Ignite A Flame of Resistance Against the 2010 Olympic Torch Relay

The Olympic Torch Relay is often presented as a tradition from the ancient Greek Olympics. In reality, the Greeks never had a torch relay! Instead, it was introduced by the Nazis during the 1936 Berlin Olympics as a propaganda tool to promote fascism throughout Western Europe and within Germany.

Today, it is a major part of the Olympic industry and serves to rally public support & nationalist fervor (just as the Nazis had intended). Along with the opening day ceremony, the torch relay is one of the most significant high profile Olympic events to occur. For these reasons it has been targetted by anti-Olympics movements.

In Italy 2006, in the two months leading up to Turin Winter Olympics, the relay was disrupted several times, with protesters briefly stealing the flame, dousing it with fire extinguishers, and blockading its route. Olympic organizers were forced to bypass towns and regions due to this resistance, despite thousands of police being deployed. Anti-Olympics groups targeted Coca Cola, a main sponsor of torch relays, due to its human rights and environmental abuses. In Busselona, a radical mayor banned all Coke advertisements from the city, while other municipalities debated similiar motions.

During the torch relay for the 2008 Beijing Summer Games, protesters denouncing China’s occupation of Tibet (and other human rights abuses) succesfully disrupted the relay in San Francisco, Paris, London, and other cities during the relay’s 21 country international tour. Thousands of police were deployed to protect the torch in country after country. In Paris, the torch was extinguished 34 times by organizers as it was hustled onto a bus to drive by protesting crowds. The protests succesfully tarnished the Beijing Games as the work of an authoritarian and repressive police state, and highlighted the cause of Tibetan independence. These mobilizations showed the vulnerability of the Olympic torch relay to disruption, and the high profile nature of such disruptions.

For the 2010 Winter Games, Olympic organizers have planned an ambitious and extensive torch relay, beginning in Victoria on Oct. 30, 2009. It will spend five days on Vancouver Island before flying to the Yukon, crossing the northern region of the country to the Atlantic coast, then proceed westward across all provines, to arrive in Vancouver for the opening ceremonies on Feb. 12, 2010.

The relay will last 106 days and cover 45,000 km. It will pass through 1,000 communities, with midday and evening celebrations each day in some 200. Through collaboration with the Assembly of First Nations, the torch relay will include some 115 Native communities. Altogether there will be 12,000 torch bearers. The cost of the entire spectacle is $30 million, with two thirds of this funded by the federal government. The main corporate sponsors are the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) and Coca Cola.

Join the movement: organize protests and disruptions in your area! AntiOlympic organizers in Vancouver have called for protests and disruptions of the torch relay as it crosses the country, transforming it into an opportunity to ignite anticolonial and anticapitalist
resistance.

● To learn the route of the torch relay and
if it passes through or near your location go
to: www.vancouver2010.com and find
Torch Relays, which will take you to maps and lists of towns and cities.
● Get in touch with the Olympic Resistance Network at: olympicresistance@riseup.net.
● Check out No2010.com for info and updates.

RESISTANCE 2010!

Opening ceremony in Berlin, Germany - 1936

Stay Tuned….

This blog will be updated in the near future…

Stay tuned for the exact dates and locations for demos and other information.

Organizing assemblies with begin in a couple months.

Don’t wait, get organized now, start talking with others, preparing yourself, organize an affinity group, etc…

(An affinity group is a small group of people who know and trust each other and who come together to plan and carry out any kind of project or action.)

International Callout to An Anti-Olympics Convergence, Victoria, COAST SALISH TERRITORIES, October, 29-31, 2009

We expect this convergence to be mostly regional, as a sort of pre-emptive strike leading up to the larger convergence in Vancouver/February 2010. If you live far away and can’t make it for 2010 but would like to contribute to the Anti-Olympics resistance that is unfolding, you could come to Victoria in late October and help start the cross-Canada torch relay on a really bad foot. Or if you want to contribute a lot of time and energy to this struggle, you could always come in late October and stay in the area until February.

Of course, long term local organizing should take priority. If coming for either of these convergences would mean sacrificing your own projects, there are many other ways you could engage in solidarity right where you are. Obviously if you live in Canada you could disrupt the torch relay when it passes through your town or city. No matter where you live there are many national and international corporate sponsors of the 2010 Olympics that are not hard to find, also benefit-fundraisers/info-discussions/social events could be organized to support the 2010 legal defence fund (see http://no2010.com). These are just a few ideas…

This is Also a Callout for International Anti 2010 Olympics Solidarity, from Oct 29 – 31.

WHY WE RESIST? HOW WE RESIST?

WHY WE RESIST?

The Olympics isn’t about sports, it’s about accelerating profit growth for the few at the expense of the many. The Olympics are a tool used by the rich to expand the impositions of their developments and police into our already very compromised lives. Indigenous people, refugees, employed and unemployed working class people with Canadian status all survive in our places on this ladder of exploitation while the mega investors scamble at the top. We are all chewed up and spit out by their corporate interests that drive them to throw up their offensive structures and ravage the land without any respect for life. Let alone the traditional native societies that have lived and subsisted here since time immemorial.

At least two workers have been killed on Olympics related developments and one widely honoured native Warrior/Elder died as a direct result of repression following her resistance to the ‘Sea to Sky’ highway development of Eagle Ridge Bluffs in West Vancouver. Cops kill people on a regular basis and the are using the Olympics to justify the rapid expansion of police forces in Vancouver and the surrounding region. All of this continues with ver little resistance But as many people around the world are showing us; social rebellion IS possible. Just like to bosses and their gaurds are using the Olympics to accelerate their devestating projects we must see them as an opportunity to expand and multiply our own projects of solidarity and resistance.

“Only time will tell, and I can’t see the end. All I know is that it starts right here…” – Friend of a Friend

HOW WE RESIST?

To initiate a collective momentum towards October and onwards to 2010 we will be launching regular assemblies to coordinate self-organized efforts. This will be one part of expanding outward, attempting to stimulate networks locally and regionally. We wish to reach not only activists, but people all across the social territory; in and around workplaces, schools, welfare lines, pubs, cafes, parks, in the streets, and in places where people are already taking a stand for limited objectives like better wages/incomes/housing or against development or displacement. Our aim is not to organize other people but to engage with them, fire them up, challenge resignation and generally proliferate self-organized social struggle.

We want to propagate the concept of the affinity group. Our vision is to inspire as many people to self organize their own projects towards and during the torch relay kick-off in late October proceeding to the February convergence in Vancouver and beyond.