On Friday I attended the Anti-Olympic rally at BC place. Although I got their late and missed a good portion of it I enjoyed myself and thought it was a worth while. It is good to know that not everyone in the city is excited about the Olympics. Even if it is a minority position.
Now that the protests have turned violent I am torn, part of me feels that a violent system must be met with violence, and that property destruction is not a big deal . However, I also feel this delegitimates the other protests. In a city filled with "Olympic Fever", reckless violence only further marginalizes an already marginal position. In short, where does informed political action end and smashing stuff because you mad at your parents begin.
There are definite problems with the way the protests have been organized and a complete lack of any firm message/goals. Hopefully this will improve as the weeks go on, but I remain skeptical.
As for the Olympics themselves, it is truly remarkable to see their effect on the City. Everything is light up, busy, and I can't leave the house without providing directions to some happy Russian tourist. I understand the excitement that the Olympics brings and the fun in getting swept up in an event of this magnitude. I like sports and parties and will likely watch a number of Hockey games(on TV of course), attend the free concerts, and enjoy a city full of happy people.
I compare the experience to eating at McDonald's. One can disagree with McDonald's believing they have horrible labour practices, corporate policies, and promote unhealthy food/lifestyles, but the food still tastes good, at least until the digestion process takes over.
This is a big part of the problem. In the same way, that McDonald's uses human evolutionary cues (fat & sugar taste good) in order to sell unhealthy food at a profit, the Olympics takes great human qualities (athletic prowess, desire for community, social interaction etc) and turns them into tools for capitalist accumulation and corporate greed.
I'd like to leave on the following thought; spending 6 billion dollars on a party in a world filled with social need is unconscionable. The economic benefits that the games provides serve the needs of the rich at the direct expense of regular working class people. When the provincial budget is passed next month, how many people will loose their jobs and how many important programs will be further decimated, primarily to service debt incurred on behalf of the Olympics. And this is just a tiny, easy to idenitify, fraction of the negative impacts the Olympics will have on this city and the (nonrich) people in it.
Unfortunately digesting those chicken mcnuggets is never as good as that first bite.
Personally, I couldn't care less about the windows that probably got smashed, as you implyed, by the boiling over of youth angst in the anynomity of mass protest.
ReplyDeleteIs this the best way to try and prove a point to a broad audience that you don't like the olympics? Probably not. Does it make you feel slightly better, give you a great story, and cost a nominal amount of money to a big corporation which gets eaten up by insurance, and ends up costing the masses through higher premiums? Probably.
Stuff like this probably ends up creating more backlash against the movement, as it aleinates those who might be against the olympics, but are also against violence.
The mainstream media, which has a vested interest in the status quo of coroprations fucking people can also use violence to illegitimize violent actions, no matter how well founded the violence may be.
In short, unless you are destroying enough that there will be a marked effect on the target of the voilence, you should probably just draw the olympic rings on a punching bag, and save it for action which will have an effect.