my olympic morning began like so many other fridays: a little organic tea in my cup, organic porridge in my tummy, check the email and facebook while listening to cfuv on the radio, and then head downtown for the morning coffee meeting with street newz friends. this friday, though, i packed my full media kit, was costumed in hallowe'en attire, and prepared for a full day of embedded media action.
having paid absolutely no attention to hitler's actual torch run, focussed instead on the torch protest (how did those germans allow those atrocities to happen?!?), i was not surprised to see zoe blunt walking to centennial square where the real events of the day were to take place. i was surprised to learn that there were protesters already on the bridge, and that the torch was scheduled to pass there shortly. i dropped my backpack with my friends at the solstice cafe, and proceeded to the bridge where i easily recognized the council of canadians representatives with their brightly coloured signage. there's audio from that interaction here, and video here. (check back later .... i'm off to the farmer's market ....)
click here for photos on facebook from the day ...
and here for the same photos accessible elsewhere (in backwards order)
on the bridge i learned that the torch arrived an hour and a half late into victoria and, as we waited for its official departure from the bc legislature and then wondered why it took so long to arrive at the bridge i learned that there are actually many torches and they're lit every 300 metres. can you imagine? this is the greenest games ever, they say, and there are people positioned every 300 metres around the world, each with a piece of newly made petroleum based plastic that they'll carry for maybe 10 minutes and then discard. and there i was, watching helicopters that had been in our skies since early morning, shuddering as war planes flew in formation overhead and, as the torch finally arrived, nearly asphyxiated as the slow moving coca cola and other olympic vehicles led the way through the streets where traffic idled. eventually rob reid, former mayoral candidate and, i've heard, one of the major complainants about the downtown bottle exchange (no friend to the homeless despite his token gifts of shoes which bring him publicity and acclaim), lit the torch of a man who works at the ministry of mining (or something like that, and apparently the man was an olympic athete previously) and one of many thousands, millions perhaps, of great torch passings was complete.
the event raised more questions than allegiance in my heart and mind. why are so many willing to celebrate hitler's torch? lest we forget - they don't even know?!? why, if there are so many corporate sponsors - union busting and water polluting coca cola, outrageous profits all take and no give royal bank, agent orange dow chemical, tar sands petro canada, uber-mining earth destroyers cominco - why are taxpayers still on the hook for nearly 30 million dollars? if the corporate sponsors are set to reap enormous benefits from the games, why aren't they the ones footing the bill? if taxpayers are on the hook for nearly 30 million dollars, why weren't we asked via referendum whether we support that sort of extravagant spending of our tax dollars? and, the big elephant on the bridge question, what's so green about this parade?
i learned another very important lesson, after an afternoon of music and speechifying and innovatively entertaining poverty olympic games, after marching through victoria's downtown with a loud and informed and awake and concerned crowd of anti-olympic protestors. we'd shared centennial square with a handful of trained legal observers (thanks to pivot legal society and the bc civil liberties association from vancouver) and, at one count, at least 45 police officers - including the two fellows on the roof of a nearby building. the officers had watched this colourful and vibrant and diverse band of concerned citizens peacefully gathered all afternoon in the square, i guessed they were having a lot more fun than the cops assigned to the actual torch run. we had won, i believe, a smattering of trust from these officers we'd shared the afternoon with.
when the time arrived for the march we discovered the ultimate in animal cruelty - 8 large horses forced into servitude, adorned with goggles and forced to walk through city streets with traffic and noise for the next several hours. 8 large horses working for the corporate agenda, whether they liked it or not. they followed us as we wound our way through the streets, refusing parade permits, insisting on our right to peacefully gather, chanting "whose streets? our streets," "we want homes!" and "1,2,3,4 .... fuck the olympics!" among others. we weaved through lanes of traffic and, as night fell, some of the organizers began to insist (rather militarily i thought) that we "keep tight," pull up the rear, don't let the cops get into the crowd. but they had been in the crowd, walking along with us, perhaps secretly enjoying themselves and appreciating a moment of open defiance, and i didn't understand why, suddenly, we were being yelled at to keep tight and don't let the cops in.
as we neared the legislature, i began to understand. here we were greeted with a whole new set of police. police who'd spent the day, perhaps, with the torch, forming stereotypes of "those unruly protestors," devising strategies for dealing with us lest we should disrupt the precious bread and circuses ceremony that the uninformed masses were to enjoy that night. these new police officers, rcmp among them, began to push their way into our crowd, attempting to harass and intimidate what were, by this time, tired and no doubt hungry young people just trying to share their concern that government and corporate priorities are not being set to favour any sort of a viable future for them. i heard one rcmp officer say, words to the effect, "we're just going to stand right beside you right here" and three or four of them invaded the personal space of some masked kids who held hands and moved closer into the crowd of people who will support them if the cops turn ugly.
i said to my friend carl, who was busy chatting with the woman carrying the tail of the massive big salmon, carl walking alongside as a sea louse, "these are new cops," untrained. he knew immediately what i meant. it's precisely what they did at tiananman square, he said. they got rid of all the beijing police, who lived and worked in the community, who knew some of the people, who had family nearby, and replaced them with fresh, out of town officers who would be less empathetic and more willing to clamp down on the students in the square. i could sense the fear emerge in our group, the same fear, no doubt previously formed in gatherings of this sort, that had led to the militant "tighten up" orders. these were from vancouver where they've encountered countless acts of violence at the hands of the notorious vancouver police department, and they were doing their best to stay together as a group so that nobody could be singled out and perhaps beaten or disappeared. (there are many questions remaining about how willie pickton got away with what he got away with all those years, and where are all those missing indigenous women, and what are those vancouver cops really up to?)
i stayed with the crowd, honoured and proud to be in the company of so many diverse and interesting and truly concerned and caring people. we'd achieved, as peace coalition susan suggested, secondary event status - the sidewalks of cook st. village and downtown had crowded with onlookers. and the occasional "get a job" naysayer. we lost some tired paraders along the way, and we gained newly arriving others. we were young and old, queer and straight, students, activists, business people, professors, union workers, carpenters, representing the cooperative movement, the peace movement, the environmental movement, the anti-poverty movement. we were peaceful, but we had an important message to share and we channelled our angry energy creatively.
at the very end, with my friends the salmon and sea louse, always with an escape route in sight. if these cops became violent, i wanted to remove my embedded self from the protest quickly and become the media. we wound our way through a strangely fenced off area in the middle of the street, and were then released onto the lawn of the legislature. there were thousands of people on the lawn, kids singing "we just want to be free" from the mainstage which was broadcast onto massive big screens (heaven only knows what this little party cost), and i could only feel sympathy for this obviously uninformed, or uncaring, crowd. i stood on the sidewalk with another friend, watching the giant salmon and the poverty torch wind its way onto the lawn. bread and circuses, we surmised .... give them bread and circuses and they'll never suspect, or even wonder, what's really going on.
it's not that i'm opposed to athletes and athletics. but my mother taught me to be a good house guest - clean up after myself and don't leave a mess, be grateful to my hosts and respectful of their needs for privacy and space, leave a little thank you gift in appreciation of their generosity. if the olympics weren't such lousy houseguests, barging their way in, demanding the streets be cleaned and quieted, leaving behind a public debt that's only countered by slashing social programs, perhaps they'd get invited back and wouldn't have to shop for new locations every go round.
bread and circuses. and the facade's only just begun.
