Why Are So Many Locals Skeptical About the Games?

By BOB MACKIN, 24 HOURS
http://vancouver.24hrs.ca/Sports/vancouver2010/2010/01/19/12528676.html
Why are so many Vancouverites skeptical about the 2010 Winter Olympics or even opposed to the Games?
Washington, D.C. author and journalist Dave Zirin has the answer.

“When the regular citizen finds they can’t take public transportation or their rents have been jacked-up through the roof or the police are on the corner telling them to hustle along -- and all of this is because of an international sporting event -- that’s a recipe for conflict,” said Zirin.

Zirin hosts the Edge of Sports Radio on Sirius XM Radio and his latest book is A People’s History of Sports in the United States. He is in Vancouver on a speaking tour and to gather information about the politics and impacts of the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Unlike Vancouver, Zirin said the International Olympic Committee “was in absolute heaven” because it felt little or no resistance at Beijing 2008.

“They were operating in the context of, I call it, ‘market Stalinism,’ where they get an absolute run of things from a free market perspective, with an unquestioned crackdown on peoples’ civil liberties and an unquestioned budget commitment,” he said.

Zirin speaks at Olympic Resistance Network co-presented events Wednesday at Simon Fraser University Burnaby Mountain (2:30 p.m.) and the Maritime Labour Centre (6:30 p.m.) and Thursday at the University of B.C. Students‘ Union Building (4 p.m.).