One of Pivot Legal Society's Red Tents on the streets of Vancouver during the 2010 Winter Olympics. Photo by The Blackbird.

The five-ring circus has rolled out of Vancouver, but the tents are still up. Hundreds of red tents, which became as much a symbol of our 2010 Games as those maple leaf mittens, won’t be coming down until we get our housing legacy. That’s the pledge of Pivot Legal Society, the non-profit legal advocacy organization that launched the campaign as some 350,000 visitors descended on Vancouver in February to soak up the so-called first socially sustainable Olympics.

The Red Tent campaign was pitched in response to the predicted shortage of shelter beds in the city during the Games and the failure of the Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee (VANOC) and its government partners to deliver on promises related to housing and civil liberties. The distinctive tents bear the statement, “Housing is a Right. This tent is protected by Section 7 of the Charter”—the right to life, liberty and security of person. They will be popping up in urban centres across the country as Pivot expands its action, which was inspired by a landmark constitutional case: last December, the B.C. Court of Appeal upheld the right of homeless people to set up temporary shelters on public property when they have nowhere else to go. The campaign will continue until, Pivot says, the ultimate Olympic legacy is realized: A funded national housing strategy. Canada is the only G8 country without one. In April 2009, NDP MP Libby Davies (Vancouver East) stepped up to the podium with a private member’s bill to push for adequate, accessible and affordable housing for all Canadians, but the Conservatives didn’t support the initiative. There were Olympic dreams that Vancouver would set a golden example of how to tackle homelessness, but when the road to the Games got bumpy, promises were torched. Let’s look at what happened.

During the bid stage in 2002, a coalition of environmental and social activists and academics formed the Games-neutral Impact on Community Coalition with “the purpose of maximizing the opportunities presented by the Games and mitigating the potentially negative impacts on Vancouver’s inner-city neighbourhoods.” The IOCC successfully pushed for a referendum on the Games, and together with the bid committee and its government partners, developed the Inner-City Inclusive Commitment Statement (PDF), a set of promises that was incorporated into Vancouver’s bid book and was considered binding.

The statement addresses 14 areas—including civil liberties and public safety, housing, and input into decision-making—and makes 37 specific promises. It’s been touted as an unprecedented pledge by a mega-event host city to work with low-income communities and promote social sustainability, but it materialized into little more than public relations puffery.

While the city boasted about hiring binners to collect bottles and cans left around town (meeting a commitment under employment and training) and VANOC proudly made 100,000 event tickets available for $25 each (ticking off the box next to affordable Games events), housing and civil liberties promises were glossed over.

After a quarter of Vancouverites cited homelessness as their greatest concern in a 2006 poll, ignoring the housing crisis was a Quatchi-sized gaffe. Worst of all, it broke the promise that no one would be made homeless as a result of the Olympics.

According to the Metro Vancouver Homeless Count, the number of homeless people in Vancouver increased by 135 percent from 670 in 2002 to 1,576 in 2008. The tally is believed to greatly underestimate the reality, given the difficultly in tracking down and interviewing the homeless, and housing advocates estimated there were between 4,000 and 6,000 homeless during the Olympics. (There were an estimated 5,500 athletes and officials.)

There was a promise that no one would be involuntarily displaced, evicted or face unreasonable increases in rent due to the Games. But according to the IOCC, approximately 1,300 low-income single room occupancies (SROs)—many contained in old hotels on East Hastings and considered the last option before homelessness—have been lost since the bid was won and the city is not following its own policy to replace rooms at a one-to-one rate. The city defends its record, making another promise that from 2003 to the end of 2012 it will have nearly 2,000 additional non-market units built, compared to a loss of over 1,400 units. However, these numbers don’t take into consideration rent increases that have made SROs unaffordable for low-income residents, nor does it account for rooms held vacant by landlords. Further, the city counts provincially owned rooms as new social housing, when they are newly social, but not new accommodations.

Before the Games, condos were outpacing social housing in the Downtown Eastside at a rate of three to one, and SRO residents were being booted out of their homes as landlords renovated so they could raise rents and make room for Olympic visitors. The IOCC went so far as to file a human rights complaint with the United Nations in July 2009 (PDF), saying hundreds of renters could be evicted prior to the Olympics because of loopholes in tenancy legislations, which allows for these “renovictions.”

An early version of the Inner-City Inclusive Commitment to provide affordable housing proposed by the city of Vancouver included a three-tier housing model at the Olympic Village: market price, moderate income and core-need. However, when a new city council was elected in 2005, one of its first moves was to play Monopoly with the model and commit only 25 percent of the units to “affordable housing,” and of those 252 units, between 30 and 50 percent for core-need individuals. In February 2009, the city reported that the cost of affordable housing at the village had risen from $65 million in 2006 to $110 million. And as of print time, housing advocates feared the plan would be axed completely (the city said a final decision was yet to be made).

Since they failed on the housing front, in a desperate attempt to clean up the streets before the Games, the B.C. Liberals pushed through the controversial Assistance to Shelter Act in November. Dubbed the “Olympic Kidnapping Act,” the law gives police the power to haul homeless people off the streets, pile them into paddy wagons and deposit them at shelters when there’s an extreme weather alert, which can occur in Vancouver when the temperature hovers around zero and there’s heavy rainfall (read: winter in the city). After activists rallied against the act—housing experts came forward to denounce it and Pivot said it was prepared to challenge its constitutionality in court—the chief of the Vancouver police said his officers will only use “minimal, non-forceful touching” to persuade people to accept a lift to a shelter, and will back off if they are met with resistance.

Another Inner-City Inclusive commitment was to commit to a “timely public consultation that is accessible to inner-city neighbourhoods before any security legislation or regulations are finalized,” but the community only became aware of the draconian act when a document leaked, and hasn’t been involved in any meaningful consultations.

In a last desperate attempt to quell negative media attention, BC Housing and the city teamed up to intercept international journalists at the edge of the Downtown Eastside, before they could get to the gritty stretch. They set up an information centre, Downtown Eastside Connect, at the shiny new Woodward’s site, where they shared their “successes” in tackling homelessness, including the building of social housing on 14 city-owned sites. There’s no mention of the fact that construction of these sites was delayed and not one was ready in time for the Games. The cost of the propaganda kiosk: $150,000.

Inevitably, foreign journalists found their way to the Downtown Eastside and wondered how the world’s first “socially sustainable” Games could look like this: Human wreckage, open drug use, prostitution, crumbling buildings. And a legacy of red tents instead of homes.

How could all of these promises be broken? There was no budget to implement the recommendations, including no funding for an independent watchdog; there was no enforcement mechanism and a lack of accountability; many of the goals were not measurable and the statements were wishywashy and open for interpretation. But perhaps that was the point: Get Vancouverites behind the bid with promises of social sustainability, and then hope we forget about it when the circus comes to town.

This edition of Verbatim is a transcript of Andrew Wallace in conversation with Harsha Walia of the No 2010 campaign. The original podcast of that interview is available here. Andrew is also joining us as a blog columnist, writing about the intersection of sport and society with Game Theory. The first column appeared yesterday. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast on iTunes for new interviews every other Monday.

In today’s Verbatim, Harsha Walia talks with Andrew about the present circumstances of the Olympic protest movement on the eve of the Games, and the future of the social organizations that have met and collaborated to critique the event.

Q&A

Harsha Walia: The Olympic resistance network is a network that was established approximately two years ago in Vancouver Coast Salish territories to basically build resistance to the Olympic games. The games were costing $7 billion while public services are being cut. The games have resulted in an approximate 300-fold increase in homelessness in Vancouver’s downtown east side, which is the poorest neighbourhood in Canada.

So there’s a lot of growing discontent around those two issues in particular about the Games. But for us, we also have a much more radical analysis around the Games as a corporate industry, where we’re seeing corporate sponsors getting sweetheart deals. They’re getting bailed out, in the context of the economic recession, as workers are losing jobs – corporate sponsored projects with the Olympic village are getting multi-billion dollar bailouts.

And also, an anti-colonial analysis which is that the Games are being held on unceded Coast Salish territory throughout B.C. and that the Games have provided an even greater impetus for the ongoing theft of native land for development projects like ski resorts.

Andrew Wallace: And can you explain the slogan “No Olympics on Stolen Native Land”

Harsha Walia: Yeah, there are several pieces to it; one is the obvious, which is that the Olympics are taking place on unceded Coast Salish territory.

Andrew Wallace: And can you explain what “unceded Coast Salish territory” means?

Harsha Walia: Coast Salish territory are the indigenous territories that Vancouver is in, so Burrard/Tsleil-Waututh, Squamish, and Lil’wat, which is in Whistler area, and so Coast Salish is actually the anglicized name given to all the different indigenous nations, of which there are many, along the costal area of B.C.

Unceded is the legal reality, let alone the moral reality, that B.C. in particular is all untreatied land. So from a legal perspective B.C. is still unsurrendered indigenous land. There are no treaties that have been signed, with minor exception, in the province of British Columbia. So that’s the specifics of “unceded.” “Stolen” is a much more popular term, which is that all of Canada is stolen land and we all reside on occupied indigenous territories.

So that’s the basis of “No Olympics on Stolen Native Land.” It’s something that VANOC (Vancouver Organizing Committee) and IOC (International Olympic Committee) and all the Olympic elites know because they know that this resistance to the Olympics is so strong in indigenous communities that they have had to create the Four Host First Nations which is basically a native corporate body made up of a few token indigenous people. But Four Host First Nations primarily employs non-native people and it’s a corporation. It’s a business, and so that corporation does not necessarily represent the consent of any of the indigenous people. It’s just called the Four Host First Nations, but some of the Indian Act chiefs – and as we know the Indian Act system is a colonial system that particularly facilitates the selection of chiefs that are in line with the government agenda.

So it’s something that they know very well, the government elite and VANOC know very well, and that’s why they’ve tried to have the Four Host First Nations as a façade of native consent to the Games. That’s why “No Olympics on Stolen Native Land” really foregrounds and highlights the fact that the Four Host First Nations certainly does not represent all indigenous people and that there’s a groundswell of indigenous resistance from urban to rural communities.

Andrew Wallace: And since we’re talking about the Four Host, on the website you said or someone said, “They’re either ignorant of the issues, or greedy.” Which is a fairly harsh critique. What is the bone contention with Four Host, because it does represent some.

Harsha Walia: I don’t know about the ignorant or greedy comment, and it’s not even about specific individuals, although specific individuals come to light. Phil Fontaine for example, who is the former Grand Chief of the Assembly of First Nations and through the AFN gave grand consent to the Olympic games is now a formal advisor to the Royal Bank of Canada and is working closely with corporate interests.

The Royal Bank of Canada is the most devastating, finance is the most devastating industrial project on the planet. Which is affecting primarily indigenous people. The issue in terms of the Four Host First Nations is to highlight the fact that, first of all, no body of people represents all indigenous people. Native 2010 resistance or indigenous resistance doesn’t claim to represent all native people so certainly Four Host First Nations cannot claim all native people

Andrew Wallace: What are the larger goals of this. Clearly, the way you’re speaking and the vocabulary you’re using goes beyond just the Olympics. It seems part of a larger social movement. So what does ORN want to achieve?

Harsha Walia: I think that is really important because a lot of what we get [from people] is that “yeah, well the Games are coming anyway.” So for us it’s like “yeah we’re going to do our best to make sure the Games don’t happen entirely without a hitch.” That everyone who comes to this town and international media and people in this city and people in this province know that the effects of these games are not all positive.

In fact they’re only positive for real estate developers and the corporate and government elite. (We want to) do our best to try to engage people with why the Olympic games and the Olympic industry are negative. But much beyond that, our goals around protesting, disrupting, boycotting, all of those – and educating about the Olympic games are about building strength for social movements in the long term.

Seeing how things like the Games are rooted in processes of capitalist exploitation and things like exploitation of labour, ongoing colonial extraction of resources on indigenous land, environmental degradation, militarization, $1 billion in security.

The Olympic games facilitates this police state for Canada, so it’s seen as this moment of exception where “oh my got let’s spend off this money” because we’re so worried about a terrorist attack. In many ways it’s no different than all these Western States who use fear mongering to spend billions of dollars to fortify a military police state. So all of these kinds of things are going to be here after the Olympics are gone.

One thing that we’re very much aware much aware of, we’re anti-Olympics, but we see this as a struggle that is going to continue beyond the Olympics. Homelessness will still be on our streets after the Games are gone. We’re still going to be in debt after the Games are gone. All the CCTVs, closed circuit television cameras are going to be here when the Games are gone.

Andrew Wallace: What you call a “Police State,” can you give examples of, and explain, what do you mean by that term? How does it become a police state?

Harsha Walia: For me, the police state that we’re seeing is an encroaching police state. There are many of us who would argue we already live in a police state, particularly for people who are the most marginalized or people who live in poverty, people who live on the streets, folks of colour, etcetera. But increasingly in British Columbia, we’re seeing this police state affect everybody.

Attacks on civil liberties, so to give some examples: in Vancouver bylaws are being passed that greatly restricts basic freedom of speech. There are signage bylaws, some of which because of public opposition are now being turned. But things like saying you can’t have any anti-Olympic signs in your doors or you can’t wear anti-Olympic t-shirts. If there’s an anti-Olympic sign in your window you could get fined $10,000, all these kinds of crazy bylaws that really affect basic civil liberties and freedom of speech.

There was an elderly gentleman who clipped out something that pissed him off about the Olympics, a budgetary expense because there is so much money being sunk into the Olympics, and he sent it to his MLA and the next day he had the Vancouver integrated security unit at his door asking him questions.

So part of this police state is that as part of the Olympics we have this Vancouver Integrated Security Unit, which is RCMP, CSIS and the Vancouver Police Department who have basically tasked themselves to spend vast amounts of money to basically interrogate people who are opposed to the Olympics. This includes people like this gentleman, to people who are much more active in an activist role.

So we’ve had a Vancouver Integrated Security Unit visit the homes and work places of at least 60 activists without arrest warrants, without any real basis for a visit. They basically want to interrogate and intimidate people, in violation of their basic civil liberties.

Andrew Wallace: You work here, in the downtown east side, and these are the people — the worry is — who will feel that effect the most. So on a day-to-day basis, have you seen it, just walking the streets and talking to people? What are the stories that you’re hearing?

Harsha Walia: Absolutely, you’d be hard pressed to walk in the downtown east side and find anyone who supports the Olympics. The primary reasons for that are that one, people are directly experiencing homelessness and whether or not it’s directly traceable to the Olympics the reality is those are the facts. You know, a 300 per cent increase in homelessness and a housing crunch ballooned in this neighbourhood. Second of all, an increase in criminalization of poor people. We’re seeing an increasing number of cops on the streets; there are beat cops who just patrol the streets everyday. People are given tickets for ridiculous things, so you get a bylaw ticket for $60 if you spit on the street. If you Jaywalk you get a ticket, you know these things don’t happen in other neighbourhoods, even though these bylaws are technically on the books, they’re only enforced in this neighbourhood.

Andrew Wallace: How do you achieve change in a more concrete way besides just building the analysis, is there anything that ORN is planning on doing, or is doing?

Harsha Walia: The gauge of success is not just been whether or not we stop the Games, I think there gauge of success is multi-fold: One, is just being able to strengthen our social movements because there is going to be a long-term impact of the kind of work that we do and I think there has been successes.

So for example, there have been some housing victories that have been won in this neighbourhood. There’s certainly not enough, but they have only come because of resistance to the Games and the increasing amount of poverty and homelessness as a result of the Games in the downtown east side.

Some of the changes that we’ve seen in response to some of the bylaws that I was mentioning, the proposed bylaws affecting civil liberties have come because of resistance to the Games. So I think it builds a spirit of vigilance at a basic level for people to be vigilant about the kinds of things that are being passed by the government and the impact of corporations on our society. A greater number of British Columbians, at varying levels, are much more critical and skeptical of these kinds of things and that’s the first step to building a more politicized consciousness and action.

Andrew Wallace: It seems largely, the public debate around things like the Olympics is just in two very extreme absolutes, you’re either for the Games and everything that comes with it, or you’re not.

Harsha Walia: I don’t know if that’s true. I think it was true for a long period of time, but we’re increasingly seeing people who are just discontented with the Games and they may not be opposed to the Games in the sense that we as activists are where we also have these other kinds of analysis. Recent polls suggest that upwards of 40 – 50 percent of British Columbians think that the Games are bad for B.C. from an economic perspective. So they don’t necessarily have a social justice perspective, they have an economic perspective and at least have the analysis that the Games don’t benefit ordinary British Columbians. Part of that is the recession, but not just that, even prior to that we were seeing this small emergence.

Andrew Wallace: So you’ve seen a transformation in their thinking:

Harsha Walia: Yeah, I think so, and polls would indicate the same. So everywhere from small merchants and small businesses that feel impacted by the Games because large corporate sponsors are getting contracts and advertising space. I think there is generally, increasingly a sense that the Games are an industry and that there really is no benefit of the Games for ordinary British Columbians, which was the whole ideology of the Games, was that the Games benefit everybody.

Andrew Wallace: So after the Games, what happens to ORN? What do you guys do? Because the Games are going to happen.

Harsha Walia: Yeah, the Games are going to happen. We’re going to do our best to make sure the Games don’t go as smoothly as they would like. After the Games I’m sure part or our time and our resources will go into legal defense. We can expect massive, massive police oppression during the Games. There’s no reason to believe Vancouver will be any exception to prior Olympic games. And again, $1 billion going into security measures, already a huge amount of police surveillance and intimidation of activists, so there’s no doubt there will be a lot of people suffering from police oppression.

Vancouver 2010 Anti-Olympic mascot Bitey the Bedbug. Photo by Lotus Johnson.

On January 11, a coalition of advocates in Vancouver’s downtown eastside voiced a cheeky cry for Stephen Harper to prorogue the upcoming 2010 Winter Games. Though more marketing ploy than genuine call to action, the move is nonetheless a signal of things to come. In the few remaining days before the Olympic torch arrives in Vancouver, protestors have vowed to ramp up anti-Olympic activity. And, of course, the IOC, VANOC and even the City of Vancouver will be doing whatever they can to stop them.

But just as the call to prorogue packs more bark than bite, Olympics protests scheduled for the lead up to—and during—the Games will likely amount to little more than well-meaning disruptions. The window for real change on anything Olympics-related closed a long time ago, and Vancouver’s infuriating “Olympic Bylaws” make doing anything remotely radical prohibitive. The spectacle that comes with the Olympics offers an important opportunity to raise awareness for the plight of Canada’s poorest postal code, Native land claims and the egregiously irresponsible use of public dollars that is the 2010 Games—but grassroots advocates already need to start looking to the future. Yes, the Olympics is here now. But what happens to that progressive momentum once the Games has come and gone?

When I spoke to the Olympic Resistance Network’s Harsha Walia in her cluttered downtown eastside office over the holidays, she called the Olympics a “social catalyst.” Activists of all stripes, with varied missions and agendas, have come together in protest. The problem, though, is that Vancouver 2010 has given birth to the organizations at the front of the anti-Olympics movement right now—No 2010, 2010 Watch and ORN—as the 16-day event comes and goes, so too will they. Other established advocacy groups have continued to champion their own causes, using the Games as a flagpole to rally around, and it is the efficacy of their efforts in the Olympics’ wake that will present a chance for actual reform.

Because the real legacy of the Games won’t be the revamped Sea-to-Sky Highway or new sports infrastructure in Richmond. And it certainly won’t be the 250 units of social housing the city has promised from the freshly constructed athletes village. The real legacy will be debt. Crippling public debt. According to 2010 Watch’s Christopher Shaw, the Olympics are quickly shaping up to be Vancouver’s very own “Big Owe.”

And that debt could put more pressure on existing grassroots groups, especially when funds are cut and the world’s eyes aren’t on Vancouver. Sport can be a powerful platform for awareness—but it also comes with a short attention span. It’ll be difficult for the organizations that have been so vocal in the run up to the Games to maintain the force of their voice once the Olympic spotlight has moved on.

However, with another large-scale sports event taking place on Canadian soil in five years—the 2015 Pan Am Games in Toronto—there exists a ready-made excuse to preserve the cohesion and unity of purpose the anti-Olympics movement has created. If the fervent opposition to Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics and the trepidation around Rio receiving the same Games is any indication, the public is increasingly aware that global sports competitions are not the benign, benevolent forces they’re billed to be. The world is starting to understand who really reaps the benefits and who really pays the costs. And, perhaps, that is where Olympic detractors should be looking. Perhaps that could be the 2010 Games’ “other” legacy.

Harsha Walia.

In this edition of Listen to This, contributor Andrew Wallace talks with Harsha Walia, a writer and activist with the No2010 campaign, often known by its full name: No 2010 Olympics on Stolen Native Land. The group formed about two years ago to respond to what its members see as a clear violation of the sovereignty of the aboriginal people of B.C., where no land was ever formally ceded to the Canadian government. They discuss both the present circumstances of the Olympic protest movement on the eve of the Games, and the future of the social organizations that have met and collaborated to critique the event.

The transcript of the conversation will be available on our blog later this week, so please check this.org to read the interview in full.

And in a final programming note, Listen to This is now available on the iTunes store. Just visit this.org/itunes to subscribe and never miss an episode.

Vancouver 2010 Anti-Olympic mascot Bitey the Bedbug. Photo by Lotus Johnson.

[This post has been amended, see note below]

They were told to wear red and white, to cheer loudly and smile. They were handed little Canadian flags and instructed to wave them with gusto. “This is an opportunity of a lifetime,” they were told.

Some 540 students at L’École Victor Brodeur in Esquimalt, B.C., where my partner’s daughter is a Grade 4 student, were among the first children to witness the 2010 Olympic torch relay as it roared past their school on day one of the cross-Canada carnival. Their school was one of the first of an estimated 1,000 communities to receive the message of peace and hope Olympic promoters say flickers in the flame.

But first, a message from the sponsors! Before the torch made its appearance, the captive student audience watched a pair of flashy Coca-Cola party trucks crawl by, complete with dancers hopped up on sugar and caffeine, followed by a Royal Bank-branded gas-guzzler. There were no permission slips sent home asking parents to allow their children to be part of this marketing campaign. And there will likely be no lesson in class on corporate sponsorship of the Games.

The students also witnessed a police presence worthy of Beijing 2008. The roll-call at this Celebration of Sport and Culture included hundreds of officers, a helicopter, bomb-sniffing dogs and, as one little boy with a tear-smudged maple leaf on his cheek put it, “men in black.” Some children were frightened by this display of security, but the lesson on militarization at the Olympics will also have to wait.

Later in the classroom, my partner’s daughter asked about the relay’s connection to Nazi propaganda, which we had discussed over breakfast (anyone remember the torch relay’s introduction by the Nazi regime during the 1936 Berlin Games?). Her teacher dismissed her question: while the word “Nazi” does not appear in the educational materials pushed across teachers’ desks by the B.C. government and VANOC, kids canlearn a whole lot about sports like the Nordic combined (a combination of cross-country skiing and ski jumping, in case you were wondering).

In the three years leading up to the Games, the B.C. Liberals have spent an estimated $550,000 on a pro-Olympics education program. The lesson plans were developed by B.C. teachers and are available on the Ministry of Education’s dedicated “Sharing the Dream” website and through VANOC’s educational portal. The IOC requires host countries to develop formal education programs, so it’s no surprise much of the materials are blatant Olympic propaganda. For example, there’s a variety of “mascot education resources” encouraging students to get to know the fictional, First Nations-inspired characters: Miga, the sea bear who loves snowboarding; Quatchi, the sasquatch who dreams of becoming a world-famous goalie; and Sumi, the animal spirit who flies over the Coast Mountains.

What about Bitey the Bedbug, one of the anti-Olympic mascots? Students certainly aren’t learning about his favourite sport, the Downtown Eastside crawl, or the issues to which he’s drawing attention. Students probably won’t learn that some Vancouver housing advocates expected there to be more homeless people than Olympic athletes and officials in attendance by the time the Games open (some estimates range as high as 6,000, up from 1,000 people before the bid began in 2003), and that the city has been backpedaling on its commitment to include 252 low-income housing units in the Olympic Village.

Meanwhile, the province has cut sports grants by $10 million, among them a $130,000 grant to B.C. School Sports, which organizes high school athletic programs across the province. And while teachers spend valuable class time discussing Quatchi’s home in the mysterious forest, students don’t learn about real animals and forests that have been affected by the Olympics: no mention of the thousands of trees that have been cut down and the mountainsides that have been blasted to make way for Olympic venues, or the record number of black bears struck by vehicles along the expanded Sea to Sky Highway.

Students are being bombarded with positive messages about the Games, but they need to see a more balanced picture. They are the ones who will inherit the Games’ legacies, after all—perhaps including financial burdens, restricted civil liberties, and environmental damage. They need to understand what’s going on behind all the razzle-dazzle.

Enter Teaching 2010 Resistance. This volunteer network of youth workers, teachers, and volunteers provides free teaching resources for educators who wish to bring a critical perspective on the Olympics to their classrooms. The materials explore the social, environmental, and economic issues associated with the Olympics and are appropriate for students of all ages. For example, elementary students can learn about grizzly bears and the development of the Callaghan Valley, while secondary students can explore more complex issues like indigenous rights, title, and sovereignty. You’d think the cash-strapped Liberals would welcome some free teaching resources after cutting funding to B.C. schools by more than $118 million this year, but provincial politicians seem more concerned with the smear to their Olympic spirit campaign.

“I don’t think this was right taking all the enthusiasm for the Games away from the children,” Premier Gordon Campbell was quoted as saying. B.C. Solicitor General Kash Heed also lashed out: “Encouraging teachers to use the classroom to recruit kids to break the law, to commit acts of vandalism or to occupy private property, you know even to the extent of sabotaging children’s food, is absolutely and completely unacceptable.”

While Teaching 2010 Resistance has no plans to sabotage food, it certainly doesn’t plan on promoting Olympic sponsors Coca-Cola and McDonald’s in the classroom. And the materials do not advocate breaking the law; rather, they encourage students to become active citizens and stand up for their civil liberties.

At the end of October, Teaching 2010 Resistance had planned a meeting for educators interested in previewing its workshop at Vancouver’s Lord Strathcona Elementary. The event poster featured Dora the Explorer tossing Miga into a garbage can and was available on the website of the Vancouver Elementary School Teachers’ Association (VESTA).

When the media got wind of the event, the Province and the Vancouver Sun—both Canwest dailies and multi-million-dollar sponsors of the Games—published editorials blasting the meeting. “Resistance Workshop Fails Us All; Teachers’ Association Makes Astonishing Decision to Consider AntiOlympic Zealots’ Case,” wrote the Province. “It’s Elementary, My Dear Children: The Olympics are a Sham,” the Sun wrote, sarcasm intended.

After VESTA was slammed in the corporate media for promoting the event, and the Vancouver School Board was questioned for allowing the group to rent a classroom, both capitulated. Teaching 2010 Resistance relocated the meeting and VESTA said it was distancing itself from the group. Ironically, the negative media attention helped promote Teaching 2010 Resistance, and by the beginning of November the group had been in touch with 18 teachers and had presented its workshop to more than 100 students in five classrooms.

After the torch relay, my partner and I took his daughter to the anti-Olympic events that were planned for the same day. We discussed the issues that have demonstrators upset and the things that have supporters excited. We’ve played the “Which mascot are you?” game on VANOC’s website, and we’ve talked through Teaching 2010’s lesson plans. Some days, this smart little nine-year-old wants to be an environmental activist, other days she wants to be an Olympic snowboarder. In the end, it will be her informed decision.

[In response to a reader letter, we re-examined the figure of 6,000 homeless estimated in Vancouver in early 2010. Some housing advocates do indeed place their estimates that high, but reliable figures do not exist. The most recent homelessness survey in Vancouver was in 2008 and counted fewer than 1,600 homeless people in Vancouver, though the study’s authors state that this is undoubtedly an undercount. To reflect this ambiguity, in the online edition of this article we have moved the figure of 6,000 inside parentheses and indicated that it is at the highest end of the estimates out there. Regardless, Vancouver homelessness increased by a shocking 135 percent between 2002 and 2008. ]

Four First Nations communities overlap Vancouver Olympic Sites from Vancouver to Whistler.

British Columbia’s First Nations are divided in their support for the Olympics. On one side, the chiefs and band councils of four indigenous communities—the Lil’wat, Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh—have endorsed the Games and set up the Four Host First Nations Society, an offi cial Olympic partner and organizer. On the other side, some of the most vociferous and vocal anti-Olympics activists come from within these same groups. Many in leadership positions view the Olympics as an opportunity to share First Nations culture with the world and a source of revenue that will aid their people; others see the Games as a threat to Indigenous culture, including their traditional lands and livelihoods.

With a few small exceptions, British Columbia is legally Indigenous territory. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 states that the Crown must sign treaties with the Indigenous people before land can be ceded to the colony. While many such treaties took place, the Government of the Colony of British Columbia failed to negotiate treaties, which is why B.C. is the only province not covered by them. Therefore, B.C., for the most part, is unceded—stolen—Indigenous territory.

According to Gord Hill, from the Kwakwaka’wakw Nation and editor of No2010.com, the division in Indigenous communities around the Olympics stems from the band council structure itself: “The Indian Act is divisive and was always meant to install a pro-government council that would implement government policies over Native peoples. In the Vancouver area there are over 60,000 Natives, yet the FHFN represent only 6,000 or so members,” he says.

To date, treaty processes are taking place but little progress has been made. The Indigenous people who oppose the Olympics point out that, fi rst and foremost, the Games are taking place on stolen land. Not only that, they are worried that the Olympics will attract even more foreign investment to Vancouver and B.C.—foreign investment that is troublesome because land disputes are still unresolved. Each new dollar that fl ows in from abroad further encourages the government to continue ignoring indigenous land titles, and that investment is also usually detrimental to the natural ecosystem. Many First Nations activists are further concerned about the impact of the Olympics on Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, where Indigenous people disproportionately live in poverty and have been hit hardest by increasing rent costs and gentrifi cation.

Hill says that he opposes the Olympics “because of the huge social and environmental impacts, including ecological destruction along the Sea-to-Sky Highway, the venues constructed in Whistler, the massive amounts of concrete used in all related construction work, the $6-billion debt, the massive police state being built, the huge increase in homelessness suffered since Vancouver won the bid in 2003, the criminalization of the poor and of anti-Olympic groups, and the erosion of civil liberties. The government also hopes to use the Olympics as a way to increase international investment in mining, oil and gas, and ski resort industries, further threatening indigenous peoples and lands.”

In a recent speech, Tewanee Joseph, executive director and CEO of the Four Host First Nations, painted anti-Olympics protesters as “non-Aboriginal naysayers … [that] want us to remain forever the Dime Store Indian.” “Do these protesters not realize they are forcing, yet again, Aboriginal people into a dreadful mould, a stereotype that takes us back to a shameful chapter in Canadian history? No. No. And no again. We fought to participate in the Games. As full partners. We fought for the jobs. We fought for respect. That is why few Aboriginal people are likely to be swayed by salvoes of warmed-over, anti-corporate rhetoric. That is yesterday’s news for the Aboriginal people of this country.”

But with opposition only likely to grow as the Olympics approaches, those “salvoes of warmed-over, anti-corporate rhetoric” look set to be tomorrow’s news, too.