The Olympics? Cities Should Just Say No
By Dave Zirin

The bribes have been spent. The pimps paid off. The
"escorts" shuttled home. Now it's sweat-time for local
fat cats, anxiously tapping their uncalloused fingers,
as they wait to see if "their" city will be chosen
Wednesday as host for the 2012 Summer Olympics. The
motley Montgomery Burns's of New York, Moscow, London,
and Paris already have the champagne on ice, in
expectation of feeding at the trough of Olympic slop.
The people of these cities, however, should be praying
that they become Olympics bridesmaids, because there
is no worse fate than being an Olympic bride.

In fact, only someone who wants to see their city
bankrupted, militarized, and stomped flat should pine
for the Olympic games. As Sports Illustrated's Michael
Fish, a writer who otherwise blows the Olympic bugle,
wrote, "You stage a two-week athletic carnival and, if
things go well, pray the local municipality isn't sent
into financial ruin."

The evidence is overwhelming. People may remember the
1976 Olympics in Montreal where "Nadia Comaneci stole
our hearts." It was more than hearts that were stolen.
The people of Montreal are still paying for the
Majesty of the Summer Games three decades later, even
though at the time one official said "Olympics cause
deficits as often as men have babies."

But for those with shorter memories, one need only
look to the 2004 Summer Games in Athens, which gutted
the Greek economy. In 1997 when Athens "won" the
games, city leaders and the International Olympic
Committee estimated a cost of $1.3 billion. When the
actual detailed planning was done, the price jumped to
$5.3 billion. By the time the Games were over, Greece
had spent some $14.2 billion, pushing the country's
budget deficit to record levels.

The graft and corruption may reach Enronian levels,
but far worse is the fact that the Olympics carry the
promise of repression for a city's most vulnerable
residents. It's a familiar script, replayed every four
years, with only the accents changing. Political
leaders start by saying that a city must be made
"presentable for an International audience." Then the
police and security forces take their green light and
round up "undesirables" with extreme prejudice.

In Mexico City in 1968, this expressed itself most
brutally when hundreds of Mexican students occupying
the National University were slaughtered in the Plaza
de las Tres Culturas in Tlatelolco. To this day the
Mexican Government has only admitted to 30 killings,
but Amnesty International put the number at 500.

In 1984, Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates oversaw
the jailing of thousands of young Black men in the
infamous "Olympic Gang Sweeps". As Mike Davis has
written, it took the reinstatement of the 1916
Anti-Syndicalism act, a law aimed at the revolutionary
union, the Industrial Workers of the World, to make
these Stalin-esque jailings a reality. The 1916 bill
forbid hand signals and modes of dress that implied
IWW membership. The LA politicos of the ‘80s
modernized the bill to include high-fives and
bandanas, making the case that Blood and Crip Joe
Hills were overrunning the city. It was in the Gates
Sweeps that planted the seeds for the LA Rebellion of
1992, as well as the debut music video by a group
called NWA.

The Atlanta games in 1996 were no different. These
games were supposed to demonstrate what President
Clinton called "The New South," but the New South
ended up looking a lot like the old one, as
African-American occupied Public Housing was razed to
the ground to make way for Olympic facilities.

Repression followed the Olympic Rings to Greece in
2004. As Democracy Now reported, city authorities
"round[ed] up homeless people, drug addicts, and the
mentally ill, requiring that psychiatric hospitals
lock them up. Also affected by Athens Olympic clean-up
are refugees and asylum seekers, some of whom are
being targeted for detention and deportation in the
days leading up to the games."

In a place like New York, defined both by savage
inequalities and a police force ready to enforce them,
the prospects of this are chilling. More than 20% of
the city's residents live below the poverty line. More
than 50% of African-American youth in Harlem are
unemployed. Losing the Olympics will literally save
thousands of residents from being caught in the web of
the criminal justice system.

But if New York City does win the games, people from
their jail cells and cordoned off neighborhoods, can
thank Senator Hillary Clinton, who has been ruthlessly
exploiting 9/11 to make the case for Olympic Manna.
She said, "We're standing here a little less than four
years from the time when we were attacked and we're
telling you that New York City is the place to bring
the 2012 Olympics because people of New York are
resilient. They're extraordinary in their capacity to
pull together and plan for the future."

Perhaps the most dispiriting sight has been the great
Muhammad Ali, shilling for the New York bid. New York
City's Mayor, billionaire Michael Bloomberg, calls Ali
the bid campaign's  "secret weapon" as he leads the
largely incapacitated Ali from photo-op to photo-op.
To see this is to see tragedy beget tragedy, bypassing
farce altogether.

Now would be a more than appropriate time to remember
the Ali of 1960. This Ali, then known as 18 year old
Cassius Clay, won Olympic boxing Gold in Greece only
to be turned away from a white-only restaurant in his
hometown of Louisville, despite a medal swinging from
his proud neck. The young Clay then took his medallion
of gold and flung it into the Ohio River.

We should take his lead and jettison the Olympics into
the nearest fetid swamp, complete with cement shoes.


Dave Zirin's new book "What's My Name Fool? Sports and
Resistance in the United States" is now in stores..
Check out his revamped website edgeofsports.com. You
can receive his column Edge of Sports, every week by
e-mailing [email protected]. Contact
him at [email protected].