ORN Feb 6 Press Conference and media coverage

‘We are absolutely a threat to these Games’: ORN
By Geoff Dembicki February 4, 2010
http://thetyee.ca/Blogs/TheHook/Olympics2010/2010/02/04/ORN-threat-Olymp...

The Olympics Resistance Network drew battle lines with just over a week until Vancouver’s opening ceremonies.

“We are absolutely a threat to these Games,” ORN spokesperson Harjap Grewal told dozens of reporters and activists. “But we are not a threat to the public. We are a threat to the corporate sponsors and the industry and the government that props them up.”

The ORN is the loudest voice in a diverse Olympics protest movement. Security forces keep its members under close watch. A U.S. travel advisory last month urged Olympics visitors to avoid Vancouver protests.

This Thursday afternoon, ORN organizers stood before a phalanx of microphones and TV cameras in the Downtown Eastside’s Pigeon Park.

A maroon bandana reading “Fuck you and your fucking Olympics” covered one activist’s face. Nearby, a man smoked a joint and rested his hand on a trumpet.

The ORN expects activists from across the country and south of the border to converge on Vancouver this month. Native repression, corporate control, environmental destruction and police aggression top a long list of ORN
grievances.

Grewal drew strong parallels between Olympics opposition and anti-globalization.

“A call for convergence normally happens at the G8, WTO and World Bank summits,” he said. “We don’t see the Olympics industry as being that much
different than these institutions.”

Security planners have a $900 million budget. They’ll deploy an estimated
14,800 police, military and private security personnel in Vancouver and
Whistler. What happens when security forces meet protesters is a subject
of huge speculation.

A “welcoming committee” demonstration next Friday could be the largest
protest event of the 2010 Olympics. ORN members said any violence will
likely come from the police. Security boss Bud Mercer has often said he's
fine with legal protests.

Anti-Games critic Chris Shaw hopes for thousands of residents in the streets.

“I get calls everyday from ordinary people who’ve probably never held a protest sign in their lives,” he said.

Geoff Dembicki reports for the Tyee.

Olympic protesters converging on Vancouver
http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20100204/bc_olympics_re...

The Olympic Resistance Network, which represents a coalition of social-activist groups in B.C., says it will do whatever it can to disrupt the journey of the torch when it reaches Vancouver and inconvenience supporters of the 2010 Winter Games.

Representatives of the network told reporters Thursday that they are inviting protesters from around the world to come disrupt the Games.

They said billions of dollars are being spent on the Games to entertain the world's elite when the money could have gone to help the poor.

They said they hope to educate the world about Canada's poverty, homelessness and addiction issues.

"The Olympic Games are a capitalist industry, it's a corporatized industry whose gains and profits are sought only by a few, while the majority of people in Vancouver continue to suffer," said network member Harsha Walia.

Members of the resistance network have already disrupted the Olympic torch run in several places.

They say protesters from Ontario have arrived in Vancouver and more are expected to come from the U.S.

They say if things turn ugly, it won't be their fault.

"If there is violence it is not coming from us. The only violence I have seen in these sorts of things has come from the police," said high-profile anti-Olympic activist Chris Shaw.

The group is preparing for violence anyway.

It is planning to set up its own medical clinic in the Downtown Eastside. And protesters have been advised to wear goggles and bandanas soaked in apple cider to counteract the effects of pepper spray and tear gas.

With files from CTV British Columbia's Peter Grainger and The Canadian Press

Anti-Olympic protesters call for support
Thursday, February 4, 2010, CBC News
Olympic protest organizer Chris Shaw says he wants thousands of people to
show up for an anti-Games protest outside the opening ceremonies Feb.
12.Olympic protest organizer Chris Shaw says he wants thousands of people
to show up for an anti-Games protest outside the opening ceremonies Feb.
12. (CBC)

Anti-Olympic protest organizers are asking thousands of people to flock to
downtown Vancouver on Feb. 12 to help disrupt the opening ceremonies of
the Games at BC Place Stadium.

The Olympic Resistance Network made the appeal at a Vancouver briefing
Thursday where the group outlined its strategy to derail the event.

"Next Friday, there will be a demonstration in this town that's probably
never been seen before in an Olympic city," said Games critic Chris Shaw.

Shaw said people gathering at the Vancouver Art Gallery at 3 p.m. next Friday will march six blocks to the stadium, where the ceremonies are scheduled to begin at 4:30 p.m.

The protest is intended to be peaceful, Shaw said.

"If there's violence, it's not coming from us," he said. "If [RCMP Asst. Comm.] Bud Mercer wants there to be no violence, he should instruct his police officers to act that way."

Tent city planned

People who will be on the streets of Vancouver should not fear the protesters, another organizer said.

"We are absolutely a threat to the Games, but we are not a threat to the public," said Harjap Grewal.

A second mass march is planned for Main and Terminal Streets on Feb. 13, the first full day of the Olympics.

There also are plans for a tent city in the heart of the Downtown Eastside as a protest against homelessness, the activists said.

Read more:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2010/02/04/bc-olympic-pr...

Brian Hutchinson: Is Vancouver ready for its Olympic-sized close-up?

http://www.nationalpost.com/scripts/story.html?id=2523645
By Brian Hutchinson in Vancouver, National Post, Thursday, February 04, 2010

Final touches of plaster and paint are being applied. Volunteers wearing Games-approved smiles have hit the streets; police officers are at the barricades, waiting. Almost a decade in the making, Vancouver's multi-billion-dollar party is one week from launch. Is this city ready for its close-up?

With so much at stake, residents are understandably anxious. Hosting the Winter Olympic Games presents enormous opportunities. But they are a 16-day open house for hundreds of millions of guests. People will drop in, either in person or via television, radio and newspapers. They'll poke around a bit and they'll quickly pass judgment.

Visiting media are already arriving and transmitting first impressions to their audiences back home. Vancouver has been described as insufferably damp and grumpy, where the vast majority of people are Games hostile. Or just hostile. Reporters are venturing into Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and are suitably appalled. Local entrepreneurs have found employment guiding out-of-towners up and down Hastings Street and into alleyways, where addicts injecting heroin, cocaine and meth will, if asked nicely, allow their photos to be taken.

One place the foreign press is not being led is inside a new, government-funded information centre that opened in the neighbourhood this week.

Called the Downtown Eastside Connect, the centre was conceived as a sort of clearinghouse for positive neighbourhood stories and news. The focus is on all the new, tax-funded social housing initiatives and programs in the neighbourhood. While no figure is attached to years of spending, it's been estimated to be in the range of $1-million a day.

So why not tout the effort? "We know reporters from around the world are going to be in the area, and they're going to see what everyone sees," a City of Vancouver greeter told me after the centre opened this week. "We just want to be able to give them another side to the usual story."

A positive side. That explains why the info centre has so far been popular with tourists and students but not with reporters looking for seamy underbelly features.

Visitors walk into an oddly shaped room festooned with posters. These bluntly describe the "abuse, untreated mental illnesses and addictions" that plague many area residents, and they address "the turning tide" that is transforming the Downtown Eastside for the better.

On offer are dozens of different pamphlets, brochures and documents prepared by more than 30 non-profit organizations that operate in the area. Participating groups include the Portland Hotel Society, one of the edgiest and controversial social service agencies in Vancouver. It operates Insite, Canada's first supervised injection site, housed just down the street. Insite has its own brochure inside the info centre, prominently displayed.

Ironically, some vocal supporters of Insite and the neighbourhood's well-entrenched poverty industry condemn the information centre, which is merely temporary; they call it a propaganda pushing "spin zone." NDP MLA
Jennie Kwan has joined the chorus, telling reporters this week that "it's basically an attempt to sanitize what's really happening in the Downtown Eastside."

What's happening, of course, is a renaissance. The Downtown Eastside is the oldest Vancouver neighbourhood, where the city got started. Its sad decline and rampant poverty, crime, homelessness and drug abuse are not news. But conditions are improving as private developers and governments build new market and social housing options, and as businesses slowly return and set up shop. Downtown Eastside Connect is located inside the Woodward's Block, a unique, privately led housing development that also contains dozens of off-market housing units for low-income families and for singles. When the info-centre is dismantled after the Games, the space it occupies will be leased for retail use.

Until then, it's open to anyone. My greeter was cheerfully pessimistic. "We're sort of tucked away [inside the Woodward's block]," she said. "I hope people can find us. It's been quiet."

Not so, down the street at Pigeon Park, a tiny, triangular public space recently renovated and improved. Yesterday, media were invited to learn about pending Games protests. A good number turned up, including NBC, the American network that is spending heavily on the Games.

Protest organizers denounced the corporations involved with the Games, and the alleged "$7-billion" Games budget, and the "military police state" it has produced while "the majority of people in Vancouver are suffering."

They spoke in anger about the Alberta tar sands, residential schools and Bhopal. This was their own clearinghouse, for grievances. I caught the eye of another reporter. He winked. The TV cameras kept rolling, and the protesters kept speaking. They made the evening news last night.

National Post

Read more:
http://www.nationalpost.com/scripts/story.html?id=2523645#ixzz0egQpTFg7
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Democracy Now:
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/2/5/headlines#12