[Stopwar-l] StopWar at the Olympics

[StopWar]

Greetings StopWar friends and supporters!

There are a lot of events
coming in the next week and opportunities for you to join in the voices of
democracy, justice and freedom. Our solidarity in calling attention to the
injustices and anti-democratic acts that have accompanied the hosting of
the 2010 winter Olympics will raise the true image of what is really
happening: militarized communities, attacks on civil liberties, and
increased homelessness just to name a few. By being vigilant and vocal
about what it really means to promote a peaceful society concerned with the
preservation of human dignity we can try to ensure that no nation and no
community is forced to endure these conditions again.

We have listed below
a few of the events that we hope you will join us for. StopWar has
participated in the organizing of the 2010 Welcoming Committee festival and
march on Feb 12th, and has called an anti-war anti-militarization
demonstration on Feb 15th. All the details are below. Feel free to contact
us at stopwar at resist.ca if you have any questions. 

1. Simon Fraser Public
Interest Research Group (SFPIRG) Annual General Meeting
with Keynote
Speakers on the Tar Sands
Wednesday, February 10, 3:30-5:30pm, MBC 2290,
SFU Burnaby Mountain 

2. TAKE BACK OUR CITY:
'Welcome' the 2010 Olympic
Torch with Free Games, Free Speech and Free Food!
Friday, February 12,
2010, 3pm 
Vancouver Art Gallery 

3. The 19th Annual Feb 14th Womens
Memorial March
 Sunday, February 14 2010 and begins at 12pm.
 Carnegie
Community Centre Theatre, 401 Main Street  

4.  Rally for Homes - No More
Empty Talk, No More Empty Lots
 Mon Feb 15th @ noon
 Pigeon Park 

5. DO
YOU BELIEVE IN TORTURE, WAR AND OCCUPATION? THEFT OF INDIGENOUS LAND? THE
CANADIAN GOVERNMENT DOES!
Anti-war and anti-militarization moving
spectacle.
Monday February 15th, 2010
Gathering at 6:00pm and leaving at
6:30pm
Vancouver Art Gallery, Georgia
side.

***************************************************

1. SIMON FRASER
PUBLIC INTEREST RESEARCH GROUP (SFPIRG) ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING
with Keynote
Speakers on the Tar Sands

When: Wednesday, February 10, 3:30-5:30pm
Where:
MBC 2290, SFU Burnaby Mountain (note: new room)

FEATURING
Clayton Thomas
Muller
Indigenous Environmental Network
Clayton, of the Mathais Colomb Cree
Nation, is an activist for Indigenous rights and environmental justice.
Recognized by Utne Magazine as one of the top 30 under 30 activists in the
United States and as a "Climate Hero" 2009 by Yes Magazine, Clayton is the
Tar Sands campaign organizer for the Indigenous Environmental
Network.

Eriel Tchekwie Deranger
Rainforest Action Network
>From the
Athabasca Tar Sands to the World Olympics - How Canada continues to
subjugate the Indigenous peoples of Canada. Eriel
will discuss the
devastating impacts of the Alberta Tar Sands and how the same profiteering
corporations are green-washing their
reputation by putting forward millions
of dollars to sponsor the Olympics Winter Games.

Learn also about what
SFPIRG's been up to this past year as your on-campus resource centre for
social and environmental justice...and get involved!
Contact us for more
info at sfpirg at sfu.ca or 778-782-4360.

Facebook group:
http://www.facebook.com/inbox/?tid=1120349788512#/group.php?gid=2445942367&ref=ts

Facebook event:
http://www.facebook.com/inbox/?tid=1120349788512#/event.php?eid=290748212649">2.
TAKE BACK OUR CITY:
'Welcome' the 2010 Olympic Torch with Free Games, Free
Speech and Free Food!
* Friday, February 12, 2010, 3pm *

Vancouver Art
Gallery (Georgia Street, between Howe and Hornby)

Join us in a public
festival at the Vancouver Art Gallery at 3pm followed
by a parade to
protest the opening ceremonies of the 2010 Olympics at BC
Place Stadium. As
the Winter Games begin, we will show the world the
negative impacts of the
Olympic industry and celebrate our communities
with our own games and
entertainment.

* The 2010 Welcoming Committee supports the participation
of parents and caregivers.

THE FREE KIDS ZONE...with games, music,
theatre, arts  however, we are doing this work as community members, not
professionals. We do not have capacity at this time to provide care for
children under two years old and/or with special needs. 

To register or
for more info, call 604-561-9831 or clairew89 at gmail.com. 

While City and
Olympic officials try to turn our city into a sanitized corporate image, we
experience:
* Increasing homelessness, poverty, illegal evictions and rent
increases,
* Union-busting and public services cutbacks with a $6 billion
Olympic budget,
* Threats to civil liberties and crackdowns on visible
poverty,
* At least 15,000 police, soldiers, spies and security forces and
public video monitoring,
* Corporate sponsors engaged in arms
manufacturing, human rights abuses,
and the environmentally destructive
Alberta Tar Sands,
* Exploitation of unceded Indigenous land and
resources,
* Major environmental damage to build the 'Green Games,' and
more ...

Public space has been turned over to the Games but the community
has
fought back and preserved our rights to protest. Now is your chance
to
Stand Up, Be Counted and Take Back Our City!
Organized by the 2010
Welcoming Committee: community groups, service
providers, activists and
educators united by a social justice critique of
the Games.

Contact:
2010welcoming at resist.ca Visit: 2010welcoming.wordpress.com

The 2010
Welcoming Committee is endorsed by:
2010 Watch, Alliance for People's
Health, Anti-Poverty Committee, Bridgeview Community Action Group, Building
Bridges Human Rights - Vancouver, Bus Riders' Union, Check your Head,
Citywide Housing Coalition, Colour Connected Against Racism - UBC, Co-op
Radio Bulland Awaaz, Co-op Radio The Rational, Community Olympics Watch,
Council of Canadians - National, Council of Canadians - Delta/Richmond
Chapter, Council of Canadians- Vancouver/Burnaby Chapter, Council of Senior
Citizens Organizations - Sunshine Coast Chapter, DTES Community Arts
Network, DTES Power of Women Group, East Van Abolitionists, Ethical
Environmental Consulting, Federation of Iranian Refugees, Food not Bombs -
Vancouver, Freedom Socialist Party, Friends of Women in the Middle East
Society, GatewaySucks.org, Impact of the Olympics on Communities Coalition,
Indigenous Action Movement, Industrial Workers of the World, Iran
Solidarity, Justicia 4 Migrant Workers, Latin America Connexions
Collective, no2010.com, No 2010 Victoria, No One Is Illegal - Vancouver,
OilSandsTruth.org, Olympic Resistance Network, Pink Resistance, Poverty
Olympics, Progressive Nepali Forum in Americas, Siraat Collective,
Progressive Nepali Forum in Americas, Simon Fraser University Public
Research Interest Group, Social Justice Centre - UBC, Solidarity Notes
Labour Choir, StopWar.ca, Streams of Justice, Student Christian Movement -
UBC, subMedia, Surrey Urban Youth Project, Teaching Support Staff Union
Social Justice Committee, UBC Network of Sri Lankan Law Students, Vancouver
Action, Vancouver Status of Women, VANDU Womyn's Group, Warrior
Publications, West End Wild Animal Alliance, Whister Watch, Workers
Communist Party of Iran, and Work Less
Party.
************************************************************************

3.
THE 19TH ANNUAL FEB 14TH WOMENS MEMORIAL MARCH  

Sunday, February 14 2010
and begins at 12pm.

At noon, we gather at the Carnegie Community Centre
Theatre, 401 Main Street (corner Hastings, Vancouver) where family members
speak in remembrance. At 1 pm, the march takes to the streets and proceeds
through the Downtown Eastside, with stops to commemorate where women were
last seen or found; speeches by community activists at the police station;
a healing circle at Oppenheimer Park around 3 pm; and finally a community
feast at the Japanese Language Hall.
 In January 1991 a woman was murdered
on Powell Street in Vancouver. Her name is not spoken today out of respect
for the wishes of her family. This woman's murder in particular was the
catalyst that moved women into action. Out of this sense of hopelessness
and anger came an annual march on Valentine's Day to express compassion,
community, and caring for all women in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, Coast
Salish Territories.
 Nineteen years later, the march continues to honour
the lives of missing and murdered women. Increasing deaths of many
vulnerable women from the DTES still leaves family, friends, loved ones,
and community members with an overwhelming sense of grief and loss. Over
3000 women are known to have gone missing or been murdered in Canada since
the 1970s. Last year, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of
Discrimination against Women issued this statement: "Hundreds of cases
involving aboriginal women who have gone missing or been murdered in the
past two decades have neither been fully investigated nor attracted
priority attention."
 Please respect the memorial march and the leadership
of those organizing it. This event is organized and led by women in the
DTES because women, especially Indigenous women, face physical, mental,
emotional, and spiritual violence on a daily basis. This is a memorial not
a protest; it is a deeply emotional time for family members and women
affected especially in Vancouver's DTES. We ask that you please do not
bring your banners, flags, or leaflets as the Women's Memorial March
carries five banners only to honour the women.

The February 14th Women's
Memorial March is an opportunity to come together to grieve the loss of our
beloved sisters, remember the women who are still missing, and to dedicate
ourselves to justice. Please join us (all genders welcome) and we thank you
for your support of the Women's Memorial March. 


*****************************************************************************************


4. RALLY FOR HOMES - NO MORE EMPTY TALK, NO MORE EMPTY LOTS
Mon Feb 15th
@ noon
Pigeon Park.

*** The Olympic Tent Village needs your support
***

The upcoming 2010 Winter Olympics has escalated the homelessness
crisis in
Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and the Greater Vancouver area.
Since the
Olympic bid, homelessness has nearly tripled in the GVRD, while
real
estate and condominium development in the Downtown Eastside is
outpacing
social housing by a rate of 3:1. Meanwhile, a heightened police
presence
has further criminalized those living in extreme material poverty
in the
poorest postal code in Canada.

With the eyes of the world on
Vancouver, residents of the Downtown
Eastside and supporters will be
setting up an Olympic Tent Village (ie.
Tent City) to raise our demands and
voices for:

1. Real action to end homelessness now. No more empty talk and
no more
empty lots.
2. End condo development and displacement in the
Downtown Eastside
3. End discriminatory ticketing, police harassment, and
all forms of
criminalization of poverty.

The Olympic Tent Village, a
grassroots and autonomous community effort,
will need YOUR support and
solidarity to keep going! We are relying on the
determination of the DTES
community and the strength of our supporters
during the Olympic
period.
************************************************************

5. DO
YOU BELIEVE IN TORTURE, WAR AND OCCUPATION? 
THEFT OF INDIGENOUS LAND? 
THE
CANADIAN GOVERNMENT DOES!

Come out and be part of an anti-war and
anti-militarization moving spectacle. This event is a festive and creative
demand for the Canadian government to respect and uphold human-rights,
international law, the right to self-determination and civil rights. This
event will also feature Gold Medal Award ceremonies for human rights
violations, war mongering, and police brutality. 

MEETING POINT: Vancouver
Art Gallery, Georgia side.

WHEN: Monday February 15th, 2010
Gathering at
6:00pm and leaving at 6:30pm

The 2010 Winter Olympic Games reveal the same
consistent, predictable and historical pattern of militarization and
anti-democratic acts as they have everywhere that they are hosted. StopWar
is especially concerned with the militarization of Vancouver and Whistler
during the Games, with its accompanying restrictions on the democracy and
safety of our community. Enormous resources, including one billion dollars
of spending, considerable military personnel and equipment, and countless
thousands of police and private security personnel are being deployed. The
Games are accompanied by the largest domestic military and security
operation in Canadian military history. Featured among the identified
"threats" to the Games are domestic protest.

The Olympic Truce movement
has similarly revealed the hypocritical and rhetorical commitment of the
Canadian government to peace that is contradicted by action. Despite Canada
being in its 9th year of waging war on the people of Afghanistan, the
Canadian Olympic Truce is calling on the world community "to cease
hostilities during the Games and promote the ideals of peace through
sport", however, Canada has no plans to cease causing death and destruction
in Afghan 
society. In an ironic twist of history, we remember that the
1980 Olympic Games hosted by the Soviet Union were boycotted by over 60
countries, including Canada, in protest of the Soviet occupation and war in
Afghanistan that had begun a year earlier in 1979. 

Bring you costumes,
signs, banners and musical instruments! 
Join us in calling attention to
the Canadian governments disregard of human rights, international law, the
right to self-determination and civil rights. We call on the Canadian
government to end the occupation, war crimes, and human rights violations
from Afghanistan to BC, to sign the UN Declaration of the Rights of
Indigenous Peoples, and to abide by International law. To bring aid not
militarization to Haiti. To bring equity not militarization within Canadian
communities. 

SPONSORED BY: Stopwar.ca
For more information contact:
Stopwar at resist.ca

StopWar Statement on the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games

December 9, 2009 
***Please distribute widely.*** 

The Olympic Charter
states that the Olympic movement aims, "to place sport at the 
service of
the harmonious development of man, with a view to promoting a peaceful

society concerned with the preservation of human dignity". The Stopwar.ca
coalition in 
Vancouver, Canada considers that this noble ideal is
contradicted the by reality of the 
Games which reveals a consistent,
predictable and historical pattern of militarization 
and anti-democratic
acts everywhere that they are hosted. The 2010 Winter Games that 
will take
place in Vancouver next February are no exception to this reality.


StopWar is especially concerned with the militarization of Vancouver and
Whistler 
during the Games, with its accompanying restrictions on the
democracy and safety of 
our community. Enormous resources, including one
billion dollars of 
spending, considerable military personnel and
equipment, and countless thousands of 
police and private security
personnel are being deployed. Featured among the identified 
"threats" to
the Games are domestic protest. The Games are accompanied by 
the largest
domestic military and security operation in Canadian military history. It

includes: 40 km of electronically monitored security fencing; over 1000
closed circuit 
cameras; the use of military aerial surveillance; the
creation of new policing forces such 
as VISU (Vancouver Integrated
Security Unit), JTFG (Joint Task Force Games), 
and participation of US
security and policing agencies; and finally, the use of 4500 
Canadian
Forces troops, many of whom will be pulled from the war in Afghanistan to
be 
relocated in 10 military camps between Vancouver and Whistler. 

The
increased surveillance and militarization of the Olympic host communities,
as well 
as those that the Olympic Torch will be passing through, has
resulted in an assault on 
civil liberties that is increasing as the Games
draw closer. What's more, British 
Columbia is facing environmental
destruction and the erosion of social services as a 
result of the Games.


The pattern of anti-democratic and repressive security procedures and
apparatuses that 
follow the Olympic Games wherever they are hosted can be
traced to IOC rules. Rule 
51 of the IOC Charter (2007) stipulates that "No
kind of demonstration or political, 
religious or racial propaganda is
permitted in any Olympic sites,venues or other areas." 
Rules and
procedures such as this call into question the legitimacy of any community

hosting the Olympic Games if they are guaranteed to remove the basic
principles and 
protections of a democratic society. The Canadian agencies
responsible for security 
have identified domestic protest groups as the
most significant security threat, thereby 
legitimizing the use of force to
suppress opposition and the effective removal of the 
fundamental freedoms
of speech, thought, and assembly protected by the Canadian 
Charter of
Rights and Freedoms.

Like the stated goal of the Olympic Games, the
Olympic Truce movement is similarly 
hypocritical and reveals nothing more
than a rhetorical commitment to peace that is 
contradicted by real
actions. Despite Canada being in its 9th year of waging war on the 
people
of Afghanistan, the Canadian Olympic Truce is calling on the world
community 
"to cease hostilities during the Games and promote the ideals of
peace through sport", 
however, Canada has no plans to cease causing death
and destruction in Afghan 
society. In an ironic twist of history, we
remember that the 1980 Olympic Games hosted 
by the Soviet Union were
boycotted by over 60 countries, including Canada, in protest 
of the Soviet
occupation and war in Afghanistan that had begun a year earlier in 1979.


The continued Canadian aggression in Afghanistan reflects a paternalistic
and 
Imperialist commitment in which the sovereignty of Afghanistan and the
ability of Afghan 
people to determine their own future is disregarded. In
the same way, the Olympic 
Games reveal the true agenda of the Canadian and
BC governments to disregard and 
further attack the struggle for
self-determination and sovereignty of local Indigenous 
nations. Land and
resource development for the Games has displayed a total disrespect 
for
legally recognized Indigenous land, title and resources and the destruction
of sacred 
sites. Government supported chiefs have been bought out and
traditional indigenous 
symbols and artistic expression have been co-opted.


Stopwar opposes the use of war as a means of settling international
disputes. We 
demand that Canada withdraw our troops from Afghanistan
immediately and that 
Canada respect and recognize Indigenous rights,
title, and sovereignty on the stolen 
and colonized land of Turtle Island
(North America). 

We believe that the Vancouver 2010 Olympic games will
leave a lasting legacy that is 
disastrous for our community and nation. We
call on all peace loving people to expose 
and bring to the world stage our
experience of the militarization that come from hosting 
the Olympic Games.
By being vigilant and vocal about what it really means to promote a

peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity we can
try to ensure 
that no nation and no community is forced to endure these
conditions
again.

************************************************************
with a
lot more events, please be sure to check
out:

http://olympicresistance.net/content/schedule

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