When Eric Garcetti and Casey Wasserman welcomed the Olympics back to Los Angeles in 2028, they weren’t just rolling out the red carpet for the noted criminals and high-level grifters from the International Olympic Committee. They’re also inviting the federal military apparatus to drill its tentacular vestiges deeper into our city.
The LA2028 Olympics will be designated a National Special Security Event (NSSE), which means we’re inviting all the agencies housed under the Department of Homeland Security (so ICE, CBP, NSA, TSA, and so on) to coordinate and collaborate with local law enforcement, in spirit and in law. In essence, this undoes any sanctuary protections we would/could have at that time and leaves hundreds of thousands of undocumented people in the region incredibly vulnerable.
Of course, LA is already one of the most militarized places in human history, and an increase in policing and militarization has accompanied every modern Olympic games, which is a frightening cocktail of circumstances coming together. Even though local officials won’t clarify when and how this NSSE will be employed, we contend that any deployment of this policy will result in undemocratic, unethical, and immoral results.
This is a subject we’ve been exploring since our launch last year, so we called up Dennis Pauschinger, an activist scholar who was involved in opposing the bid in Hamburg, a coalition effort which successfully forced a referendum, and killed the city’s 2024 bid. Pauschinger is currently studying Power and Space in the Drone Age at Université de Neuchâtel, Switzerland where he is researching the use of drones in the country, and will soon publish a dissertation on Global Security Models associated with Mega Sport Events and their impacts at the Rio 2016 Olympics.
We spoke with Pauschinger via telephone in mid-September.
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NOlympics LA: What brought you to the Hamburg opposition group?
Dennis Pauschinger: Hamburg started its bid for 2024, just after the 2014 World Cup and a bit before the 2016 games in Rio. We listened to the local politicians and the pro campaign and were astonished how similar it was to the talking points from Brazil’s politicians and corporations.
At that time, I was two years into my PhD and had read a lot of critical literature on sports mega events. Hamburg politicians were repeating positive claims for the city, and I quickly got involved with the various people opposing the bid. We wanted to establish a more critical look at the pros and cons in order to have a more honest debate about what the games will actually mean for the city.
NO: Who was involved in the opposition campaign?
DP: The first people I met were urban geographers who worked at the University of Hamburg, people involved in right to the city movements. These groups had already been involved in public struggles advocating for a city accessible to all, for more citizen participation in urban policy making.
That was one group, but there were also local politicians, mostly from the left wing party Die Linke, not the Social Democrats (SPD). There were also some political groups from the Universities, some random people who were interested in hearing different voices about the mission of the bid.
We tried to organize an open platform for folks interested in working on issues key to the bid.
The first platforms were successful but as things progressed the group was brought down to about 10 people in the core. I had to step back a bit to concentrate on work, but eventually came back and wrote a position paper [Ed. Note: this link loads as an Unsecure Connection on most Internet Browsers. We have provided a PDF document with the original German text, sources and an English version via machine translation.] with scholars positing what the pro Olympics campaign should be talking openly with the people.
NO: What were some of the key points in the position paper?
DP: We had more or less four topics. The Planning Scenarios, which we believed were based on unclear data and clarification as to what exactly they want to do for the city as it related to the Olympics. [The bid committee] talked a lot about citizen participation, but you would go to these workshops and it would not be a question of should we host the games but rather how we should host them, so there was no transparency on people’s suggestions at these workshops (issues of mobility, housing), and how those issues would that be reflected back on the actual bidding plans. These meetings would be white old retired men giving opinions on how to model a future city on the Olympic games but with very little citizen participation.
Most often the most vulnerable populations are targeted.
We also talked about the ecological sustainability of the games. We had a very particular situation in Hamburg. The city was governed by the Social Democrats and the Green Party. We know they are about being sustainable and green but the games would contradict a lot of what the Green Party stands for. We cannot see how, based on the studies how the games can be done sustainably, what does sustainability actual mean?
The city framed the games as a way to do Urban Development in a better and quicker way, and that without Olympics we simply can’t do that. But from our view, it is the core duty of the state to do just that and you don’t need an Olympic bid for that. We were also talking about the financial risks, and how they are incalculable, as has been proven in most bids.
We also took on Olympic Security and Control which would restrict civil and human rights.
This is one of the biggest issues, and there is a lot of critical scholarship about the surveillance and security consequences, how it affects how police would be equipped, where surveillance cameras would be permanently installed.
Finally we explored how the Olympics have historically exacerbated social problems in the city.
There are studies that point to that. We were in favor of discussion on whether we should have the games, to put all the facts on the table, then have the people draw the conclusion. That was not what was happening.
NO: When did the Hamburg bid start?
DP: Around the end of 2014 they were already preparing the bid, but Hamburg’s ambitions were around quite longer than that. I know from my lifetime there was another attempt, and that they reused some of the same framing then. It was around 2003 when various cities were bidding for the German right to host the games.
NO: What city in Germany beat Hamburg at that time?
DP: It was Leipzig.
NO: What was the timeline like on the referendum? How did the opposition group help make it happen?
DP: There was always the option on the table. In fact they [the bid] said we are not going to do this without a referendum. They were willing to do it without a referendum, but knew that they needed to have one.
In Hamburg you don’t have a position as the government to ask for referendum. They actually needed to change the constitution to have the referendum in the first place. Referenda normally come from the people, you have to collect signatures (100,000) to ask the city to hold the referendum.
The bid and supporters weren’t worried about it because they were confident they could win. All the big business sectors were in favor, the major political parties were all in favor, even the Social Democrat and Green government were in favor.
Big news outlets were openly in favor of the bid, and there was hardly any real strong visible opposition. They even had state run public transit doing marketing in favor of the Olympics.
NO: How did you spread the opposition message? How did you know what public was thinking?
DP: I wasn’t very involved at that time but the articulators of the opposition message were keen on blogging a lot, doing small but efficient actions to drive media attention. It’s not that media wouldn’t cover them. Though the local biggest newspaper would fancy way bigger reporting on how they were in favor, they would also have some critical pieces when the NOlympia campaign was going on.
Many professors from various universities signed our social science driven position paper and that got a lot of coverage. After politicians didn’t respond to that, they issued another paper of opposition because we were not being taken seriously.
The other thing that was important was the public suspicion because the pro campaign was so over the top, with officials and marketing companies producing high end marketing spots for the pro campaign for free. They were so polished that people would say “OK, that may be a bit too much.”
And I think then one of the biggest issues was the finances. The Audit Department in the city of Hamburg published a negative paper on the financial costs that was leaked when it was still unfinished, and it said that the budget calculations were not based on something that would be possible.
NO: What did the budget look like? [Ed. Note: the LA2028 Olympics still have no budget]
DP: They would say that the games would cost €11.2B, they were expecting €3.6B in gains, but they would still need to pay €7.4B. The federal government would take over €6.2B, but the Mayor of Hamburg said they would not spend more than €1.2 B.
One crux from this calculation, within this €1.2, €461M was designated for security which is not nearly enough. They published a financial plan laying out the numbers, but no plan for the security. In that section of the plan they said what they were aiming for what they’re going to do on security, but that “we can’t know because we don’t know what the number will be in 2024.”
This is a politics of camouflage, hiding the costs of what could come later, using the numbers from previous games (mostly London as we still had no numbers for Rio). They could have looked at that but they weren’t.
NO: When did referendum take place? [Ed. Note: the LA2028 Olymic bid had no referendum.]
DP: November of 2015.
NO: In the lead up to the referendum how did people think it was going to go?
DP: The temperature was clear for the Yes campaign, and many polls by the media and researchers were saying that they were going to win. They were saying something like 60-40.
One of the highlights of my political life as a citizen was the night of the results. It failed by a vote of 51.6% No and 48.4% Yes.
NO: What was the strategy for getting people to vote No?
DP: There were several campaigns. There was the official NOlympia campaign, and other campaigns saying no that were not with that campaign. The city of Hamburg sent out a pamphlet with the yes and no arguments to every household.
We really tried to produce flyers, posters, distribute them in bars, on Facebook, Twitter. Social media was really important. We for example gave interviews in the days before, appeared on radio shows, had debates on whether we should vote yes or no and tried to get that attention to get a voice for the opposition.
I think the referendum failed not only because of the NOlympia campaign. Activism had a major impact but there were other factors that played a role. We were driving the debate towards the critical issues and people would be forced to think about them. Politicians couldn’t ignore us anymore.
Other factors were we had a huge German Futbol Association scandal that the 2006 World Cup was bought by them. The Paris terrorist attacks in 2015 were also an issue, and sadly the politicians used this to urge that now we need the games to show the terrorists that we are not going to be intimidated.
One big reason why people voted no was that the federal government didn’t say they would pay for the amount that the Mayor was asking for, that they wouldn’t plainly support the way the city had imagined it. People were scared of tax money going to the games. It makes people think there is something wrong with the numbers. And in fact there was.
NO: Can you talk briefly about you understanding of the role of Security in the games?
DP: This is important for the bid because of things like the attacks in 1972 in Munich, the major boost toward securitization since 9/11. This said, it’s important to realize that security doesn’t happen in a vacuum. They are inserting this into general security measures that are ongoing anyway. All the talk about war on terror, the implementation of surveillance, militarization of policing after 9/11 takes part in the Olympics. It’s an opportunity for city and federal government to exacerbate it, it acts as a catalyst, an accelerator. They now have more money to invest in things they’ve dreamed of for a long time.
It is a standardization of security. This can be seen in the militarization of public space and the police, increased surveillance, area lockdowns isolating sport venues, restriction of “islands of security.” It has a huge influence on the day to day running of cities and the citizens who live there. This is something to have in mind when talking about Olympic security, to talk about these standards. The army, the air force, bombers flying over London, no fly zones, surveillance through technology installed such as CCTV cameras.
Another thing that is pretty important is that for example they aim (and this is true of FIFA as well) to enable the experience in a “neutral” setting. Much of the security apparatus is also involved in private security to protect brands and to not damage the image of a clean, peaceful, beautiful Olympics.
It is an industrial security complex that travels with the games with their sponsors: Samsung, IBM, Cisco. They provide technologies and use the games as a showcase for security tech development, and make the cities keep technology and contracts after the games.
They are creating a security legacy.
All the talk about war on terror, the implementation of surveillance, militarization of policing after 9/11 takes part in the Olympics. It’s an opportunity for city and federal government to exacerbate it, it acts as a catalyst, an accelerator.
In Rio the promise was to improve security in the city which is more or less the promise in every host city. London was the same. We have to carefully look at the outcomes, at what stays in the city. Athens was the first summer games after 9/11 and is now one of the most technologically surveilled cities.
If you think about the implementation of the security apparatus, it is important to think about the standards that travel from place to place but also how they are adapting to local conditions. If you look at LA you have to think about what actually could be an issue for the Olympic organizers. Put yourself in their position, and think about how can you run a city without negative images.
I have a friend in LA, and he tells me that he sees a lot of people living in tents and there is an Olympic security tradition of cracking down on the homeless before, during, and after the games.
You saw this in Vancouver, in Rio, in London. How did they deal with the promises made?
Regarding drone usage, with our studies here, and I don’t know how it applies to LAPD, but I think that if you’re talking about surveillance, it’s very routine and systematic. In Switzerland drone use is sporadic, spontaneous and not systematic.
Another point that might be important: during the games legislation is often pushed through as the Olympics are used to push through exceptional situations for law enforcement to overstep boundaries on the pretext of terrorism. There may be reasons and real threats, but there is always the question of at whose cost? Most often the most vulnerable populations are targeted.
NO: What kind of infrastructure was being proposed for Hamburg? The LA bid is touted as a “no build” Olympics.
DP: In Hamburg they said this would be a games of short distances and a new sustainable games, but they also said we’re going to build a whole new neighborhood from scratch, place a stadium and village there, which they would transform into housing. In Hamburg we have legislation that says that if you build new housing, 1/3rd of it has to be social housing, but only for a certain number of years, and it’s always the worst housing that goes to social housing.
If we put money into refurbishing stadiums, how will they be used afterwards? Is there a need?
In Hamburg they wanted to build an Olympic swimming area while at the same time public pools were being shut down. The pool I learned to swim at closed a few years ago, and meanwhile they wanted this new Olympic swimming facility.
They also talked about mobility. In LA they are expanding the Metro, but you have to look at the city and its plans. Does the city have good urban planning that we are adapting to the Games or is it the other way around and we are adapting to the Olympic games? The latter is bad. It serves the games and not the city.
NO: What is the legacy of the Olympic infrastructure plans in Hamburg?
DP: The area they wanted to build in is a port area. In between the city center and another part, there has been a huge dream of urban planners to bridge this space, to connect the city center to this part on the other side of the Elbe river. They always talked about jumping over the Elbe and how that would be possible through the Olympic project. But on the other side of the river, there is a lot of immigration, a lot of working class people living there. There is already not enough mobility infrastructure. To serve these places, the Olympics were used as an excuse to do what they always wanted to do, saying we need these games otherwise it’s not possible.
NO: Do you get the impression that Hamburg would ever bid for the Olympics again?
DP: A vast majority of the local business industry was in favor, and the Olympics still have strong narrative of “dream” and “Disneyland” that they are selling. A successful games is glorifying for local politicians. The German Olympic Committee is now considering a bid for another region. Hamburg is off the plate for the moment, though we thought they might try for 2028, after losing the referendum, but that’s obviously not what happened.
So at the moment I would say no, but they were very angry and disappointed at the outcome. They were very unfair against the No campaign, saying that these are people who are against everything, not arguing about the arguments, but rather about being betrayed.
To serve these places, the Olympics were used as an excuse to do what they always wanted to do, saying we need these games otherwise it’s not possible.
NO: “What about the NOlympia/NOlympic activism gives you hope for change in the future?”
DP: Oh yes, I think that locally many NOlympia movements have really made a difference in the ways in which citizen participation in urban planning processes should and could look like. I also think that the many cities that withdraw the bids or were referenda were won against the Games has helped a lot to raise awareness about the many things that are wrong with the ways in which the Olympics are being organized. There hasn’t been a globalizing effect and real change in the sports governance bodies yet, but locally the campaigns are really successful examples of how we can think about urban planning from below. I am actually putting together, with a colleague, a series of essays that draws upon protest and the Games and the impact that it has made in the past and what it could look like in the future (soon available at www.playthegame.org).
It is important to stress that the Hamburg NOlympia campaign was not against sports and the forces sports can unpack, but advocated for something better for our city than the Olympics and all of what comes with it.
Many critics said “oh, but you are just against everything”. No, the people involved in the campaign are engaged for the right to the city for all for a long time and often have a long story of activism or political engagement of different sorts. NOlympia campaigns can bring to the fore much needed debates on how the city is organized and can bring together people that would not be discussing it otherwise. That’s the positive I take from it. Although it might be a bit of an optimistic view as these kind of debates should happen anyway without Olympic Games ahead. But you in LA can really use this period in putting some critical questions on the table whilst the city is preparing for the Games, although the city has the burden to host them now.
This transcript has been edited for clarity.