Olympics Remembered (And Hopefully Soon Forgotten)

Four years ago when Vancouver, where I live, was host city to the Winter Olympics I wrote an e journal about it and frankly I said everything I will ever want to say about it.  So on this opening day of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia here is my record of the huge protest on opening day of which I was a participant.

I have just ducked into the library after participating in the huge process (I mean PROTEST, but I will accept this as a meaningful Freudian slip) march that is taking place in time for the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Winter Olympics.  I arrived late for the march but one of my bosses (thanks again, George!) was good enough to let me leave work early for the march.  I never know what I am going to encounter in a demonstration and I have participated in a few over the years.  With the awful things I have heard about police brutality, tear gas and agents provocateurs I did not want to take chances, especially with nearly a billion bucks worth of security to contend with so I brought my Keffayeh, to shield my face in case of tear gas and earplugs in case the police were going to try out their new sonic toys on us.  After a lengthy search that took me from the art gallery along Robson to B.C. Place and a huge phalanx of police (I have never in my life seen so many cops in one place), I finally found the march on Georgia.  One of the police asked me why I was walking against the crowd. I said that I was looking for the demonstration, which I hope is the closest I will ever have to come to having to ask a cop for directions to a protest march!  No he didn't tell me where they might be. I might have replied that it is because I enjoy seeing people's faces, and admittedly this is one of my reasons for walking against crowds.  They are made up of individual human beings and humans, regardless of how boring they can be, are fascinating!  I find that it helps me to see and appreciate the humanity in others, including in police whose humanity must be under perpetual assault just having to do what they do for a living. I was lucky to run into a good friend in the march right away and we talked about how calm this march is as well as enormous.  There are thousands out there (the Globe and Mail's estimate is of course conservative, but so is the Globe and Mail, as they claim just over 1,000, but it must be somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000) right now to protest the Olympics reminding the world through the lens they have on our city right now that housing for the homeless and respect for human rights and the environment trumps extravagant sporting events every time in priority.  Five choirs joined together to sing in this march and their voices and music are inspiring and they also help lighten the mood, given how pompous and serious us protesters can be sometimes.    One song they were singing: "I'll send my love over the mountains; I'll send my love over the sea; I'll send my love into the heavens; and it will return to me."  Well, remember the old saying? "Love is the only treasure that grows as you give it away!" I am going to step back outside to see how the protest is going and I will write more tomorrow.   When I stepped back outside the crowd had diminished to the thousand or so that the Globe and Mail suggests attended.  We were right up against the police barricades, drumming and chanting  "Homes, not Games; 2010 homes, not 2010 Games; Our streets, our streets, our streets...."; and my favourite, as there were several police on horseback, "Get those animals off those horses."  Well, I really do think it is cruel to horses to use them in this manner as well as potentially harmful to the protestors.  Throughout, the crowd remained respectful of the barricade.  I wish I could say the same about the police, who without the slightest provocation from protestors began to advance forward into the crowd.  Fortunately no one was hurt and no arrests were made.  The crowd also was considerably more disciplined and self-controlled than in other demonstrations I have been in, with protestors retreating on command by those coordinating the event for moments of quiet.  The weather was awful by the way, with rain and huge gusts of wind, but it was wonderful how many, despite the weather turned out for the event.  Ironically we were doing this next door to a sports bar with big windows and screens featuring Olympic sports, and crowds of patrons evidently oblivious to the protest and likely to the reasons behind the protest. This is something I have been noticing throughout the build up towards the Olympics.  There appears to be a huge disconnect between your so-called average Canadians and people who care enough about the issues of homelessness, poverty, aboriginal issues and environmental concerns being exacerbated by the Olympic Games.  We need somehow to work at bridging these solitudes and this is not going to be easy.  I don't think it's so much that a lot of people don't care, they are simply unaware and very vulnerable to the media manipulation, hype and spin that comes with the Games.  The torch relay, an invention of Adolf Hitler for the Berlin Games in 1936 is particularly powerful here, and problematic.  It seems that the metaphor of fire, especially as a flame being passed from one hand to another on a global run so stirs us in its archetypal power that it has on many people a strong, spiritual or quasi-religious impact, and so much the more given how little real spirituality there seems to be in the lives of many Canadians.  Here we have the instinctive archetypal power of fascism at work in an event that is supposed to be secular, apolitical and socially inoccuous. I am also concerned about the kind of kneejerk, unreflective kind of nationalism and patriotism being inspired by the Olympic Games in Vancouver.  It isn't that there is anything particularly wrong with this country (though we have our problems, but yes there are also many good things to be said about Canada.) but this mindless adulation of country is to me symptomatic of the kind of creeping fascism that is in danger of slowly strangling the many progressive social institutions that have marked Canada as a global icon of human rights, peace and social progress.)  The flag-waving and cheering patriotism that I have been noticing to me really brings this into emphasis. I am also concerned that so much importance and symbolic significance is invested in our athletes, as representing us so that many of us unthinkingly transfer onto them our own personal aspirations for excellence.  However, and sadly, the performance of the athletes, no matter how wonderful and superhuman, will not be enough to get most of us off the couch and outside where we can work on improving on our own levels of health and fitness. As long as our adopted gods and icons can do it in our proxy I suppose that gets us off the hook for working at our own self-improvement and growth. I have mentioned this before, but I think it bears repeating, how much the Olympics, by fiat of corporate sponsorship have become such a flagship for global capitalism.  It is this constant metaphor of competition, relentless unceasing competition such as guarantees the survival of the fittest, and the destruction and dying off of whomsoever cannot successfully compete.  This sadly brings to mind that it should be no wonder that the homeless, the most powerless in our society are not only being further threatened by this humongously costly spectacle but that we are likely to be forgotten by most of the "average Canadians" who want only to turn on their TV, watch the athletes perform, cheer for Canada and knock back another beer and another bowl of Doritos. Global capitalism is like a psychotic tiger and this beast needs badly to be declawed, defanged, muzzled, leashed and caged. The Olympics has mutated from a symbol of social progess and international peace into a catalyst for the Psychotic Tiger of Capitalism.  This has to change. Please pass this on. from the ground Aaron