always the unfortunate “war on drugs” mentality of our current federal government, not the presence of the Olympics.

I guess my main question for the anti-Olympic movement is: Why now? Why the Games? Nearly every issue cited is an ongoing problem – from homelessness and drug use to corporatization to public debt (sure, I’ll agree it’s not a good thing) to the ongoing question of Aboriginal land claims – an issue that’s not mentioned here, but that is the most frequently mentioned sore spot in anti-Olympic coverage I’ve read. These are all worthy problems to tackle. Why not work to solve these problems, to raise awareness about these problems, all year round? Why the focus on Vancouver 2010? Maybe the answer is that the Games are a huge global event that provides a profile like no other for the protesters’ causes of choice. Fine. I’d have a lot more respect for the protesters if they would just say so, rather than claiming the Games as a scapegoat for seemingly every ill in Canadian society today.

Finally, I don’t think tackling a relay runner is a petty thing at all. Symbols and actions matter, particularly when you’re protesting and trying to sway the public. Even if you don’t believe there’s any moral issue with random physical assaults on Olympic participants (and hey, we could have an interesting conversation about the circumstances under which violent protest becomes morally acceptable), it comes down to tactics. If the goal of those protesters was to come across as a bunch of inarticulate bullies, well, mission accomplished. You’d think, if you believe in the issues you’ve mentioned here, you’d be inclined to condemn them for setting your cause back a ways.

And I also don’t understand why the only ‘distaste’ you feel is from seeing the corporate logos associated with the Olympics. Did you not read the entire section on homelessness and poverty in the article you just commented on? The issues are more than just superficial problems such as corporate sponsorship: people’s lives are being destroyed, and they are losing their homes because of this ‘symbol’ for the world… why can’t we just be content with the numerous other symbols of unity and pride that already exist in Canada? And if we are not content, why not create a symbol that does not have such a destructive side effect?

Really, someone being tackled to the ground is such a petty issue when compared to the fact that people are losing their homes and being put at risk of serious danger as the downtown eastside’s state worsens further and further due to the games. I personally would not mind someone tackling me if it managed to raise awareness towards a serious issue, and potentially led the way for someone to get their home back.

I understand the objections to the Olympics in general (as having become a corporate event, etc) and to the Van games in particular (the security stuff is really over the top, though I don’t think public debt is really a question of “morality,” myself) but I’ve always believed that what the Games stands for, its role as a symbol for the world, should still outweigh the distaste I feel when I see the Golden Arches slapped all over the event. And that distaste is nothing compared to the disgust at seeing a torch bearer tackled by an anonymous crowd of shithead cowards “making a statement.” I mean, the flame is still supposed to mean something, right?