Reality check: Hosting the Olympics is an Abomination
We have been calling for the 2028 Olympics to be canceled since Los Angeles was awarded the bid in 2017. Our position remains the same, but more urgent than ever. There should be no Olympics held in 2028.
Angelenos simply cannot afford to put public money, time, energy and infrastructure development into a global party-cum-TV show while we respond to the devastation wrought by the most recent fires..
Right now, the city should focus on stopping disaster capitalists from exploiting vulnerable Angelenos. We need a rent freeze to stop price gouging, an eviction moratorium to prevent further displacement, a right to return for displaced renters and new rent stabilized housing to replace the housing that was destroyed.
Contrary to the claim these games are privately funded, an enormous amount of public resources are going to the Olympics, from city/county staff labor to federal dollars for temporary bus leasing and security costs. We need to redirect all these resources toward targeted relief and the development of resilient infrastructure for the future. Currently, LA28 has a blank check signed by the City of LA. That means Angelenos are on the hook for cost overruns for an event that routinely goes over budget. That risk was unacceptable before these latest fires and it is obscene now. If our officials had any courage they would cancel the Games right now so we can focus on actual recovery.
If we treated our year-long fire season like we treat sports mega-events, maybe the scale of this tragedy wouldn’t be so historic. Important city services like our fire department have been defunded while the LAPD’s budget bloats, hoovering up more and more of our resources every year.
We expect a repeat of the Tokyo 2020/Fukushima playbook, where the leaders who failed to prepare for this disaster push a “recovery” narrative along with the Games — at the expense of residents and infrastructure that suffer from deprioritization. Newsom’s absurdly named LA 2.0 plan cannot possibly make Angelenos whole. Right now it amounts to “organizing philanthropy,” asking the federal government for money for both recovery efforts AND the Olympics (spoiler: only one of these is important), and thanking Trump for giving us the Olympics. We don’t need a rebrand or a citywide make-over. We need targeted relief for the historic, redlined black community in Altadena that was left unprotected.
LA officials are signaling that they intend to remove building regulations whole hog to ensure quick redevelopment — the same thing they want for Olympic fan zones, parking lots, and venues.
As disaster and celebration capitalism converge, we expect this state of exception will be exploited by developers and planners at the expense of residents.
Wildfires in Los Angeles are neither preventable nor predictable. Yet we all know they are a constant threat that we can and must mitigate. LA does not not allocate enough funding for preventative care of fire-prone areas. Fire is a part of our natural ecosystem, but protecting the walled mansions of celebrities and royals from poor people is more important to officials than protecting this city from dangerous land management practices.
In the same way that climate change does not cause fires in Southern California but exacerbates them, the Olympics are exacerbating the problems LA leaders routinely fail to address. Angelenos pay a larger percentage of our income to rent every year. We see housing becoming less affordable, while unhoused people experience violence from police tasked with clearing them from public view. Our officials and business leaders are trying to make Los Angeles the sports capital of the world, but they won’t fund the fire department properly, or build public housing. Instead they allow landlords and developers to set city policy and priorities. And Angelenos pay the price.
We will continue working with communities to reclaim our right to the city, as we do in all times — not just extreme distress — unlike the LA Olympic Organizing Committee and its backers.
The Olympics are not just a distraction. They are destruction.
It’s time to cancel the LA Olympics.