STOP
PLAYING
GAMES
In the last few weeks, we have witnessed the ruling class scramble to respond to the escalating global pandemic and cling to their profit margins as millions of lives are on the line. The IOC’s faltering decision to “postpone” the Tokyo 2020 Summer Games is yet another example of how politicians, corporations, real estate speculators, and other entities driving the Olympic machine operate with indemnity. The Japanese government repeatedly declared in March that the torch relay and the Summer Olympics would be held exactly as planned, while delaying vital measures to protect Japanese residents at risk – all in the name of preserving the Olympic Games. Once the decision to “postpone” was finally announced, the number of cases in Japan surged, indicating that they had also been suppressing testing and concealing information from the public. This is all part of the Olympic legacy of putting private profit above human life. Now more than ever, reform and negotiation with these monied, powerful interests is not in any of our best interests.
The status quo only has two “solutions” to offer in the face of this crisis, or any crisis, both of which only serve to protect elites’ interest and perpetuate further harm. The first is to enhance the security state in the short-term as fear builds, and then the second is to push capitalist development on steroids in the long-term to claim “recovery.” The Olympic Games are the perfect vehicle to deliver both of these “solutions” to our cities and communities, which will wreak further havoc on top of the damage already done by the bidding process, preparations to host, and now, the COVID-19 pandemic.
We are calling on the IOC and all Olympic organizing committees to STOP PLAYING GAMES. In short, this entails canceling (not postponing) all planned Olympics, taking the resources that are currently being siphoned towards these bloated games, and redistributing them towards the people in our cities and communities who are struggling to survive.
The Tokyo 2020 Olympics are already massively over budget, coming in at approximately $25 billion (~$20B over budget). The budget for the LA 2028 Olympics is nearly $7 billion and Paris currently sits at $8 billion – both of which are expected to rise significantly. In the age of this global pandemic, Olympic budgets are the ultimate expression of hoarding resources, regardless of how they’re funded to begin with. How many lives could be saved with that money as this pandemic rages? Using these funds for anything other than addressing the urgent, basic needs of our families and neighbors is unthinkable. Using them for a mega-event that will further exploit our cities and kill the poorest residents is genocidal.
Instead, these billions of dollars should be applied to the following priorities:
Disaster Recovery
As the climate crisis continues to ravage our cities, we demand reparations and relief for victims of disasters like the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, typhoons in Japan, and wildfires in California. This includes housing for people who have been displaced, medical care for people who are affected by radiation and other long-term effects, mental healthcare for people who are experiencing long-term trauma, and economic relief for people who lost income or their source of income.
Decommodification of Public Goods
The Olympics are one piece of a larger effort to privatize public space and financialize our basic human needs. We demand the immediate socialization of education, healthcare, housing, utilities, and transportation in our cities wherever these public goods are not already under public control. This includes reclaiming now-vacant hotels and short-term rental units for social housing. These are the things we need to support human life and prosperity in general, and recovery from the COVID-19 specifically – not an enhanced security state or ramped up real estate development.
Defund Police and Military
The biggest line item for every Olympic budget is typically security. For the London 2012 Olympics the security budget ballooned to over $1.6 billion. Tokyo has been spending an undisclosed but likely astronomical amount of money on new mass surveillance and facial recognition technology for the Olympics. We demand that every penny designated for brutalizing our cities’ poorest residents in the same of “Olympic security” be redirected to the service of basic human needs. We have seen in this crisis that when millions of human lives are at stake, the people on the front-lines saving lives and risking their own are not the police or military but workers.