Dear No Tokyo and No Pyeongchang Movements in Pyeongchang,
As the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang are set to open later this week despite dire environmental concerns and existential threats to residents near Games sites damaging what’s left of the IOC’s credibility among other dubious organizational concerns, we at NOlympics LA stand with you, our No Tokyo and No Pyeongchang comrades. As we’ve seen public safety become unstable or exacerbated from already shaky conditions in and around Rio and Sochi before, during and after they hosted Olympic Games, NOlympics LA has redoubled efforts to resist the Games.
This struggle against the Olympics is global, as we’ve seen from coalition partners made in Rio, Denver, Salt Lake City, Tokyo, and here in Pyeongchang. As the most vulnerable people in each of our societies are displaced, our environments and ecological systems thrown into disarray and out of natural balance, and athletes and citizens from every country are exploited, we say NO: NO to unhoused people swept or given one-way tickets out of host cities; NO to deforestation and gentrification to clear way for stadiums and arenas; NO to exploiting vulnerable young athletes subjected to systematic abuse.
Your struggle is our struggle. It’s through our combined work that we can affect global change and fight back against the IOC and its insatiable need to extract profit from and try to colonize our communities. We’re sending our strength from Los Angeles.
In Solidarity,
NOlympics LA