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THE D.C. STATEHOOD GREEN PARTY
MEDIA RELEASE For immediate release:Wednesday, June 26, 2002
Contact:
Scott McLarty, Media Coordinator
202-518-5624, scottmclarty@yahoo.com
* Mayor Williams' 'One City' slogan conceals the Olympic threat to D.C.:
tens of thousands of displaced residents; billions in taxpayers' money
diverted to out-of-town business; environmental damage; lack of
accountability by D.C. and Olympic officials
* Precedents cited: July 2002 Grand Prix auto races
at RFK Stadium; effects of Olympics on Atlanta (1996), Sydney (2000),
Salt Lake City (2002) (Index of exposés at the bottom of the release)
* PROTEST: Saturday, June 29 at noon in front of the Wilson Building,
1350 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Members of the D.C. Statehood Green Party will join
other protesters at the visit of the U.S. Olympics Committee on
Saturday, June 29. Statehood Greens are asking District residents,
politicians, and the press to note the widespread damage, diversion of
public money at the expense of education and other essential
needs, and lack of accountability that the Olympic games inflicted on
Atlanta in 1996 and Salt Lake City in early 2002.
"D.C.'s current government stands ready to sell out our city for
such boondoggles, which will burden the residents with debt and
destroyed neighborhoods long after the Olympics have left town,"
said Steve Donkin, who is seeking the Statehood Green Party's nomination
for Mayor of D.C.
Opponents of the D.C. Olympic bid have called this July's Grand Prix
auto races at RFK Stadium a dry run for the lack of accountability by
D.C. officials in imposing the Olympics. The D.C. Sports and
Entertainment Commission and city officials forced the races on
neighborhoods near the Anacostia River without a public hearing,
without an environmental impact statement, and with no input sought from
local residents about the noise and pollution from racing cars or the
traffic and crowds invading their streets.
Statehood Greens call the bid for the 2012 Olympics a danger to the
interests and well-being of District residents, citing the following
reasons:
*** Mayor Williams and other politicians cheerleading for the bid have
kept D.C. residents in the dark about the how the Olympics would affect
D.C.'s finances and quality of life -- who will lose, and who will
benefit. The Mayor, D.C. Council, Washington D.C. 2012 (the bid
committee), and the autonomous D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission
have all refused to hold public hearings on the bid. "We'll get
some public hearings -- after the bid is a done deal and all the
contracts signed," noted one D.C. resident.
According to a May 31, 2002 Washington Post editorial, the Sports and
Entertainment Commission "is virtually a law unto itself" and
a potential "monster," adding that "the imperial Sports
and Entertainment Commission -- thanks to pliant elected leaders --
never had it so good." The U.S. Olympic Committee is a private
entity that conducts all business in secret, ignores the public, and
only speaks to business elites in cities offering a bid for the games.
*** The expenditure of taxpayers' money for the Olympic bid will run
well into the $ billions, covering new sports facilities, security,
accommodations, roads and parking lots, promotion, etc. A.D. Frazier,
who led the fundraising effort for Atlanta's successful 1996 bid,
estimated in June 2000 that a successful bid for the 2012 Olympics
"could cost $3 billion" in public funds. According to the U.S.
General Accounting Office, security for the Salt Lake City Winter
Olympic Games cost U.S. taxpayers over $300 million.
*** While this money gets funneled into Olympic spending, District
residents have already seen the dismantling and privatization of D.C.
General Hospital, the city's only full-service health care facility;
closing of schools and underfunded education (including recreation and
athletics); a ban on the purchase of school supplies from March through
September 2002; cuts in public library hours. When the Mayor and
Financial Control Board destroyed D.C. General Hospital in 2001, they
opened up land for Olympic use on Reservation 13 ("City Unveils
Plan for D.C. General Site", The Washington Post, March 21, 2002)
*** Some D.C. residential neighborhoods will be leveled by construction
for the Olympics. In Atlanta, an estimated 30,000 low-income residents
were evicted as 10,000 housing units were lost to accommodate the 1996
Olympics, including 4,000 public housing units that were razed.
*** The effect of massive displacement of residents will be
gentrification of traditional African American, work class, and
low-income neighborhoods. Charles Rutheiser, professor of anthropology
at Johns Hopkins University and author of Imagineering Atlanta, told The
Village Voice that the 1996 Olympics "allowed the downtown
gentrification Atlanta business leaders had long sought." Anita
Beaty, head of the Atlanta Taskforce for the Homeless, said, "The
developers use the Olympics as the biggest development project they've
ever had an opportunity to engage in. And then it's a steamroller. It
keeps rolling."
"D.C. has a long history of displacing residents under the guise of
revitalization -- just think back to the 'urban renewal' wholesale
demolition of Southwest D.C.," noted Parisa Norouzi, D.C. resident
and community activist. "Gentrification is causing
displacement throughout the District, and the communities around the
Anacostia River are threatened by a litany of development projects being
pursued by the Williams Administration. The Olympics is simply a way to
fast forward the process of displacement, and public financing of
unwanted development projects."
*** No environmental impact study has been undertaken to determine the
likely effects of traffic, pollution and congestion, square miles of new
asphalt, run-off into the Anacostia River, etc. caused by the Olympics.
According to the San Francisco Bay Guardian in September 2001, "The
truth is, the Olympic Games have always been a bad thing for the region
that hosts them. They involve massive long-term changes to regional
infrastructure to accommodate a two-week influx of tourists and
athletes." Toronto University sociology professor Helen Jefferson
Lenskyj, author of Inside the Olympic Industry, claims that
"the whole agenda [of the Olympics] is dominated by
multinationals."
"The poor, the homeless, the most vulnerable will suffer to benefit
multinational corporations and local developers hell-bent on
gentrification at the expense of the city's lower and moderate income
citizens," said T.E. Smith, a native Washingtonian and Statehood
Green activist. "We don't know the full impact the Olympics will
have on our city because its advocates and our pliant elected officials
won't tell us."
MORE INFORMATION
The D.C. Statehood Green Party http://www.dcstatehoodgreen.org
1314 18th Street, NW, lower level, Washington, DC 20036, 202-296-1301
OLYMPIC EXPOSÉS
"Athenian Dreams or Trojan Horse?
By Neil de Mause, The Village Voice, December 13, 2000
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0050/demause.php
Inside the Olympic Industry: Power, Politics and Activism
Book by Helen Jefferson Lenskyj
http://www.sunypress.edu/details.asp?id=60254
The Best Olympics Ever? Social Impacts of Sydney 2000
Book by Helen Jefferson Lenskyj
http://www.sunypress.edu/details.asp?id=60615
"Olympic War on the Poor"
Rent Report (Rentwatchers)
http://www.rw.apana.org.au/rentreport/issue01/05.html
"Hide Your Poor -- the IOC's Coming!"
Jockbeat, The Village Voice, July 18, 2001
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0129/jockbeat.php
"Sport and Corporate Environmentalism: The Case of the Sydney
Olympics"
By Helen Jefferson Lenskyj
http://www.breadnotcircuses.org/sports%26environment.html
"Ring Toss -- How Olympic Insiders Betray the Public Trust"
By Andrew Jennings
http://www.breadnotcircuses.org/jennings.html
RELATED INFORMATION
"Neighbors oppose Grand Prix race"
By Kristina E. Gleeson
The Common Denominator, November 19, 2001
http://www.thecommondenominator.com/111901_news3.html
Australia Anti-Olympics Alliance
http://cat.org.au/aoa
Bread Not Circuses, coalition of groups concerned about Toronto's 2008
Olympic Bid
http://www.breadnotcircuses.org
http://www.breadnotcircuses.org/bbkfiles
Whistler BC exposé on the 2010 Canadian winter bid
http://www.whistlerolympicinfo.com
2000 Green Olympics [Sydney] Questions and Answers
Greenpeace Australia
http://www.greenpeace.org.au/archives/olympics/press_kit/qanda.html
Field of Schemes: How the Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public Money into
Private Profit
Book by Joanna Cagan and Neil De Mause
http://www.fieldofschemes.com
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