As I said at yesterday's debate, the 'dualism' of an event like the Olympics has to be considered. It's a two-week sporting event and mass spectacle, replete with tons of free activities for the general public -- it's not the same as a three-day meeting of the world's bankers and politicians.

The fact is many if not the vast majority of those critical of the Games coming here in the first place -- who would have preferred public resources had gone to housing, health care, education etc -- still enjoy watching the world's greatest hockey players, or going out to see a free show, or just walking about and seeing and meeting folks from around the world.

I think this dualism was missed or underestimated by some of us, and as a result opportunities for creative outreach around a range of social justice issues have been given less energy than they might have.

But there have been some great successes. I think indigenous sovereignty and rights issues are critical, and a lot of great work has been done in exposing this reality to the international media, for instance. The Tent Village and the Red Tents campaign have been brilliant in drawing attention to the homelessness crisis. But more like that could have been done, for sure.  

I agree that the resistance could have focused more effectively on the real overarching problem, which is global corporate domination of our planet and its peoples. But as a supporter of the united resistance, I feel very satisfied by the networking we have done to date, which may be more powerful than what has been broadcast to the general populace. I am looking forward to the post-Games hangover when we will pool mailing lists and start homing in on how to solve our systemic problems from the ground up.

In the meantime, while we keep the message strong, we also reserve the right to party. And we will...behind the barricades, or in the streets with our visitors from around the world.
 

I'm very much in agreement with those who would rather see spending on "bread, not circuses" (borrowing a phrase from a friend), so I ought to be sympathetic with at least some of the anti Olympic protest points. But not once did I feel like I should join in with the groups that have been leading this charge, despite having myself a long history of political activism and leadership.

Charlie is heading in the right direction - those who led the charge did not link the Olympics to issues that resonate with the electorate, or failed to make their points in a cogent and socially acceptable manner.

Networking within your own sects of resistance will lead to no tangible progress in the future, much like no tangible public progress has resulted from the resistance to date.

If you can't engage the public, where are you? Lost. 

The protesters didn't miss their mark. They failed to draw much attention because, quite frankly, 95 per cent of people in this city don't agree with their message. Let's be brutally honest here. No one gives a shit.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. A protest of 2,000 people in a city of 2 million is insignificant. It's a fraction of a percent.

Vancouver's anti-olympic protesters are very opinionated and very passionate people. They are (generally, at least) also educated people. They seem to have a difficult time coming to terms with the reality that the vast majority of their friends, neighbours, and co-workers are happy that the Games are here.

Ironically, I've found that this leads to a knee-jerk reaction for most protesters. If you're not against the games then you obviously "don't understand" or you're a "sheep" or a "corporate shill."

The protesters seem to have convinced themselves that they are the only intelligent people on this planet. Apparently the other 99.9% of people living in this city and enjoying the Olympics are stupid and misguided.

Elitist punks, anarchists and hippies. Who would have thought!
 

As an indian I would say yes. This was an opportunity to unite under the same thumb, at least momentarily.

The vast majority of Canadians could give a damn about indians. It's the biggest Canadian secret. 

Yep I think hayden is either a sheep or a corporate shill. We are spending more than the entire years worth (more than 5 years worth) of our entire education budget on security alone.

Anyone that thinks this is a good idea is either out to lunch or in on it.

Maybe you'll wake up on March 2nd. Try to remember to vote next time around. 

Mr. Smith's insight regarding humor must not be ignored. The Olympic Resistance people and associated groups have all been remarkably joyless. They transmit a message that is both serious and unpleasant rather than hopeful and constructive. I don't want to live in a world of Black Blocks and no hope, but I have little sympathy for banks and corporations. It's not about spin, it's about hope. Unfortunately masks, camouflage and unclear/confused messages are not great attractors.  

The 'No Olympics on Stolen Native Land' slogan that dominated the anti-Olympics movement was problematic for a number of reasons (even though the slogan does rightly point out that the games take place on Stolen Native Land).

* 'No Olympics on Stolen Native Land' is in effect a demand to cancel the Olympics. Once the possibility of building a movement big enough to get the games cancelled becomes 0%, 'No Olympics on Stolen Native Land' becomes a dead demand. That the movement continued with 'No Olympics on Stolen Native Land' as a slogan suggested to ousiders that the movement did not accept reality, and had descended into ultraleftism (if it was not ultraleftist to begin with).

*The dominance of 'No Olympics on Stolen Native Land' prevented the anti-Olympics movement from reaching out to most of those who do not recognize native land as stolen (or who recognize the futility of trying to stop the Olympics at the 11th hour), but who fully recognize and are opposed to the rampant real-estate speculation; the broken promises around housing; the skewed transit priorities; the ridiculous security state aparatus attached to the games; the hypocrisy of spending billions on a sporting event while governments cry financial poverty, ect. While the movement did address these issues to an extent, the average person opposed to the Olympics sees a movement that does not reflect their concerns.

The sad fact is that to a large extent the movement did not reflect the concerns of the average person opposed to the Olympics. Even when other issues were addressed within the anti-Olympics movement, they were mostly dominated by a hyper identity politics common among certain segments of the activist left in Vancouver. In this brand of identity politics, those with mulpitle visible systemic barriers to participation in society are viewed as part of 'opressed communities', in contrast to those without these same barriers. The 'oppressed communities' are played off against the rest of the working class, and the broader working class is accused of 'priviledge' that it must check at the door if it wants to get involved in the movement. Average workers (who mostly find it increasingly difficult to make ends meet) will not get involved in a social movement if they are told that the movement is not about them.

For these reasons, the anti-Olympics movement did not reach out to the unions when those organizations started to become dissilusioned with the games during the last year. Reaching out to the unions is critical if we are to build a broad based movement that can fight back against the right in this province. Without the involvement of the unions it doesn't matter that the anti-Olympics movement managed to get close to 5,000 people out to the 'Take Back the City' demo on the opening day of the Olympics, and the activists in the anti-Olympics movement will largely retreat into their own irrelevance once the Olympics are over. 

@ Baaah

That's the thing you don't seem to get. We're all "in on it." We all have something to gain from this experience.

Look around you. This city is booming right now. Businesses are experiencing profits like they've never seen. Thousands of new jobs (albeit temporary jobs) were created. People are working. People are happy.

What's more -- Vancouver is now in the global spotlight. People from across the globe are watching us every day, and seeing how beautiful this city truly is. Not only are there tens of thousands of tourists visiting right now from countries all over the planet, but there will be new visitors (as a direct result of the Games) for years and years to come.

These couple of weeks are a chance to make this city a global destination. Why anyone would want to detract from that is beyond me. Yes, it's costing a lot. So why not get the best bang for our buck? What exactly is your alternative, Baah? That we sulk and whine and spoil this golden opportunity?

I'm originally from Ontario. The outskirts of the GTA. The failing, withering manufacturing core of this country. People in and around Toronto would love to have an event like the Olympics to pull them out of the rut they are in.

I don't think people here fully understand how devastating the past couple of years have been to other provinces in this country. People who had well-paying jobs have lost their pensions. I know men and women in their 50s and even 60s who gave 30 years of their life to companies, only to have had to come out of retirement to work at Wal Mart. Right about now Ontario is a cold, harsh, bleak place to be.

The contrast between the East and the West in this country never ceases to amaze me. Vancouver has been fucking fortunate to be spared the true blunt force of the recession. I can't comprehend how people out here don't realize just how good they have it (ridiculous rent costs aside).

I love this city, and I love what the Olympics have done for it. Guess that makes me a sheep. Better that than an ass.

 

More strategic messaging would have been to focus on the cost per taxpayer for the Olympics. If the cost was $1B, excluding the long-term infrastructure costs, what was the cost per BC taxpayer (given the fact that only a portion of the population pays taxes)?

Another aspect of the protests that may not have been effectively communicated was the idea of warning other potential host cities. Many I've talked to seem to think the protests were about stopping the 2010 Winter Olympics specifically rather than attacking the brand as a whole.

That being said, I see the protests as a success and am grateful for those who put so much energy into organizing. 

Can someone flesh out the details on the whole stolen land claim. Which Olympic venues and developments are on stolen land?

It is true that the entire event is taking place on lands claimed by the Musquem, the Tliel-Watuth (spelling?), the Squamish and the Lil'Wat tribes but these land claims overlap each other and cover areas like the Whistler Valley where there is no evidence of any native settlements. In short, these land claims are nothing but a joke to the non-native population (Royal Canadian Air Farce did an excellent skit on it when the claims were first made in the nineties). If this is what the stolen land is all about then that is why very few people were sympathetic.

As for the natives themselves, I believe their consent is the biggest reason the stolen land campaign failed. Read up on "the Four Hosts." All four tribes with claims on these lands signed a deal with Vanoc to provide native art patterned merchendise in exchange for a cut from the sales of said merchendise. 

Too many critics of the Olympics are doing a cost analysis rather than a cost-benefit analysis.  

Hayden, lets touch ground again on March 2nd. 

@Gabriel

A cost-benefit analysis that takes into account who gets stuck with the cost and who benefits would certainly be informative. The Price-Waterhouse report estimates a $1B economic inflow, which is considerable, but what portion of that inflow will go end up going towards the costs through tax revenue? 

Anti Olympic opposition would have been more effective in the run up to the Olympics if they:
- first spoke out forcefully against the hooded vandals;
- personalized the stories about the homeless & the mentally ill;
- provided concrete examples of what $6billion could have provided combined with the20 year lack of investment by both the Federal Liberals and Conservatives in social housing. 

A couple things I thought were missed completely:

— Lack of transparency - We will never know how much the Olympics really have cost because of the shell game around expenses. Where's the security budget coming from? Who knows! How much was spent by VANOC on buying up ads on transit, and how much was spent by the government on buying ads from VANOC? Who knows! There has been a ton of creative bookkeeping with our tax dollars, but no one seems to be demanding a proper accounting. Which brings me to the next point...

— Lack of accountability - Who's to blame for the boondoggles? Security is a great example here. A few million over estimated budgets is a drop in the bucket, but how can security costs increase by 800+ million (500%!) over the span of 8 years? Who is to blame for the things that were clearly security needs, like increased border screening and security for dignitaries, but were not included in the initial budget? Heads should roll, but they haven't, and no one is even calling for them. 

Reading this article, the condoning of hooded hooligans, I almost find myself supporting the Games and man... that says it all about the attractiveness of your "campaigns"... 

I don't think the anti-Olympic movement missed the mark by focusing on stolen aboriginal land! I think most people are unaware of the issues that are important to a healthy democracy. If you spend any amount of time in the DTES, you will quickly become of aware of the overwhelming number of First Nations living there and the situations that have led them there.

The Olympics have done little for our "democratic society". They have enriched those able to play the game, both native and non-native. Unfortunately, the masses have been kept blissfully unaware of the elitist nature of the Olympics by drinking Coke, buying HBC red mittens and not being concerned, for the present, of the long term costs to their pocket books and a caring & compassionate society. 

The provincial budget is coming March 2nd; the Olympic cheerleaders will get to change their minds then.
Miguel 

They probably chose to focus on this one issue because it's probably the only one they could all agree on. The left is so split, everyone trying to out-righteous each other, there's only One Issue To Rule Them All -- native land. you can't beat the guilt, the bad history, or its intractability. Too bad for them, it's a two edged sword -- yes it's undebatable, but it's pretty much unsolvable too. About the best their slogan can inspire is weary resignation. 

The right to question is the ultimate quality of our society (the liberal western tradition) that distinguishes it from theocracies such as the Khomeini Islamic Republic which subsumes all to the literal interpretation of the Koran, Marxist-Leninist dictatorships of the proletariat which subsumes all to the needs of the state and military dictatorships such as the thugocracy of Myanmar.
Along with this remarkable right, upheld by institutions such as the Supreme Court, are the necessity to have an uncorrupt police force and legal system based on the rule of law as derived from the evolving system of common law and statute law such as the constitution of Canada.
I was overjoyed to see the right to peaceful protest being put into practice on the first day of the Olympics.
The frustration of the few at the apparent lack of instant results from this event maybe led to the unbelievably disastrous media pictures of a couple of people smashing windows of the Bay and TD bank.
The right to peaceful protest, a right denied to vast numbers of the world's population, was brought into disrepute.
Who will ensure that the power of peaceful protest is not highjacked by the terribly dangerous few? The ones who have no hope and can see no future and can only seek to destroy? Who cannot see that is tremendous power in numbers of people making a quiet witness of social injustice?

 

Frankly, they missed the boat for two reasons. First, people who had legitimate issues to discuss let the loudmouths at ORN run the show. Secondly, apparently not that many people were actually against the Olympics. That is made quite obvious by the fact that the "massive" rally on Jan. 22 drew 200 people, and the "Welcome" rally on opening day drew 1000 people. Hardly a dent compared to the over 150,000 people who were downtown to offer a true Canadian welcome to the world. You know, one where we respect other people and property because it's the right thing to do. Quite frankly, if the loonies at ORN can only muster crowds of that size after years of b*tching and planning, then they are quite impotent. By the way, no one I have talked to from other countries ever heard anything about protests against the Olympics. Impotent indeed!!!!! 

The protestors need to think like the marketing departments of the corporations they so abhor and change their message and approach to reach a few more people. Clearly, their gatherings are seen as a joke by the public who are not anywhere near ready to hear their message.

At this point, it just looks like some people got together to make themselves feel important and part of a group. "Gee, aren't we wonderful." Not a whole lot different than the hundreds of thousands of people who got together as a group having fun downtown thinking "gee, aren't we wonderful." 

I agree with Charlie. The anti-Olympics movement lacked an effective, coherent, appealing focus. I believe the best focus should have been one which typified the essence of what is wrong with the Olympics, namely that it doesn't incorporate any semblance of a social ethic other than:
a) empty patriotism,
b) a shallow internationalism only on petty matters like sports, and
c) celebration of the qualities of individual effort and single minded devotion to a socially irrelevant activity that produces a great athlete.

For the Olympics to appeal to the thinking citizen with a global and local social conscience, it will need to address the growth, not decline, of international militarism, the decay of the culture or rights (which it contributes to), and the decadent social priorities which typify the spending decisions of governments (which the Olympics are a prime example of).

What would have made this 2010 Olympics a truly marvelous display of all that makes the Olympics a venerable tradition, would have been a long overdue and truly meaningful initiative by the Canadian government to take a principled stand to uphold international law and work towards an equitable resolution of the Middle East crisis - a resolution that upholds the full human rights of all involved. This would have spoken to any real and mostly imagined risk that Palestinian terrorists would try to exploit the 2010 Olympics to attack the two Isreali athletes at these games.

If this is too difficult for our federal government, then the federal government could have politely requested that the Israelis keep their athletes at home, either because we are protesting the Israeli / U.S. sanctions program against the people of Gaza and the continuing illegal settlement of occupied land in Palestine, or just because we can't afford the billion dollars it costs to try to protect those two figure skaters.

On the other hand, if intelligence indicated that the Afghani Taleban might be planning to send some terrorists over to murder some Canadian or US athletes in retaliation for the war crimes Canada and the US have committed in Afghanistan, then Canada could negotiate with the Taleban and come to a peaceful settlement of their grievances, and offer them some meaningful gesture of redress for what we have done that we shouldn't have done, such as making a sincere effort to listen to them and to answer some of their legitimate and lawful demands. By negotiating in good faith with our so-called enemies, then we could probably relieve tensions enough to create the conditions where an Olympics could be held without a state of siege in Vancouver at the insane expence of $1 billion just for so-called security.

If the Canadian government is not willing to do its share of peace building and peacemaking in the world, sufficient to create the conditions where an amateur sports event can take place that doesn't require more than a minimal amount of routine security, then we shouldn't hold the Olympics in Canada. In short - no peace, no Olympics. That, in my mind, should have been the focus of the 2010 Olympics protest movement. This is a legitimate argument against the Olympics, even if only from a prudent financial perspective, leaving the politics of war and peace out of it.

The majority of Canadians are abhorred by the immense expence and inappropriateness of Canada's involvement in the attempted American takeover of Afghanistan and Haiti, and also offended by the consistently unprincipled position that our federal government takes on the Middle East conflict. These are important matters that a course correction can indeed change, and matters that the majority of Canadians are already on board with. Also, economics are a high priority, so prudent fiscal management is something that virtually everyone supports. No Peace - No Olympics should be the cry of Olympics protestors and anti-corporate globalization activists worldwide.  

One more thought. For me, there is something sickly hollow and pathetic about the 2010 Olympics being launched on the same day as an escalation of the US and Canadian military intervention in Afghanistan, in the shadow of the murderous takeover of the Haiti airport by those same militaries which blocked lifegiving aid reaching the distressed people of Haiti for four vital days, and the ever increasing stranglehold of the illegal Canadian supported sanctions program in Gaza. A society that shows little or no concern for our own government's complicity in war crimes and crimes against peace, and instead places all its focus on the pursuit of athletic prowess, and the spirit of mindless devotion to relatively meaningless activities that the Olympic spirit seems to offer up as the epitome of human excellence, seems to be more than coincidental.

I think the Olympics represent what I like least about our society, namely the prevalent willingness to buy into feeble rationalisations and distractions to avoid confronting our duty as citizens in a democratic society. Duty to work for informed insight into national policy issues, and then to take those actions which a citizen is bound by a sense of responsibility to take to serve his country and the human race, both now and into the distant future. 

I don't get the logic - isn't all of Canada, USA, Mexico, South America, the Carribean, Australia and other places "stolen native land"? The protestors probably go home to their apartment that is on stolen native land. By the way, before the white man came to Canada there was no concept of buying and selling land. 

The Olympic brand is still very strong, despite the evidence of corruption and cheating within, and the terrible record of debt and damage to communities after hosting the Games. I don't think that focussing on poverty or homelessness more would have made the anti-Olympics movement more successful, most Canadians don't give a damn about poor people any more than they do about Indians. (Except at Christmas) It doesn't do any good to say I told you so, but in a couple of weeks we can start trying to find out how long you and I will be paying. 

No Peace, No Olympics:

is that satire? I really can't tell anymore. 

Did you read it? Did you comprehend it? Try reading it, and if you have something substantive to say, then come back. Your dismissive ridicule is a manipulative ploy, typical behaviour of the brainwashed minions of the corporate culture who replace primitive instincts coupled to crude rationalisations for conscious thought. 

to tim, who commented that the movement did not "reach out" to unions, you should read up on labour and 2010: http://no2010.com/node/214

and everyone should study that site before commenting on the olympics and indigenous issues. 

I find it astounding that so many educated literate people know so little about the Games, the philosophy of Olympism, the Fundamental Principles of Olympism - don't any of you have the internet?

If you reduce the Olympics to a mere 'sporting event', you can't possibly know a thing about the history of the Games and how much the Olympic Movement encourages aid through sports (with HIV, refugees camps, mine removal, etc.) and know nothing of the ethics, which are basically the same secular humanism.

Vancouver was the host city - I understand many of you didn't want to be the host. Vancouver gave a gift to the world. The Olympics is about promoting international peace through sport, equality no matter race or gender (yes, the IOC could move faster with gender, but without the Olympics you would never see a woman athlete on TV without a tennis raquet or golf club in hand - the Olympics has brought women into sport, something which is empowering for girls around the world).

The Olympics has been invaded by profiteers, but blind hatred had created protesters who REFUSE to see anything positive - think global not local. Think of the Paralympics, an off shoot of the Games - how inclusive is that? The five rings symbolize the five continents. The torch symbolizes peace.

Most of Vancouver and Canada and the 3.4 billion around the globe had a shared positive experience, it is good when the world gets together to celebrate - all of these issues such as the homeless should have been addressed long ago. Yes, it's easy to get the impression that many of the protestors are opportunists using the Games with little knowledge of their positive impact globally.

How much do any of you protesters give to the homeless? Any volunteering with the homeless?

By the way, Vanoc donated 300.000 to the Haiti Relief Fund, in keeping with the Olympic Spirit.