STORY about Solidarity posted on February 21, 2010 by
An Open Letter to Public Debate
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The Anti-2010 Convergence has largely been based on a the model of convergences against large governmental/corporate meetings such as the WTO or G8, G20 and so on. These types of meetings occur over a few days –they set up their security infrastructure, meet somewhere in the city, then after a few days pack it all up and leave. The difference between those types of events and the Olympics is not just that the actual event of the Olympics occurs over a 2 week period –a month counting the Paralympic Games.
The significant difference is that the fabric and landscape of the city has been changed on a largely permanent basis. The set up for the Olympics has taken place over the past 5 years and so the encroachment onto Indigenous lands, repression, displacement, gentrification and environmental destruction has been going on for an extended period of time.
By the time the Olympics arrived in town, the damage had already been done. And when they are over and all the tourists and VANOC and pavilions go home, we are going to be left with the Olympic Legacies of increased police funding and resources -and further, a new Olympic attitude towards policing and surveillance; the DTES heavily gentrified and a huge proportion of residents displaced from the support systems they developed in their neighborhood and dispersed and isolated around the city; the entire East Side becoming unaffordable and taken over by yuppies and their conservative values; highways, bridges and other infrastructure feeding into transportation routes for massive resource extraction; colonialist assimilation polices furthered, and Indigenous land bases eroded and destroyed; massive public debt and cutting of funding to public services; etc. All these things will effect those of us living in Vancouver for years to come.
In particular, increased policing in the city will effect our resistance to these things and gentrification and displacement will effect our abilities to organize as members of communities and neighborhoods. What I’m interested in hearing is public forums and debates about where do we go from here? Once all the No 2010 Convergence infrastructure is gone, once everyone goes back home, what are we left with? What are our Anti-2010 Legacies that will carry forward into the resistance against these massive changes that have occurred in Vancouver?
I would very much like to see the same support, resources and organizational capacity used to facilitate the debates around the BCCLA and the Black Bloc utilized to facilitate and focus discussion and development of ideas around moving forward from here. Once the Olympics are gone the fight is just beginning –again.
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Blog?
Consider posting this as a blog here on VMC instead of a story. People expect stories to be actual breaking news and things, and you'll get more people reading if it's a blog.
Clear strengths for continuity
The wide range of activist issues and the uniique flavor of Vancouver solidarity across issues has really shone through, so a wider level of awareness has already been achieved.
One thing that may be hugely significant from these Olympics is that a continuity of organized protest may have already begun for 2012 in London.
The Black Bloc movement is a new and quite radical phenomenon for popular protest, conceptually and in practice presenting new mass orchestration of events that are able to completely blind-side police state tactics. On top of that it made for some superlatively cool moments in demonstration and social commentary.
Valentine's Day 2010 saw the beginning of a continent wide movement in solidarity addressing murdered and missing indigenous women & girls and the empowerment of indigenous women's voices has already grown stronger during the week since!
These are just a few highlighted observations
Oh ya, almost forgot because it is also already becoming a pervasive new reality, the voice of alternative media has become stronger, more interesting and more relevant than the mainstream media!