Chris Thompson has spent the last two years lobbying the federal, state, and local government to grease the wheels for the land-grabbing, profit-squeezing, police-budget-inflating machine known as the LA 2028 Olympics. Now, incoming LA mayor Karen Bass has appointed him as her Chief of Staff. Cool cool cool.
An executive from the private Olympic committee running the mayor’s office! What could possibly go wrong?
Karen Bass claims tackling homelessness and unaffordable housing are top priorities for her administration. But for LA28, the Olympics organizing committee, the priority is not to get unhoused Angelenos into safe and dignified permanent housing — it’s to remove visible homelessness and poverty before the global media comes to town. And the Olympics have already kicked off a frenzy of real estate development that is displacing tenants and driving up rents. These Olympics, like all Olympics, put tourists ahead of residents and profit ahead of people.
We have long known Karen Bass supports the Olympic project, but her choice for Chief of Staff presents a conflict of interest more egregious than anything tried by her predecessor Eric Garcetti, whose most blatant privatization efforts have been conducted through nonprofits that orbit the mayor’s office. A Bass spokesperson claims Thompson “will not participate in matters regarding the Olympics for the first year of his service.” This claim is not feasible, given how many aspects of LA city politics (from housing and homelessness to policing and parks) are impacted by Olympics preparations. And why would Thompson’s interests in collaborating with his LA28 buddies vanish after one year? He stands to make more money working for the LA28 than he ever could at City Hall.
Meanwhile, the new mayor’s office will be indebted to powerful LA 2028 committee members and boosters like billionaire Jeffrey Katzenberg, who bankrolled the effort to elect Bass — after lobbying local leaders to criminalize homelessness.
Thanks to the recent LA Fed tapes, we learned the mayor and Nury Martinez’s offices were working with LA28 and the Rams on a backroom deal on the Sepulveda Basin, a plan that would threaten (and possibly sell off) one of the Valley’s largest green spaces. What kind of dangerous deals would be ushered right along with a LA28 lobbyist working as the mayor’s chief of staff?
We need a mayor’s office that protects Los Angeles FROM the Olympics, not one that caters to the private LA28 committee’s whims and to boosters’ profiteering schemes. Angelenos never got a chance to vote on hosting the Olympics, but this month they voted on Proposition SP, a massive parks tax that was decried by opponents in the official city voter guide as a backdoor Olympics tax. It was the first time the Olympics have been on the ballot, and they were overwhelmingly rejected.
We don’t want the Games here. And we definitely don’t want LA28 lobbyists running our city. CANCEL THE LA 2028 OLYMPICS.