By: Andy Crosby
Four years ago, a protest snaked through downtown Vancouver, one of several actions as anti-Olympic fervour swept the city, when police officers assigned to the march suddenly began to jump up and down while delivering high fives.
The call had come in: Sidney Crosby had scored the “golden goal,” winning the top medal for Canada’s men’s hockey team.
Earlier that day on Feb. 28, 2010, the protest contingent had been met with hostility from drunken men stumbling out of bars on Vancouver’s more swanky streets, throwing beer bottles and calling the demonstrators derogatory terms. Some protesters looked at each other with confusion, saying, “we like hockey too.”
While not everybody likes competitive sports, many of those who criticized the Vancouver Olympics put aside their appreciation for athletics to take a principled stand against the harmful effects wrought by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and its corporatized version of sport competition: environmental destruction, gentrification and displacement of the poor, a multi-billion dollar budget footed by taxpayers, low wages and poor conditions for imported labourers, cultural appropriation, and a swelling security state.
Compounding these factors was the disregard for the will of Indigenous populations who did not want the Olympic Games on their territories, along with the death of Elder Harriet Nahanee following a 2007 protest to prevent the destruction of Eagleridge bluffs to build an Olympics highway from Vancouver to Whistler. This prompted residents of British Columbia to organize around the slogan “No Olympics on Stolen Native Land.”
The Canadian government spent an estimated $1 billion dollars on Olympics security. The primary threat, according to the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, was not terrorism, but demonstrations against the Olympics.
Four years later in Sochi, Russian president Vladimir Putin will undoubtedly spend more, with more than double the number of law enforcement officials – 40,000 compared to Vancouver’s 16,500 military, police, and private security officers.
Putin has restricted dissent over the Games to a “designated protest zone” located 12 kilometres from Sochi, a decision praised by the IOC.
“We welcome the announcement of the organizing committee that in Sochi there will be protest zones that will be established for people who want to demonstrate against something,” IOC president Thomas Bach told reporters at a Lausanne press conference in December.
The mainstream media erroneously conveys the idea that mega-event protest is about the airing of issues-based grievances in the hopes the world will pay attention. In fact though, resistance to the Olympics in 2010 was more about disruption.
And aside from the militant “heart attack” protest, which shut down the Lions Gate Bridge and prevented traffic from reaching Whistler, the mainstream media typically ignored successful protest actions.
Thousands defied Vancouver’s “designated protest zone” at the Art Gallery. Led by Indigenous elders to disrupt the opening ceremonies., Indigenous warriors and settlers scuffled with police just outside BC Place.
The much promoted Canadian Pacific Spirit Train was scheduled to travel across Canada ahead of the Olympics, but was disrupted and cancelled after protesters accused the railway of being a “key instrument in the colonization of Canada and the genocide of Indigenous peoples,” according to a press release issued by the Olympics Resistance Network.
Likewise, the torch relay was disrupted on numerous occasions, including by large demonstrations that prevented the torch from coming through portions of East Vancouver and the Downtown Eastside.
Finally, the tent city that sprung up in the Downtown Eastside was another example. A vacant lot, owned by a condo developer and rented out for use as a parking lot during the Olympics, was seized. An autonomous tent city, where the homeless and others could sleep and eat, was established.
While the mainstream media ignored or condemned these displays of resistance, and at times even collaborated with police, independent media rose to the occasion to report what was really happening in Vancouver.
Dozens of independent journalists organized around the Vancouver Media Co-op, whose footage and stories were replayed around the world.
The Olympics debacle and independent media spectacle provides a lesson to the residents of Sochi, who have largely come out against the Games: Resist, disrupt, and organize your own media!
This article first appeared in the Leveller Vol. 6, No. 4 (Jan/Feb 2014).
