I was reading Chicago’s Lumpen magazine tonight and was very interested in the article about Chicago perhaps becoming the site of the 2016 Summer Olympics. The woman who wrote it, Burke Bindbeutel, did not mention where she procured her information, but I assume it‘s from just living in Chicago, reading The Tribune, watching the news, etc.
Clearly, it takes shitloads of cash ($2 billion) to ready a city for something like the Olympics, but I never really thought about how it could permanently disrupt a city and displace residents. Chicago becomes more and more gentrified as the years pass, so I don’t doubt that, as Bindbeutel claims, the city and a lot of its residents will be really fucked afterwards.
Apparently, Mayor Daley is going to create an “Olympic Village” on 37 acres on the near south side now, even though he won’t know for a few more years whether or not the city will host the games. This will give real estate companies the ability to convert even more housing into blasé looking condominiums that are ridiculously priced, and doing so will push out a lot of the people living on the south side, which Bindbeutel says is one of the last “affordable” areas (yet not super dangerous, I’m assuming) left. I don’t doubt that, either. I saw Division St and other parts of Wicker Park transform into a yuppie playground within two-three years. Driving along Ashland Ave, you pass dozens of cookie cutter condos. There are still some parts of Chicago left that emit a vibe, but they are quickly disappearing, and it’s just very sad.
I yahoo-searched this “Olympic Village” to confirm Bindbeutel’s report and to get a little more information. According to a January 23rd article on the CBS Chicago web site, an 80,000 seat oval-shaped stadium would be built specifically for the games and then taken down. Also according to the article, the area “would serve as athlete housing for the Olympics, and then become a whole new Chicago neighborhood, with homes, apartments, hotels and businesses when the games are over.” A pricey new neighborhood, certainly.
The city also wants to spend about a billion dollars on revamping Loop transportation. However, the Loop is NOT the area where the transit needs to be improved in Chicago, so to me it’s a waste of money. But, like Bindbeutel notes, housing the games is a prime “public relations opportunity.” The city can be marketed to the visitors from all of the nations.
It seems sort of doubtful that Chicago would be chosen over LA, Tokyo, and Rio de Janeiro. It will be CRAZY down there if is, though. Part of me would be disgusted and want to avoid it at all costs, but part of me would be curious, too.
As a sidebar, Bindbeutel included some comments from a sportswriter named Dave Zirin in which he details some of the nasty asides related to the Olympics. He mentions a 1968 massacre of students in Mexico City that happened because “Mexican security forces” wanted “to make their city ‘hospitable’ for an international audience.”
When I read that quote, I felt shocked. I’ve never heard of governmental police forces gunning down people because of the Olympics, so I decided to research the occurrence.
It was called the Tlatelolco Massacre. It happened after weeks of student protests, on October 2. (The site I looked at, www.bookrags.com, didn’t describe what the students were protesting, but people being pissed off at their government is not uncommon, especially in huge international cities). About 5,000 people had gathered for a “peace rally” that evening, and, apparently, “army and police forces-equipped with armored cars and tanks — surrounded the square and began firing live rounds into the crowd, hitting not only the protestors, but also other people who were present for reasons unrelated to the demonstration.” The goon squads said that the protestors were armed and firing at them, but the site says a 1997 investigation found that they were not armed. The average death estimate hovers around a few hundred, but the government only reported 4 dead at the time. Sounds like how the media reports 5,000 people at an anti-Iraq war protest when it was triple that.
As grotesque as this massacre was, it doesn’t sound like it necessarily happened because the Olympics were happening in Mexico City, although the site does say that the protestors wanted “to exploit” the Olympics due to all the media present. So I guess maybe there might have been more pressure to “subdue” the protests. In either case, I am appalled. It bums me out that things that should just be fun are always tainted by selfish, capitalist and often brutal governments.
Clearly, it takes shitloads of cash ($2 billion) to ready a city for something like the Olympics, but I never really thought about how it could permanently disrupt a city and displace residents. Chicago becomes more and more gentrified as the years pass, so I don’t doubt that, as Bindbeutel claims, the city and a lot of its residents will be really fucked afterwards.
Apparently, Mayor Daley is going to create an “Olympic Village” on 37 acres on the near south side now, even though he won’t know for a few more years whether or not the city will host the games. This will give real estate companies the ability to convert even more housing into blasé looking condominiums that are ridiculously priced, and doing so will push out a lot of the people living on the south side, which Bindbeutel says is one of the last “affordable” areas (yet not super dangerous, I’m assuming) left. I don’t doubt that, either. I saw Division St and other parts of Wicker Park transform into a yuppie playground within two-three years. Driving along Ashland Ave, you pass dozens of cookie cutter condos. There are still some parts of Chicago left that emit a vibe, but they are quickly disappearing, and it’s just very sad.
I yahoo-searched this “Olympic Village” to confirm Bindbeutel’s report and to get a little more information. According to a January 23rd article on the CBS Chicago web site, an 80,000 seat oval-shaped stadium would be built specifically for the games and then taken down. Also according to the article, the area “would serve as athlete housing for the Olympics, and then become a whole new Chicago neighborhood, with homes, apartments, hotels and businesses when the games are over.” A pricey new neighborhood, certainly.
The city also wants to spend about a billion dollars on revamping Loop transportation. However, the Loop is NOT the area where the transit needs to be improved in Chicago, so to me it’s a waste of money. But, like Bindbeutel notes, housing the games is a prime “public relations opportunity.” The city can be marketed to the visitors from all of the nations.
It seems sort of doubtful that Chicago would be chosen over LA, Tokyo, and Rio de Janeiro. It will be CRAZY down there if is, though. Part of me would be disgusted and want to avoid it at all costs, but part of me would be curious, too.
As a sidebar, Bindbeutel included some comments from a sportswriter named Dave Zirin in which he details some of the nasty asides related to the Olympics. He mentions a 1968 massacre of students in Mexico City that happened because “Mexican security forces” wanted “to make their city ‘hospitable’ for an international audience.”
When I read that quote, I felt shocked. I’ve never heard of governmental police forces gunning down people because of the Olympics, so I decided to research the occurrence.
It was called the Tlatelolco Massacre. It happened after weeks of student protests, on October 2. (The site I looked at, www.bookrags.com, didn’t describe what the students were protesting, but people being pissed off at their government is not uncommon, especially in huge international cities). About 5,000 people had gathered for a “peace rally” that evening, and, apparently, “army and police forces-equipped with armored cars and tanks — surrounded the square and began firing live rounds into the crowd, hitting not only the protestors, but also other people who were present for reasons unrelated to the demonstration.” The goon squads said that the protestors were armed and firing at them, but the site says a 1997 investigation found that they were not armed. The average death estimate hovers around a few hundred, but the government only reported 4 dead at the time. Sounds like how the media reports 5,000 people at an anti-Iraq war protest when it was triple that.
As grotesque as this massacre was, it doesn’t sound like it necessarily happened because the Olympics were happening in Mexico City, although the site does say that the protestors wanted “to exploit” the Olympics due to all the media present. So I guess maybe there might have been more pressure to “subdue” the protests. In either case, I am appalled. It bums me out that things that should just be fun are always tainted by selfish, capitalist and often brutal governments.
posted by Jen Threat at
6:08 PM
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