[IPSM] Walia: "Olympics Resistance in Kanada"

[Dru Oja Jay]

http://leftturn.mayfirst.org/?q=node/1305
Olympics Resistance in Kanada  By Harsha Walia
 *Published on: April 07, 2009*

The Olympic Games are an industry that is less about sports than, as stated
by historian George Monbiot, “a legacy of a transfer of wealth from the poor
to the rich…. Everywhere they go, the games become an excuse for eviction
and displacement; they have become a license for land grabs.”

In 2003, the Canadian cities of Vancouver and Whistler won the bid to host
the 2010 Winter Olympics. Since then, the devastating impacts of the Games
have become clear: expanding sport tourism and resource extraction on
Indigenous lands; increasing homelessness and gentrification of poor
neighborhoods; increasing privatization of public services; exploitative
working conditions, especially for migrant labor; fortification of the
national security apparatus with the largest military deployment in Canadian
history; ballooning public debt as corporate Olympic sponsors get bailed
out; and environmental destruction despite promises of “green” Games.

Given the range of social injustices perpetrated by the Games, the
anti-Olympics movement has created an opportunity for anticapitalist,
Indigenous, antipoverty, labor, migrant justice, antiprivatization, housing
rights, environmental justice, civil libertarian, antiglobalization, and
anticolonial activists to join forces. While building open and broad-based
structures to facilitate this opportunity, the movement has also focused on
critical and formative questions regarding leadership and solidarity,
particularly with Indigenous defenders of the land, against the onslaught of
the Olympics.

*Indigenous self-determination*

Rather than being a single issue within a laundry list of demands, the
recognition of Indigenous self-determination has become the rallying call
and the foundation for anti-Olympics organizing. This has been possible
largely due to the fact that Indigenous communities have been resisting the
Games long before they were brought to the province of British Columbia. In
2002, members of the St'at'imc and Secwepemc Nations filed a submission with
the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to oppose the bid. Since then,
there has been a groundswell of Indigenous resistance through Native 2010
Resistance, Native Youth Movement, Warrior Publications, Sutikalh camp,
Downtown Eastside Indigenous Elders Council, Skwekwek’welt Protection
Centre, and the Native Warrior Society. The resistance is growing both
despite and due to Indigenous peoples being impacted by the pillage of their
lands, disproportionately experiencing poverty and homelessness in urban
areas, and being the primary targets of repressive policing and
surveillance.

Many non-natives have supported the voice and leadership of Indigenous
peoples within this movement. Lessons from earlier antiglobalization
movements from Seattle in1999 to Quebec City in 2001 have been critically
engaged. These lessons include a stronger anti-oppression analysis, even
within internal structures; representing those most directly impacted by the
effects of capitalism and colonialism on Turtle Island; and being more
strongly rooted in local community organizing rather than ‘summit-hopping’.
While movement forces understand that Indigenous people are not solely
impacted by the Games, organizing under the banner of “No Olympics on Stolen
Native Land” has fostered an array of meaningful, community-rooted,
transformative, and potentially revolutionary alliances.

The anti-Olympics movement forces a contestation of the idea that the
antiglobalization movement died after 9/11 by giving voice especially to
Indigenous, poor, and people of color communities whose bodies have lived
and fought the ravages of globalization prior to Seattle and after 9/11. The
movement has brought into sharp focus the reality that, indeed, corporate
globalization is simply a new name for the 500-year reality of colonization.


*Diversity of tactics*

The anti-Olympics movement has engaged in a diversity of tactics, including
effective disruptions such as the shutdown of the Olympic Spirit Train
across the country and the Native Warrior Society taking the Olympic flag
from Vancouver City Hall, insurrectionary attacks on corporate sponsors such
as McDonalds, Coca Cola, Royal Bank of Canada, and popular education,
creative resistance, and media messaging efforts.

Rather than building a coalition based on the united front strategy of
lowest-common denominator politics, this loose but well-coordinated network
is based on the strengths of each of its membergroups and individuals that
allows it to flourish and bring an increasingly powerful and politicized
message to the people.

With growing state attempts to infiltrate, surveil, and divide the movement,
a Solidarity and Unity statement drawn up with the support of mainstream
groups states, “We realize that we may have many differences in analysis and
tactics and such disagreements are healthy. However such debates should
remain internal and we should refrain from publicly denouncing or
marginalizing one another – especially as ‘violent’- to mainstream media and
law enforcement.”

There has also been much debate over whether certain actions endanger
vulnerable communities. The anti-Olympics movement, with Indigenous people,
poor people, Elders, women, and people of color at the forefront, is a stark
reminder that the politics of confrontation has always “Othered” these
communities as primarily white, middle-class activists make declarations (or
more often, feel paralyzed) about whether certain tactics are in the best
interest of marginalized people or not.

We have forgotten that oppressed communities—including women, Elders, and
youth—have risen up to fight state power. In fact they invented direct
action tactics through centuries of struggle against imperialism, racism,
and colonialism. Ensuring leadership from such communities has meant easing
the “white man’s burden” approach about how best to take responsibility for
these “Others” and instead to transcend oneself into the realm of an active
and grounded practice of solidarity.

While resisting the Olympics Industry poses a formidable challenge to our
movements, the possibilities to strengthen this anti colonial, anti racist,
and anti capitalist resistance are endless. Based on the call by the
Indigenous Peoples Gathering in Sonora, Mexico to boycott the Games, there
is a call for a global anticolonial and anticapitalist convergence, February
10 -15, 2010. While working towards this convergence, we have been
encouraged to think of human interconnectedness rather than social isolation
in building our alliances. This effort has not translated into a simple
unity across our differences, particularly those that are rooted in systems
of power and privilege. Rather it has created a radical terrain of struggle
where our common, anti capitalist vision does not erase our different
racialized and colonized social locations. Similarly, it has meant that our
differing identities do not prevent us from creating a relevant, inclusive,
and disruptive movement well beyond 2010.
*Harsha Walia is a South Asian organizer, writer, and facilitator based in
Vancouver, Coast Salish Territories. She is a member of the Olympics
Resistance Network, No One Is Illegal, and Boycott Israeli Apartheid
Campaign.*
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