Contesting The Olympics: in American Cities

MEGA EVENT PLANNING
SERIES EDITOR: EVA KASSENS-NOOR
Contesting the Olympics

in American Cities
Chicago 2016, Boston 2024,
Los Angeles 2028
Greg Andranovich
Matthew J. Burbank
Mega Event Planning
Series Editor
Eva Kassens-Noor
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI, USA
The Mega Event Planning Pivot series will provide a global and cross-
disciplinary view into the planning for the world’s largest sporting,
religious, cultural, and other transformative mega events. Examples
include the Olympic Games, Soccer World Cups, Rugby championships,
the Commonwealth Games, the Hajj, the World Youth Day, World
Expositions, and parades. This series will critically discuss, analyze, and
challenge the planning for these events in light of their legacies including
the built environment, political structures, socio-economic systems, societal
values, personal attitudes, and cultures.
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14808
Greg Andranovich • Matthew J. Burbank
Contesting the
Olympics in American
Cities
Chicago 2016, Boston 2024, Los Angeles 2028
Greg Andranovich Matthew J. Burbank
Department of Political Science Department of Political Science
California State University University of Utah
Los Angeles, CA, USA Salt Lake City, UT, USA
ISSN 2633-5859 ISSN 2633-5867 (electronic)

Mega Event Planning
ISBN 978-981-16-5093-2 ISBN 978-981-16-5094-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5094-9
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
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Praise for Contesting the Olympics in American
Cities
“Arguably we are at a tipping point in the history of the Olympics and Contesting
the Olympics in American Cities makes a major contribution to debates about the
future of the Games and other sports mega-events. Written by renowned experts
in the field of the urban politics of mega-events, this will become a standard refer-
ence point for students, teachers, researchers and anyone interested in the recent
past and future development of the Olympics.”
—Professor John Horne PhD, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan
Contents
1 Cities and the Olympics in Urban Politics 1

Introduction 1
Mega-Events and Cities 3
Contesting the Mega-Event Strategy 11
References 16
2 Chicago 2016 Olympic Bid and Opposition 23

Government and Politics in Chicago 23
The 2016 Olympic Bid 27
Contesting the Olympic Bid 30
The Meaning of Opposition to the Chicago Olympic Bid 36
References 40
3 Boston 2024 Olympic Bid and Opposition 45

Government and Politics in Boston 45
Boston’s Bid for the 2024 Olympics 47
Contesting the Olympic Bid 53
The Meaning of Opposition to the Boston Olympic Bid 60
References 62
4 Los Angeles 2024 Bid and 2028 Opposition 67

Government and Politics in Los Angeles 68
The Los Angeles 2024 Olympic Bid 71
vii
viii Contents
Contesting the 2028 Olympics 75

The Meaning of Opposition to the 2028 LA Olympics 81
References 83
5 Anti-Olympics Protest as a Political Legacy 89

Introduction 89
The Nature of Anti-Olympic Opposition 91
Contesting the Olympic City in the USA 96
Conclusion 105
References 107
Index111
About the Authors
Greg Andranovich attended his first year of college at Boğaziçi University

in Istanbul and holds a BA from Clinch Valley College, an MA in econom-
ics from George Mason University, and a PhD in political science from the
University of California, Riverside. His research interests are urban poli-
tics, policy making, and public administration. He has co-authored three
books and a number of journal articles and book chapters on these topics.
He is emeritus professor of political science at California State University,
Los Angeles, where he taught political science and public administration.
Matthew J. Burbank is a professor in the Department of Political Science
at the University of Utah where he teaches classes on voting, public opin-
ion, political parties, and research methods. He is the co-author of two
books, Parties, Interest Groups, and Political Campaigns (2012) and
Olympic Dreams: The Impact of Mega-events on Local Politics (2001), as
well as a number of journal articles and book chapters. He currently serves
as the associate dean for undergraduate studies and faculty affairs in the
College of Social and Behavioral Science at the University of Utah.
ix
CHAPTER 1
Cities and the Olympics in Urban Politics
Abstract This chapter examines policy choices by taking a closer look at

the questions raised by opponents of the Olympics. Opposition groups in
American cities offer two critiques of existing social and political institu-
tions. First, they question whether the IOC and the Olympics makes sense
as a basis for urban growth and development. We examine the institutional
framework for bidding and hosting the Olympics, focusing on how and
why it is changing. This framework reveals the distortions inherent in cor-
porate global sport, more specifically the ways in which it contributes to
urban policy outcomes that can exacerbate inequalities. Second, opposi-
tion groups question the lack of democracy in the policy processes used in
urban governance. We examine the claims, strategies, and tactics of the
anti-Olympics opposition, and how these have changed over the time.
Keywords Agenda 2020 • IOC • Mega-event strategy • Olympic bids

• Opposition • Right to the city • USOC
Introduction
Sport reveals choices in communities. In the period 2013–2018, 14
European and North American cities withdrew from potential bids to host
the Olympic games. The Covid-19 pandemic resulted in the
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Singapore Pte Ltd. 2021
G. Andranovich, M. J. Burbank, Contesting the Olympics in
American Cities, Mega Event Planning,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5094-9_1
2 G. ANDRANOVICH AND M. J. BURBANK
postponement of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Summer Games for at least a

year, pending resolution of the global pandemic. In December 2020,
Japan’s NHK News (2020) found that public support had slipped for the
already-postponed 2020 Olympics (MacAloon 2020; Zimbalist 2020):
32% of respondents wanted the games canceled, 31% wanted them post-
poned again, and 27% said the games should go ahead in 2021. It is fair to
say that the Olympics are in disarray. Public sentiments—at least in demo-
cratic societies where these can be expressed and assessed—have shifted
from a broad societal consensus valuing the corporate model of global
sport with cities as merely temporary custodians of an event, toward one
of greater skepticism and a questioning of priorities. The social and politi-
cal values underlying the transformation and re-creation of urban spaces
through mega-events such as the Olympic games are a focus of critique.
Perhaps most important is the gap identified by the question, do the
Olympics actually promote the stated philosophy of Olympism? The seven
“fundamental principles” of this philosophy emphasize the importance of
human rights, global citizenship, and “the harmonious development of
mankind” (IOC 2020, 11–12). Does the conduct of the Olympic games
live up to these principles and truly support the value of human develop-
ment? If the Olympics do not live up to their own fundamental principles,
then why are cities making the policy choice of bidding to host them?
This book examines such policy choices by taking a closer look at these
questions from the perspective of the emergent anti-Olympics opposition
and resistance. The opposition and resistance groups in American cities
offer a critique of our social and political institutions in two ways. First,
they question whether the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and
the Olympic games make sense as a basis for urban growth and develop-
ment. We examine the institutional framework for bidding and hosting
the Olympics, focusing on how and why it is changing. This institutional
framework reveals the distortions and contradictions inherent in corpo-
rate global sport, more specifically the ways in which it contributes to
certain urban policy outcomes such as the financialization of land uses in
cities that can exacerbate sociospatial inequalities. Second, opposition
groups question the lack democracy in policymaking and the policy pro-
cesses used in urban governance. We examine the claims, strategies, and
tactics of the anti-Olympics opposition, and how these changed over time.
This examination allows us to identify the critique of urban economic
development policy as producing an urbanism built on the profitable
consumption of land and based selectively on values that promote
1 CITIES AND THE OLYMPICS IN URBAN POLITICS 3
individualism, self-reliance, and the sanctity of private property rights

while neglecting the values that promote community, public responsibil-
ity, collective connection, and caring. We examine the Olympic bids and
opposition in three different cities—Chicago, Boston, and Los Angeles.
Our assessment of these cities’ anti-Olympics opposition is based on doc-
umentary analyses of the official bid books, media coverage of the bidding
processes, IOC documents, and analysis of materials produced by and
conversations with key members of the opposition and resistance in
Chicago, Boston, and Los Angeles (as well as observation of meetings,
activities, and events in Los Angeles). These cities are useful cases for
identifying, as theory suggests, the weak points in the relationship between
society and political institutions that allow opposition and resistance to
emerge. Studying the anti-Olympics contestation holds the promise of
understanding the possibilities for broader societal and political change
(e.g., Lefebvre 1969).
Mega-Events and Cities

Utilizing globally broadcast sports mega-events as agents for urban change
has been a mainstay strategy for cities and nations around the world for
several decades (e.g., Burbank et al. 2001; Essex and Chalkley 1998; Hall
1992; Hiller 2000; Lenskyj 2000; Roche 1994). Getting an external event
requires bidding for it, and the IOC, which owns the Olympic games,
determines the bidding process. The manner in which the IOC selects cit-
ies to hold either the summer or the winter games has changed over time
as the appeal to cities of bidding for or hosting the Olympics changed
(Shoval 2002). At some times in the past, the IOC has sought host cities
out and negotiated directly with them. At other times, the IOC encour-
aged cities to bid to host the games. During periods of high demand, such
as in the post-1984 Los Angeles Olympics period, the IOC selection sys-
tem relied on competition between cities. After the success of the 1984
LA Olympic games, many city leaders sought to bid to host a mega-event
because of the perceived economic benefits, grounded in the concepts and
practices of urban entrepreneurialism: the Olympics could be a revenue
generator for cities, serving as a catalyst for urban growth that intensified
land-uses and increased the profitability of land consumption. In addition,
the IOC consolidated its control over the production of the Olympics and
sought greater benefits for itself as bids became larger and more complex.
For example, the IOC developed a corporate sponsorship program and
took control of and then tinkered with the distribution of sponsorship and
television broadcast revenues. However, in a number of cities Olympic
bidding and hosting led to unfavorable urban outcomes such as over-
spending, expensive and underutilized “white elephant” facilities, and
outright corruption in the bidding process. Increasingly during this
period, the Olympics were seen as being too large in scale and overly com-
mercial indicating the existence of contradictions between Olympic rheto-
ric and urban reality. After 2000, it was becoming evident that there was a
shift in relations between cities and the Olympic games characterized by
increased transnational mobilities (Cashman and Harris 2012; Salazar
et al. 2017). Olympic bids saw new stakeholders representing transna-
tional development interests (Surborg et al. 2008), including the IOC
itself (Kassens-Noor 2012). This shift suggests that the policy path of
uneven urban economic development catalyzed by the Olympics distorts
and disempowers local and national interests (Heying et al. 2007).
Although the IOC has responded to the issues raised in bidding for and
hosting the Olympics, it has done so at the margins with the purpose of
“brand protection” as a guarantor of urban growth. In the process, the
IOC has given anti-Olympics community organizers a number of very real
issues around which they can mobilize and contest the games (Hippke and
Kreiger 2015; Müller 2015a; also see MacAloon 2008).
The costs of hosting the Olympics dwarf city budgets and the amounts
spent to provide programs to city residents. In addition, the Olympic
games are marked in the public eye as much by the cost overruns and the
lack of financial transparency as they are for the athletic competition. The
changing perception of the Olympics indicates both the growing power
and the weakness of the IOC in local urban economic development policy
making and planning (Davis and Groves 2019; Kassens-Noor 2012,
2015). Flyvbjerg et al. (2016) examined local Olympic organizing com-
mittee operating and direct capital costs, or all sports-related costs for
hosting the Olympics, at two points in time (the bid budget and the final
costs) for all Olympics between 1960 and 2016. For those games where
cost data were available (data could not be obtained for 11 out of 30
games), each of the Olympic games seemed to be an outlier when seeking
a pattern among the cities (Flyvbjerg et al. 2020). The $50 billion spent
to put on the Sochi 2014 Olympic winter games—this figure includes all
costs with sports-related costs pegged at $21.9 billion (Flyvbjerg et al.
2016, 9)—blew the lid off the notion that spending could be contained or
that gigantism was being tamed by the IOC (Müller 2015b). The excess
of the Sochi games underscored the gap between the rhetoric coming out
of the IOC and the reality on the ground in the Olympic host city selec-
tion process.
The IOC processes are codified in the Olympic Charter, which serves
as the “constitution” for international sports. The charter spells out the
principles, rules, and bylaws that guide and regulate the Olympic
Movement and it is organized around the constituent parts—the IOC,
national Olympic committees (NOCs), international sports federations,
and the Olympic games (for more detailed analysis, see Chappelet and
Kubler 2008; Duval 2018). The philosophy of Olympism provides the
moral foundation for the document, and its seven aspirational principles
begin: “Olympism is a philosophy of life, exalting and combining in a bal-
anced whole the qualities of body, will and mind. Blending sport with
culture and education, Olympism seeks to create a way of life based on the
joy of effort, the educational value of good example, social responsibility
and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles” (IOC 2020, 11).
In addition, the IOC has recognized certain issues—sustainability, legacy,
and non-discrimination—that are larger than the sporting event and these
represent a nod toward the human development foundational values of
Olympism (Hayes and Karamichas 2012). The regulations contained in
the remainder of the Olympic Charter recognize the proprietary and
financial stakes in global sport and range from establishing the composi-
tion of the IOC and the bidding process, to laying out what the opening
ceremonies do, who the athletes are, what they can wear, and governing
their conduct during the Olympic games (IOC 2020). It is important to
note that the charter does get revised regularly, often in response to an
issue or issues that cropped up in a locality or in more than one city orga-
nizing the Olympic games. In the early 1990s for example, the environ-
ment (or rather, environmental degradation) became a focus for organizing
the Olympic games and the idea of sustainable development was enshrined
in the charter in 1996 and post-games legacy concerns made it into the
charter in 2007 (Andranovich and Burbank 2011, 827). Both of these
appear under Rule 33 (2.5), “Election of the host of the Olympic games”
and Rule 34, “Locations, sites, and venues” (IOC 2020, 72). London
2012 was the first Olympic games to be under the IOC’s new legacy
requirements, and it is in the period following the 2012 summer games
that anti-Olympics opposition and resistance has gained traction.
Chappelet (2016, 750) describes what the IOC does today as “network
governance of a complex system,” pointing to the sheer scope and scale of
global sports (also see Müller 2014). While it might appear that the IOC
is a central authority, the Olympic Charter institutionalizes a fragmented
hyper-relational set of activities and events under the guidance of the
IOC. Reading the language used in the Olympic Charter’s Rule 33, which
covers host city selection, suggests the close attention, through the IOC
Executive Board or intermediaries, over the Olympics (IOC 2020, 70–72).
Behind these rules and regulations is an infrastructure of activities that aim
to keep the Olympics at the center of global sport, and for this center to
be negotiated as a “functional and financial system” (Chappelet 2016,
749). These rules belie the turbulent and changing environment of global
sport, which is addressed through ongoing scrutiny and assessment, and
corresponding administrative and managerial shifts (MacAloon 2008).
The IOC’s extensive changes to the bidding process reflect this dynamic
operating environment, and a long standing dispute between the IOC, the
United States Olympic Committee (USOC; the USOC renamed itself the
US Olympic & Paralympic Committee in 2019), and the other 200-plus
NOCs over the allocation of sponsorship and television revenues under-
scored the role of politics in the host city selection process. More specifi-
cally, as the Olympics became more transnational this also affected a
dispute over the share of revenue from global sponsorships and USA tele-
vision broadcast revenues. The dispute pitted the USOC against the other
NOCs in an environment of economic globalization where the value of
national boundaries was diminishing in importance and IOC tinkering
with its share aggravated this dispute and weakened USA bids to host the
games (Barney et al. 2004; Elcombe and Wenn 2011). After an agreement
to resolve the dispute was reached, the USOC sent a letter to 35 mayors
in February 2013 seeking confirmation of interest for bidding for the
2024 summer games. That letter described what it takes to be an Olympic
host city (Livingstone 2013):
The staging of the Games is an extraordinary undertaking for any city,

with operating budgets in excess of $3 billion, not including costs asso-
ciated with venue construction and other infrastructure. Among the
many requirements are:
• 45,000 hotel rooms.

• An Olympic Village that sleeps 16,500 and has a 5000-person
dining hall.
• Operations space for over 15,000 media and broadcasters.
• An international airport that can handle thousands of international

travelers per day.
• Public transportation service to venues.
• Roadway closures to allow exclusive use for Games-related
transportation.
• A workforce of up to 200,000.
While the Games require a formidable commitment, they also provide

an unparalleled opportunity for a city to evolve and grow. The Games
have had a transformative impact on a number of host cities, including
Barcelona, Beijing, and London. They enable the creation and imple-
mentation of a new vision and provide a powerful rallying point
for progress.
The USOC letter identifies the key linkages that drive the Olympic dreams
of urban leaders and make the mega-event strategy an appealing policy
choice for local leaders embracing consumption-oriented economic devel-
opment: “unparalleled opportunity to grow,” “transformative impact,”
“creation and implementation of a new vision,” and “rallying point for
progress” provide catch phrases worthy of any aspiring urban leader. When
cities bid for the Olympics the period of hosting the games is not the only
time a global sports space comes into play; the overlays of the Olympic
City development requirements exacerbate tensions in urban develop-
ment, providing new opportunities to challenge political power and
consumption-oriented development strategies. In this instance, the con-
trasting intentions between this letter and the IOC’s shift toward adopting
Agenda 2020 resulted in an opening between policy and practice. As the
year 2013 ended the IOC was queuing bids for 2024, the USOC was
conducting informal visits to Boston, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco,
and Washington, DC as it moved toward the decision to field an American
city in the competition for the 2024 Olympic summer games (Mackay 2013).
The IOC’s Olympic Agenda 2020 reforms were discussed as a way of
combating commercialization, costs, and size of hosting the games. These
reforms were adopted in December 2014 ostensibly to give cities more
opportunities to learn about the Olympic bidding process and to allow
more interaction with the IOC before formally entering into a bid (IOC
2015; also see Horne and Whannel 2020, pp. 187–192). The Agenda
2020 process split bidding into two stages: the invitation process and the
candidature process. According to the IOC website, the invitation phase

was introduced to create a:
dialogue between the IOC and future Candidate Cities to establish a strong
basis for the next stages. The IOC provides a range of services to NOCs and
cities interested in bidding. Potential Candidate Cities are invited … [to
meet with the IOC] and receive various levels of assistance and feedback
ahead of officially submitting a candidature. This includes the sharing of
best practices, provision of materials and a focus on understanding the
Games to put together a solid project that best meets the city’s long-term
development needs. Encouragement of legacy and sustainability begins
right from the outset of the Invitation Phase to ensure the Games act as a
catalyst for positive development of tangible and intangible legacies for the
city and region. At the end of the invitation phase, NOCs and cities are
invited to commit to the candidature process and a city becomes an official
Candidate City. (IOC 2019)
The candidate city process is more formal and expected to last for two
years. The IOC presented the candidate city process as occurring in three
stages: first, developing a vision and “games concept;” second, designing
the financial and governance structure for the games while learning from
other cities as part of the Olympic observer program; and third, providing
a plan to deliver the games and “ensure a sustainable legacy” for the games
in the host city or region. The IOC established an Evaluation Commission
to review the materials submitted by the cities at each stage and conduct a
formal visit of the city during the third stage.
The Agenda 2020 reforms were intended to encourage more cities to
bid and to improve the quality of those bids. This system, however,
depended on having a sizeable number of cities interested in holding the
games and be willing to compete over many years to get them. During the
decade following the global financial crisis of 2007–2008, it became clear
that cities were less willing to meet the increasingly difficult demands of
the IOC and the various Olympic sports federations with respect to finan-
cial guarantees, venue quality, and public support for the games. During
this period a number of cities including Berlin, Boston, Budapest, Calgary,
Hamburg, Rome, and Toronto publicly considered bidding for the games
but withdrew from the process, in some cases after residents had voted
against bidding for the games (Maennig 2017). Of these, Boston,
Budapest, Hamburg, and Rome were in the 2024 bidding cycle. The
problems of not having enough cities to provide competition and in losing
high-value contenders resulted in the bids for the 2022 winter games
being a competition between Almaty and Beijing. Although Beijing was
selected, the lack of competition led to another set of changes in the IOC
bidding process and to the rolling out of the New Norm, or the IOC’s
ideas for holding down the costs of hosting (Murray 2018).
In June 2019, shortly after the IOC awarded Milan-Cortina the 2026
winter games, the IOC announced additional changes to the Olympic bid-
ding process. The new changes included eliminating the requirement that
sites be selected seven years in advance of the games. Dropping the seven-
year requirement allowed the IOC greater flexibility in striking deals with
cities for future games as the IOC did when it made the deal for 2024 and
2028 simultaneously, announcing Paris as the 2024 and Los Angeles as
the 2028 host cities. Awarding both the 2024 and 2028 Olympics gave
the IOC time to continue assessing the Olympics business model (Kassens-
Noor 2020). In addition, the new process replaced the old Evaluation
Commission with two new Future Host Commissions, one each for the
summer and winter games. These commissions have eight to ten members
and will recommend cities or joint-city bids to the IOC Executive Board.
Under the new process, the board may simply be asked to approve a host
city without other candidate cities to choose from. The new process may
also encourage evidence of popular support for the games in the form of a
referendum; however, the IOC Executive Board will decide this before a
bid is recommended. The goal of these changes is to create a more flexible
means for the IOC to cultivate and select cities through negotiations
rather than through a rigid, multi-year, and competitive bid process where,
as in the 2024 competition, Budapest, Hamburg, and Rome dropped out
leaving only Paris and LA. “‘It can come to a point where there is only one
candidate being proposed,’ IOC President Thomas Bach said at a news
conference. It chimes with Bach’s wish to avoid ‘too many losers’—a
phrase first heard during the 2024 race…The new panels will be empow-
ered to have ‘permanent ongoing dialogue’ with potential bidders and
pro-actively approach preferred hosts. They will report first to the Bach-
chaired Executive Board, which will pick the members” (Dunbar 2019).
As economist and Olympics critic Andrew Zimbalist put it: “The largest
prize in global sports—the right to host the Olympics—will soon be won
in private negotiations with the International Olympic Committee’s inner
circle instead of unpredictable membership votes....Negotiations also will
give host cities more power to dictate terms. Gone are the days when the
IOC had the market clout to simply issue terms on a take-it-or-leave-it
basis” (quoted in Fischer 2019). While these rules changes seem to ema-
nate from a less-strident IOC and appear to establish a veneer of local
self-determination, early evidence points to the IOC’s self-preservation via
Agenda 2020, through its newfound willingness to provide some latitude
in negotiating host city contracts, and then allowing these to be
made public.
Furthermore, in its assessment in 2017, the IOC did not note any spe-
cific changes for directly engaging with the general public. But, an
Olympism in Action Forum was initiated during the Summer Youth
Games in Buenos Aires in October 2018. This first forum was mostly a
public relations exercise, although Chris Dempsey of No Boston Olympics
was included as a panelist for “Hosting the Olympic games: City perspec-
tives.” His comments did not appear to be taken seriously by the modera-
tor and IOC President Bach was dismissive afterward. The IOC considered
making this forum a quadrennial event starting in 2023 (Morgan 2019).
This limited effort at engaging with “the public” shows that the IOC still
is unsure about what “public” means. Clearly, as Chappelet (2016) notes,
the IOC sees its local stakeholders in the abstract. Thus, while the matrix
of who is involved in decisions regarding the Olympic games is growing,
it has not yet reached cities that host the Olympics. In some countries,
notably the United States and Italy in 2020, national legislatures were
examining their NOCs and taking steps to potentially thrust themselves
into Olympic decision making (a fear of the IOC which also played into
the revenue sharing dispute; see Elcombe and Wenn 2011).
Finally, although there is no formal requirement for any public opinion
polling in host city candidatures set in the Olympic Charter, its practice
has been recurrent in the IOC host city selection process. Jennings (2012,
216) notes that demands for transparency and accountability, whether in
government or private business, are the bedrock for establishing legiti-
macy. Examining voting patterns in candidate cities, however, suggested
to Jennings that evidence of national, regional, and local support is not a
major factor in the IOC’s assessment of a city’s candidature and instead
might be a form of risk assessment. Hiller and Wanner (2018) note that
how a city’s residents respond to hosting the Olympics should not be lim-
ited to the bid decision because the seven-year long organizing period to
host the games has important consequences for how people’s lives are
affected by the Olympics. Their review of surveys of host city residents
provides a provocative glimpse at differences across host cities. One exam-
ple is a survey that included both emotional and infrastructural legacy
outcomes where residents of Atlanta and Sydney valued emotional out-

comes and residents in Athens and Beijing valued infrastructural outcomes
as more significant (see Kaplanidou 2012). Thus, the IOC controls a
sports marketplace that pops up in various locations using production,
marketing, and placement processes controlled by the IOC to enhance the
seductiveness of the Olympic games for many consumers beyond those
benefitting financially from the sports mega-event. Or, in the words of
Heying and Ryder (2006, 36), providing a “balm for insecurity, the illu-
sion of distinction, and the promise of abundance.”
Contesting the Mega-Event Strategy

A cross-national analysis of the impacts of hosting mega-events between
2010 and 2016 found that these were dependent upon the urban context
(Müller and Gaffney 2018). This finding is important because it reminds
us that while the IOC is a stakeholder in urban policy making and the
Olympic games are an important vector for urban development, outcomes
are not pre-ordained. Some outcomes may not even be relevant to many
urban residents, whose interests conflict with the scope, scale, and speed
of proposed urban changes (Heying et al. 2007). During roughly this
same period, anti-Olympics contestation in 14 cities forced the withdrawal
of support for bidding for the Olympics, either in public referenda or by
local officials rejecting the Olympics due to the opposition claims and flag-
ging public support (Pauschinger and Lauermann 2018). Recent research
on bidding for and hosting the Olympics addresses the distortions, defi-
ciencies, and contradictions at the heart of Olympic city development and
these anti-Olympics contestations: building lavish amenities and support-
ing hospitality for visitors, displacing residents and gentrifying neighbor-
hoods, privatizing public spaces, creating high security cities and
militarizing police forces, and false promises of widespread benefits made
by boosters (e.g., Berg 2016; Boykoff 2014, 2020; Dart and Wagg 2016;
Dempsey and Zimbalist 2017; Flyvbjerg et al. 2016, 2020; Gaffney 2019;
Giulianotti et al. 2015; Gruneau and Horne 2016; Hayes and Karamichas
2012; Hiller 2020; Horne and Whannel 2020; Ichii 2019; Kassens-Noor
2012, 2020; Lauermann 2016; Lauermann and Vogelpohl 2017, 2019;
Lenskyj 2000; Müller 2015a; Oliver and Lauermann 2017; Pauschinger
and Lauermann 2018; Perelman 2012; Russo and Scarnato 2018; Salazar
et al. 2017; VanWynsberghe et al. 2013; Zimbalist 2015). As this research
demonstrates the contradictory ways that the Olympics and other
mega-events facilitate the restructuring of urban space to make it more

profitable, anti-Olympic opposition is providing new ways of thinking
about the politics of this restructuring and the possibilities of a more
just city.
The policy formation process tells us much about the relationship
between society and government, revealing who is organized into the pol-
icy making process, and who is left out (Schattschneider 1966). Because
conflict and contestation are built into the structure of American politics,
powerful political, cultural, and economic interests exert influence over
policy formation around mega-events, dominating and trying to control
or repress alternative interests and voices (Burbank et al. 2000). The IOC
selection system produces a system of Olympic overlays such as sports
infrastructures, visitor infrastructures, security infrastructures, and con-
nectivity infrastructures that have affected local governance substantively
and temporally. As the size, scale, complexity, and commercialization of
the games have increased, critics have called the Olympic games an indus-
try (Lenskyj 2000), a sporting mode of production (Perelman 2012,
77–80), and a construction event (Zimbalist 2015) that create a city of
exception (Vanier 2016). On the ground in Olympic host cities, the mega-
event strategy channels a particular set of policy strategies that benefit
growth interests and disadvantage the poor, working class residents, and
many small businesses. These policy strategies include changing the city’s
image, physically redeveloping the downtown to emphasize consumption,
entertainment, and leisure to draw in visitors and new investment
(Andranovich et al. 2001). Implementing these strategies means utilizing
increasingly large-scale projects and prioritizing visitor amenities, luxury
housing, and privatized urban space, all of which needed to be secured
(Gusmão de Oliveira 2021). The Olympics provided a new vector for the
achievement of these policy objectives and as decision making shifted, first
from elected councils to special purpose governments (so-called quasi-
public agencies) and then increasingly to the dictates of project and finan-
cial management that also added a new element of temporality into
governance (Davies and Mackenzie 2014; Grabher and Thiel 2015; also
see Raco et al. 2018; Weber 2020). At the same time, it became easier to
avoid engaging with neighborhoods and communities. Indeed, increased
complexity in the Olympics required new, expert knowledge and the num-
ber and global mobility of experts, consultancies, and host city models
multiplied as host city leaders sought to capitalize on their experience and
expertise in this field (e.g., Gonzalez 2011; Horne and Manzenreiter
2017; Lauermann 2017; Silvestre 2013). These changes introduced a new

emphasis on meeting the requirements of technical standards including
securitization and financing, as well as stakeholders with transnational
interests, adding new layers of uncertainty and ambiguity into local policy
formation and governance while also providing new opportunities for
contestation.
Cottrell and Nelson (2010) examined the history of Olympic contesta-
tion from 1896 to 2008. Cottrell and Nelson find an overall increase in
protest activity since the founding of the modern Olympic games in 1896.
They note that these protests have changed in emphasis, starting as boy-
cotts and bans of nations and more recently being localized demonstra-
tions by transnational groups. The broad range of groups involved,
including social movements, local groups, transnational advocacy groups,
international institutions, and nation states, shows the power of the mega-
event as a global stage and the value of the Olympics as a political and
policy space. This value stems from four factors: the global accessibility
and audience of the Olympics; the attractiveness of the Olympics to poten-
tial allies and supporters; the importance of relying more on soft power
tactics when repressing dissent because of the high profile saturation media
coverage; and the symbolism of the Olympics as a progressive force for
social progress. For Cottrell and Nelson (2010, 733), this symbolism
makes the Olympics a “discourse arena” that can be used to link common
experiences to a common set of references, providing a fixed horizon for
anti-Olympics contestation. Still, the scope and intensity of protest activity
varied and the responses to contestations by hosting nations and the IOC
were also a factor. After the publication of this research, the IOC scram-
bled through three important changes to its bidding process and intro-
duced the New Norm—these changes produce variations in practice that
indicate spaces of institutional weaknesses and openings for contestation.
In light of the IOC’s rhetorical emphasis on legacy, sustainability, and
human rights, a basic question about policy formation can be asked when
a city bids for a mega-event: in whose interest is Olympic city urban devel-
opment? This challenge is at the heart of the politics of urban develop-
ment policy making and the choices made ultimately reveal who has a
right to the city (e.g., Harvey 2008; Lefebvre 1996; Mitchell 2003). This
right, expressed in recent anti-Olympics contestations, is for a more dem-
ocratic city. A city where all residents have opportunities for voice in the
policy formation process so that issues that are important to them—
including affordable housing, personal safety, health care, education,
recreational opportunities, safe and efficient transportation—are included

in policy discussions and in policy outcomes. Programs reflecting these
broad social justice intentions and purposes are not part of the menu of
policy choices in most American cities, where privatization, competition,
cutbacks, and repressive policing underpin the austerity politics evident for
decades and experienced in even harsher form since the 2007–2008 global
financial crisis (Peck 2015; Theodore 2020). “Expulsion” (Sassen 2014)
and “celebration capitalism” (Boykoff 2014) characterize the current con-
juncture with market-oriented austerity urbanism facilitating and reflect-
ing the drive for a sharpened calculus of capital accumulation. This is the
starting point for examining anti-Olympics opposition.
Henri Lefebvre’s framework for examining contestation is worth revis-
iting in this regard because it presents the core concerns (1969, 1976; also
see Purcell 2002). In The Explosion, his analysis of the events surrounding
the general strike in Paris in May 1968, Lefebvre argued that a “system”
of capitalism was evident, consisting of an “entire complex of organiza-
tions and institutions engaged in management and decision making …
superimposed on the economic organizations” and the state and state
power were fleshing out this system (1969, 14–15). For Lefebvre, this
meant that government played an important role in underwriting invest-
ments in urban space and holding ideological power for “strategic inter-
vention” to keep the economy going and maintain order (1969, 44–46).
The “appearance of a political community” was a fiction that merely
masked popular passivity and acceptance of the status quo (Lefebvre 1969,
48). That is, in this political community we “have ceased to be agents and
political ‘subjects,’ [and are instead] ‘subjects’ of political power”—which
state power regulates in a variety of ways through the branches and levels
of government (Lefebvre 1969, 49). One result is the emergence of
“voids” between political institutions, processes, and practices and civil
society, providing space for activity that “lies outside state power”
(Lefebvre 1969, 81). For Lefebvre, a shift back to agency and political
subjectivity occurs when a group becomes aware of their “marginal exis-
tence from actual social conditions they feel justified in criticizing” and
they refuse to be integrated by the fictions into the political system, which
effectively separates and fragments differences but proclaims a sense of
unity (1969, 67). The void—which is a space of institutional weakness—
becomes a new political space when spontaneity and contestation emerge
in it, replacing uncritical acceptance of the status quo. As a result, this
contestation also transforms what was a latent institutional crisis (also a
consequence of the masking effects noted above) into “an open crisis
which challenges hierarchies, centers of power, and the bureaucratization
which has infected the entire society” (Lefebvre 1969, 68). We see these
weak points between social and political institutions and relations mani-
festing in the Olympic bidding process which in turn opens new spaces
that are “consistent—but not necessarily formal, permanent or national—
dimensions of the political environment” (Tarrow and Tilly 2007, 438;
Cottrell and Nelson 2010).
Examining the conditions underlying contemporary political agency
between and through urban and transnational spaces, Barnett (2013)
notes that communicative practices are a crucial link for determining dem-
ocratic legitimacy, and cities and urbanism are the communicative field
where connections occur. As the Olympic games move from city to city
across the world, so do new opportunities to enter, use, and expand this
discourse arena. Barnett (2013) shows how new communication modali-
ties under globalization provide alternatives to our traditional thinking
about political agency, specifically by redistributing agency horizontally to
social movements, organizational fields, and advocacy networks. In par-
ticular, Barnett notes that right to the city claims introduce a distinctly
urban element into transnational political agency, focusing squarely on
urban infrastructures which are being “reconfigured as political agents”
allowing shared narratives to circulate. Thus, in making urban develop-
ment policy, especially when an Olympic bid illuminates consumption-
oriented economic development, the neoliberal market narratives can be
contested by critiques of and counter-narratives to dispossession, discrimi-
nation, other injustices, as well as a lack of public oversight and control in
governance matters related to Olympic city urban development. If
Olympic legacies, or more specifically the legacy planning process in cities,
result in feelings of exclusion and the loss of political agency, then contes-
tation provides opportunities to jump scale, including shifting horizon-
tally, to recover that agency.
To sum up, seeking the Olympic games brings a qualitatively different
type of framing event to urban politics. Presenting the Olympics as “a
project of heroic effort, celebration, and internationalism” (Heying et al.
2007, 108) has not prevented conflicts over whose city it is from gaining
traction. It seems that “the point of no return” has been reached and the
impacts of mega-events must be considered (Timms 2017, 123). The case
studies that follow show how the mega-event strategy unfolded in
American cities in the present conjuncture, highlighting the critiques,
counter-narratives, and practices of anti-Olympics opponents. In each city,

anti-Olympics contestation aimed to open the field of the possible and
entertain the chances of the impossible, if only in the imaginary (Lefebvre
1969, 62).
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CHAPTER 2
Chicago 2016 Olympic Bid and Opposition
Abstract Chicago’s bid for the 2016 summer Olympics began in 2006
and ended in 2009 when it was defeated in the first round of voting by the
IOC. The city’s Olympic bid had the support of the mayor and downtown
business leaders and appeared to provide an opportunity for redeveloping
parts of the downtown core in a manner fitting with the city’s neoliberal
development trajectory. Yet, the Olympic bid also generated opposition,
most notably from a coalition of community activists calling itself No
Games Chicago. The efforts of this opposition group helped to raise con-
cerns about the Chicago bid in the international competition and establish
a new model for effective opposition to Olympic driven development.
Keywords 2016 Olympic bid • Book of Evidence • Community benefits

agreement • Gentrification • IOC host city contract • Neoliberal
development • No Games Chicago • USOC
Government and Politics in Chicago

Chicago was incorporated in 1837 and is a home rule city under the
Illinois state constitution. Illinois provides for local home rule and is fairly
permissive. Illinois law allows home rule municipalities to tax income or
earnings, or occupations, and does not impose a debt ceiling. Chicago city
government has a mayor-council structure, with 50 council districts, called

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5094-9_2
wards, with aldermen elected to four-year terms to represent district resi-

dents. The legislative body, the city council, is organized into 16 standing
committees to conduct city business. The council also elects a vice mayor.
The mayor is the city’s chief executive and is responsible for managing city
government. Mayoral powers include appointing city officers, directors,
and commissioners (including the police superintendent), as well as mem-
bers of nearly 150 city boards and commissions (including the school
board). The mayor submits the city’s annual budget and presides over
council meetings. The mayor can veto council bills, which can be overrid-
den with a two-thirds vote. Although technically the mayor has weak exec-
utive powers, the Chicago Democratic political machine has helped
centralize power in the mayor’s office. For example, the mayor picks the
aldermen he wants to chair the powerful zoning, finance, and housing
committees which help determine how public resources are allocated in
Chicago. Historically, Chicago has been a city of low voter turnout
(Bennett et al. 2017b, 272).
Chicago politics are dominated by the Democratic party, with race and
class central to manifesting and maintaining power. Spatially, this plays out
in both neighborhood boundaries and council ward boundaries. The 50
wards are roughly contiguous with Chicago’s 77 community areas, and
these are not exactly the same as Chicago neighborhoods. Chicago, the
third largest city in the United States, is also one of the most racially seg-
regated. The political geography of council ward boundaries tends to
reflect the city’s racial and ethnic divisions, with poorer wards getting
fewer resources. The South Side of Chicago has the city’s poorest African
American neighborhoods, followed by the West Side. These neighbor-
hoods were flash points for urban riots in the mid-1960s (Abu-Lughod
2007, 84).
Historically, politically powerless neighborhoods became the locations
for public housing, the Kennedy Expressway, and the Chicago campus of
the University of Illinois, all of which contributed to white flight. The
highest concentration of public housing construction took place in these
politically powerless neighborhoods, amounting to 20% of the total hous-
ing stock in communities such as Bronzeville (Abu-Lughod 2007, 86). As
core components of the city’s economic development policy in the early
1960s, these projects did not employ local workers, did not provide a
community development infrastructure for poor neighborhoods, and con-
tributed to the separation and segregation of these communities from the
city (Anderson and Pickering 1968; Goldstein 2012; Grimshaw 1992;
2 CHICAGO 2016 OLYMPIC BID AND OPPOSITION 25
Vale 2013). Smith and Judd (1984, 187) noted three changes that
emerged in this period: fiscal welfare replaced social welfare, the uneven
distributional effects of growth exacerbated urban inequalities, and the
privatization of public decision making limited political and policy
responsiveness.
When Chicago bid for the 2016 Olympics, Richard M. Daley was
mayor (serving from 1989–2011). Richard M. Daley is the son of the
legendary Chicago mayor and Democratic machine boss, Richard J. Daley
(who was mayor from 1955–1976). Patronage jobs, large campaign con-
tributions from the global economic sectors, professional campaigning,
and control over the city council were hallmarks of the Richard M. Daley
regime (Simpson et al. 2002, 132). Under the younger Daley, urban
development followed a neoliberal path, focusing on corporate center
redevelopment and gentrification that benefited developers, investors, and
property speculators over residents (Bennett et al. 2017b). The corporate
center scheme privileged the Loop and the lakefront, and gentrification
took investment into poorer areas where land values were low (Spirou
2007). Since much of the South Side and the West Side were potential
targets for gentrification, this meant that low-income housing units were
targeted for future redevelopment. These projects were paid for by a tax
increment financing (TIF) scheme. The state legislature permitted the use
of TIF in 1977 and Chicago first used this redevelopment tool in 1984
(Lentino 2017). As a result, Chicago employed TIF rules for physical
redevelopment activities. Analyses of the city’s TIF districts show that
power has become more centralized in the mayor’s office and policy
making was less transparent (Kane and Weber 2016; Weber 2010).
Furthermore, redevelopment policy decisions are responsive to investors
and insurers. The city paid a premium to sell speculative TIF bonds for
redevelopment in nonresidential real estate, ultimately shifting the costs to
residents in terms of higher property taxes when the 2007–2008 financial
crisis hit Chicago which prompted public outrage. The shifting of public
resources toward business and corporate beneficiaries has been ongoing
for some time. As had been the case in the past communities were neither
considered in policy making nor were they guaranteed any benefits from
policy choices.
The old vision of Chicago-as-manufacturing-center had crumbled and
the new politics of economic development focused on remaking Chicago
into a global, consumption-oriented city, with familiar components includ-
ing entrepreneurial government, market-oriented social values, and a
better business climate (Wilson and Sternberg 2012, 983). Wilson and
Sternberg (2012) describe Chicago’s neoliberalization process as evolving
through three phases. In the first, Mayor Daley emphasized a narrative of
decline that needed to be changed. Wilson and Sternberg describe this
rollback phase as retrenching the welfare state and rehabilitating poor,
predominantly African American, neighborhoods.
The mid-1990s marked the second phase that used new rhetoric to
support a new vision. This rhetoric included an entrepreneurial city gov-
ernment, the importance of public–private partnerships, and a globally
competitive city with a gentrified and redeveloped downtown. The
Commercial Club of Chicago, with a number of Chicago’s biggest corpo-
rate, construction, and real estate businesses serving as co-authors,
weighed in with its Metropolis 2020 Plan, which envisioned an upscale
city built around a gleaming corporate center in the Loop. Tax increment
financing became the preferred method of implementing this vision. The
Loop, South Loop-Bronzeville, South Campus-Pilsen, and the East-West
Wicker Park areas became the places where this vision took root in the
form of 123 TIF supported projects in the 1995–2000 period alone
(Wilson and Sternberg 2012, 983). Although this period was a difficult
environment, the political incorporation of some neighborhood groups
and community organizations occurred, albeit without funding from a
federal Urban Development Action Grant as had occurred in the past
(Boyd 2008). A coalition of Bronzeville community groups formed the
Mid-South Planning and Development Commission in 1990 with a
$271,000 grant by the McCormick-Tribune Foundation. This commu-
nity coalition worked with the Chicago Department of Planning and
Development to write the grant application and to increase the number of
organizations and residents involved (Boyd 2008, 59). As investment
began to target poor and minority areas outside the Loop, so did efforts
to reduce the risk for investors by isolating and containing the poor
through more intensive policing practices.
The third phase of Daley’s neoliberal program included shifting the
rhetoric about the poor as conditions on the ground changed (Wilson and
Sternberg 2012, 984). As in the past, the racism of Operation Disruption,
a policing approach that began around 1996, increased both police crack-
downs (using sting and shakedown tactics) and surveillance activities (such
as placing 30 cameras around African American and Latino neighbor-
hoods). These neighborhoods were “seen” as uniformly crime ridden. But
increased police activity was the extent of what these poor neighborhoods
received and the deterioration continued. The terrorist attacks of

September 2001 helped to further consolidate mayoral power in Chicago.
There was, however, little effect on the city’s political economy as the
continuing decline in local revenues was having increasingly dramatic
effects on administering city services (e.g., Simpson et al. 2002). For
example, by 2005, before the national subprime mortgage crisis hit with
unrelenting force, Chicago’s South Side neighborhoods were suffering
seven times the national average of mortgage foreclosures, leading Wilson
and Sternberg to conclude that “these neighborhoods…seemed to be
consigned to an alternative reality” (2012, 986). As the city’s budget woes
grew, Daley looked for “creative” responses such as privatization agree-
ments for Midway Airport and for the city’s 36,000 parking meters.
Daley’s administration sought to end Chicago’s high-rise public housing
and to restructure the public school system with an emphasis on charter
schools. These initiatives further divided Chicagoans as the Olympic bid
was rolled out.
After the failure of the Olympic bid, the city continued to pursue mega-
project developments funded by TIFs under the leadership of Mayor
Rahm Emanuel. The city established 135 Opportunity Zone census tracts
under federal legislation that covered tax breaks and other incentives for
development that cover the city’s most economically distressed neighbor-
hoods on the South and West Sides (Ori 2019). One parcel sits across
both: the 49-acre Michael Reese Hospital site. This site originally was
purchased for $86 million in 2008 by the city of Chicago as the intended
home for the Olympic Village and later offered as part of Chicago’s unsuc-
cessful bid to land the second Amazon headquarters (Nitkin 2019a).
The 2016 Olympic Bid

In his inaugural address to start what would be his final term in office,
Mayor Daley (2007) said:
Now, with the support of the people of Chicago, we’ve embarked on a bold
new vision for our city—hosting the Olympic and Paralympic Games in the
summer of 2016. We’re all proud that Chicago was selected to become the
United States applicant city. Our bid committee and the business commu-
nity provided the plans, but it was the commitment and enthusiasm of peo-
ple across our city and region that made the difference. The United States
Olympic Committee understood that the people of Chicago are its greatest
strength. And it was the promise of what the Games could do for all our
people that convinced me to support this effort.
They would be a catalyst for transit improvements, more affordable
housing and new facilities in our neighborhoods. They would bring new
businesses, jobs, revenue and other economic benefits that would help all
our people. And as we move forward on the international bid process, we’ll
make sure that all Chicagoans have a voice in the plan. I believe deeply in the
Olympic spirit—that people from different backgrounds and ethnicities can
come together to pursue their dreams.
In the period 2006–2009, Chicago bid to host the 2016 Olympic

games. Chicago’s bid ended when it was knocked out in the first round of
voting by the IOC in its meeting in Copenhagen in October 2009. The
origin of the bid was typical of cities using the mega-event strategy to
redevelop the downtown for tourism, gain short-term revenues, and
enhance the city’s image (Burbank et al. 2001). It started in May 2006
when Mayor Daley announced that a newly formed public–private part-
nership, the Chicago 2016 Committee headed by a retired insurance exec-
utive but with Daley serving as an honorary chairman, would bid for the
2016 games on behalf of the city. The committee numbered 300-plus
members from the city’s corporate, business, government, civic, neighbor-
hood, and sports communities. Its board of directors included a number
of politically connected and powerful Chicagoans such as former planning
commissioner Valerie Jarrett and financier John W. Rogers, Jr., both also
personal friends of Barack and Michelle Obama (Stein 2011). The bid was
premised on the use of public space and existing facilities in order to pro-
vide a compact spatial footprint in downtown Chicago, providing “a
games in the heart of the city” (Zervas 2016, 217). Three locations ulti-
mately were central to plans for Olympic redevelopment: Grant Park and
Monroe Harbor, east of the Loop and adjacent to McCormick Place;
Washington Park on the South Side; and on the West Side spanning
University of Illinois, Chicago’s sports facilities, the United Center, and
Douglas Park (Bennett et al. 2013, 370). In addition to making it easily
accessible to athletes and spectators, this compact design would focus
investment in the downtown area’s tourism infrastructure—which would
provide a revenue stream long after the games ended—and would yield a
$500 million profit for the city as the host.
In fall 2006, the bid committee decided that its Olympic Stadium
would be erected in Washington Park in Chicago’s mid-South Side; the
$400 million stadium would be a temporary structure capable of seating

80,000 (Bennett et al. 2017a, 233). This plan was indicative of the general
thinking of the bid committee and its membership (city government, the
Chicago Park District, and the city’s business and civic elites): Chicago
parks and other public spaces, many located in poor and working com-
munities in the South Side and West Side neighborhoods, were identified
as the sites for most of the Olympic venues (Bennett et al. 2013, 366).
The Chicago bid book that was submitted to the USOC in January 2007
indicated that the $1.1 billion Olympic Village would be constructed at
McCormick Place on a site overlooking the lakefront on the Near South
Side, adjoining the convention center (Bennett et al. 2017a, 233). After
being selected by the USOC as the United States’ candidate city, the bid
committee looked to make the proposals for facilities and venues more
concrete. As is typical, the bid book was modified before it was submitted
as Chicago’s candidature file to the IOC in early 2008, although there was
ongoing conflict between the USOC and 2016 bid committee and
between the USOC and the IOC (Baade and Sanderson 2012; Macur
2009). When the IOC announced that Chicago was among the four final-
ists for 2016 consideration, Mayor Daley’s chief of staff, Lori Healy, joined
the bid committee in January 2009 in a newly designated position, presi-
dent of the committee. The bid committee again modified its physical plan
to host the games (Bennett et al. 2013). In this iteration, the $125 million
swimming venue was moved to Washington Park, from Douglas Park on
the West Side (Bennett et al. 2017a, 233). The final candidature file was
submitted to the IOC in February 2009 and the IOC conducted its site
visit in April 2009.
In spring 2009, the bid committee announced the signing of a memo-
randum of understanding (MOU) with a coalition of neighborhood orga-
nizations, labor unions, and businesses. The MOU established goals for
local hiring and affordable housing from Olympics-related construction
and hosting operations, all of which was contingent on Chicago actually
getting the games. In June, the Chicago bid committee (and the bid com-
mittees from the three other international competitor cities) made its
pitch to the IOC in Lausanne. At the same time, the City of Chicago
purchased a large property—the Michael Reese Hospital—adjacent to
McCormick Place for construction of the proposed Olympic Village. After
returning from Lausanne, the bid committee visited all 50 council wards,
holding “public hearings” to present their 2016 plans to the communities.
In September 2009, just ahead of the IOC vote to select the 2016 host
city, the Chicago city council voted to provide a financial backstop for the
costs of hosting the 2016 games, one of the conditions in the IOC host
city contract (Bennett et al. 2013, 378).
Contesting the Olympic Bid

Early in the bid process, there was very little broad-based criticism of the
Chicago 2016 Olympic bid. Over time, however, there were two main
sources of opposition to the bid. One was a grassroots coalition of activists
and community organizers with disparate interests calling itself No Games
Chicago (NGC). This avowedly anti-Olympics group questioned whether
the city could afford to host the games. This group “as a rule, anticipated
insider deals, profit taking, and cost overruns that would be borne by the
public” (Bennett et al. 2017a, 231). The second source of opposition was
from neighborhood activists mainly from the South Side communities
“who distrusted the Chicago 2016 Committee’s pledges to support sus-
tainable economic development and who feared Olympics-generated gen-
trification” (Bennett et al. 2017a, 231).
The NGC group came together in a kickoff meeting at the University
of Illinois, Chicago, in January 2009. The meeting coincided with Chicago
being named the United States candidate for the 2016 games. This started
a very busy year of anti-Olympics organizing and contestation that fol-
lowed the IOC calendar, including a candidate city site visit in April by the
IOC Technical Team, the June presentation in Lausanne by the bid com-
mittee, and then the IOC host city selection vote in October.
Social activist Bob Quellos became interested in the local consequences
of hosting the Olympics after reading an article by sports journalist Dave
Zirin on the human costs of the transformation of Athens for the 2004
games when he was in graduate school (personal communication, June
18, 2019). In spring 2006, as Chicago’s political leaders established an
exploratory committee for the 2016 Olympic games, Quellos met with a
like-minded activist, Ramsin Canon, in Millennium Park and over a two-
hour meeting they sketched out a rough plan for opposing the 2016 bid.
Their next year, 2007, was spent doing basic groundwork such as setting
up a website and other media, developing factsheets, making buttons, and
doing basic research on how the Olympics affected host cities. Quellos
(2007) contextualized Chicago’s 2016 bid in a critical analysis published
in Counterpunch. Quellos noted the ongoing transformation of Chicago
from a city of and for its residents into a city for the wealthy and for
visitors. Quellos also spelled out the disregard for poor and working class
Chicagoans and the growing sociospatial inequalities in the city. As Quellos
(2007) stated “the Olympic torch will be blazing a trail of gentrification
through the South Side.” NGC focused on the “glaring contradictions
highlighted” by the Olympic bid on residents and neighborhood com-
munities, such as declining urban habitability and economic dispossession
punctuated by new housing rules making the right to return to old neigh-
borhoods problematic, diminishing public space, and the lack of policy
access to decisions about large-scale gentrification. The NGC activists
tried to meet with community organizations and neighborhood groups in
order to build a larger coalition, but the most common responses they
received were silence, or that these groups would not oppose the mayor,
or people simply would not show up for meetings. Quellos attributes this,
in part, to Mayor Daley and the power of Chicago machine politics:
“Daley was good at making sure people didn’t oppose him; he kept the
opposition close and used it to his advantage” (personal communication,
June 18, 2019). The city’s fabled political culture, the “Chicago way”—
where dissent is not tolerated and information is provided on a need to
know basis—was evident.
After reading 5 Ring Circus: Myths and Realities of the Olympic Games
on the community-level effects of the Vancouver bid, Quellos contacted
the book’s author, Chris Shaw. Shaw was the spokesperson for the No
Games coalition in Vancouver and thus an excellent resource for the
Chicago activists because Vancouver had experienced what Chicago was
facing. Shaw was one of the featured guests at NGC’s kickoff meeting in
January 2009 at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Ramsin Canon orga-
nized the meeting by bringing together progressive activists from the
Caucus of Rank and File Educators (CORE) in the Chicago Teachers’
Union (CTU), Southside Together Organizing for Power (STOP), and
the Coalition to Protect Public Housing among others, and contacting
the press. The NGC organizational meeting was inadvertently aided by
the Chicago 2016 bid committee, which sent out an email blast about the
meeting. The meeting was attended by 200 people, including national and
local news media representatives, the heads of Chicago unions, as well as
some 2016 bid committee staff. The meeting opened with the reading of
letter of support from Martin Slavin of Games Monitor and featured a
number of speakers. The big story, however, became cost overruns. When
he left Vancouver that morning to fly to Chicago, Shaw took the morning
edition of the Vancouver Sun with him. The newspaper’s headline story
was news on the growing cost of the 2010 winter games: up to $6 billion.
Shaw held up a copy of the newspaper during his remarks at the meeting
(Canon 2009), and this image became the lead story on the local Chicago
ABC news. After the kickoff meeting, No Games Chicago emerged as a
voice that the media relied on to discuss costs and the issues surrounding
the potential consequences of winning the bid and signing the IOC’s host
city contract. At their next organizing meeting, NGC had 50 new
attendees.
The remainder of 2009 was spent publicizing the community conse-
quences of bidding for the Olympics through dozens of community meet-
ings and 75 media appearances. Although the privatization process had
started earlier, the anti-Olympics opposition narrative was built around
the Daley policy of privatization as a solution for Chicago’s growing finan-
cial crisis, the lack of transparency and integrity in city hall, and the general
dismay with the Daley administration’s mismanagement of the city’s infra-
structure services in housing, education, health care, and transportation.
These topics were widely covered in the local news media, and NGC sum-
marized these as “no money,” “no ideas,” and “save the city with the
games.” The deleterious effects of the city’s problems affected the every-
day lives of Chicagoans but disproportionately affected poorer Chicagoans.
NGC’s Tom Tresser noted that message clarity and discipline were impor-
tant to the NGC media strategy, which he described as both “doing due
diligence for the IOC” and “speaking out for the public’s interest in
Chicago” (personal communication, March 20, 2020). For NGC, the
Olympics were “the wrong project, for the wrong city, at the wrong time.”
This message was consistently presented, and carefully documented on the
NGC website; the website remains available, is regularly updated, and a
resource for anti-Olympics organizing.
A number of different protests were on display for the IOC Technical
Team site visit in early April 2009 (Chicago was the first of the four candi-
date cities on the IOC itinerary). Around 3000 off-duty members of the
Chicago police union protested at City Hall, one of the many represented
groups working without a contract for the nearly two years of the financial
crisis (Tareen 2009). The IOC visit gave this protest added visibility and
was a reminder of the financial problems facing the city’s workforce, and
the police chanted “no contract, no Olympics.” No Games Chicago
hosted a rally at Federal Plaza attended by more than 200 people to hear
speakers, including Chris Shaw, discuss the city’s financial problems, mis-
management of recent urban development projects, crumbling
infrastructures of housing, schools and hospitals, and question the mayor’s

and 2016 bid committee’s openness with their pledge to privately produce
an Olympic games. After the rally, the protestors marched to the Aon
Center, the home of the 2016 bid committee, located adjacent to the
Fairmont Hotel where the IOC technical team was staying. The protestors
chanted “IOC, leave us be” among others chants. NGC requested a meet-
ing with the IOC technical team, following a suggestion by Chris Shaw
based on his experience with the IOC in Vancouver (Quellos, personal
communication, June 19, 2019). Among the groups protesting were the
coalition group Communities for Equitable Olympics, which was seeking
a community benefits ordinance from the city prior to the IOC site visit.
In the month before the IOC site visit, the Chicago police conducted
undercover surveillance to monitor the activities of NGC and Bob Quellos,
attended NGC meetings, monitored websites, collected pamphlets, and
went through their trash. These activities were detailed in a Freedom of
Information Act (FOIA) public records request that later was reported by
a columnist in the independent weekly Chicago Reader on six instances of
police department spying on Chicagoans during the Daley and Emanuel
mayoralties (Joravsky 2015). Joravsky noted the irony of the police pro-
testing against the Olympics because the mayor, pleading poverty, would
not give police officers a raise but was ready to spend “hundreds of mil-
lions” on the Olympics. In addition, Joravsky (2015) reported that in a
follow-up call regarding the FOIA request, the FOIA officer told Quellos
that he had the “First Amendment worksheets” on NGC. This term was
the name on the forms the Chicago police department used to open a
surveillance operation and investigate groups exercising their First
Amendment rights.
In June, when the Chicago 2016 bid team went to Lausanne to make
their presentation to the IOC, NGC sent three members there as well.
NGC claimed to have an unnamed IOC insider to observe the proceed-
ings and to make the pitch as best as they could to IOC members to award
the games to someone else. The Chicago bid presentation was a big news
story in Chicago with the focus on the question of signing a host city con-
tract with the IOC. This contract stipulated that the host city government
is responsible for any cost overruns. In the months preceding this meet-
ing, Mayor Daley took every opportunity to state that the games would
not cost Chicago taxpayers and that he would not sign any agreement to
the contrary. In Lausanne, Daley and the Chicago 2016 committee told
the IOC they would sign a standard host city contract (Joravsky 2009).
While in Lausanne, NGC activists Tom Tresser, Martin Macias, Jr., and
Rhoda Whitehorse stood outside the Olympic Museum, where the pre-
sentations were taking place, to answer questions for the media and to
hand out copies of their Book of Evidence, explaining why the IOC should
not award Chicago the Olympics (No Games Chicago 2009a). The activ-
ists delivered 125 copies of their anti-Olympics bid book to the IOC,
through its communication director, to be distributed to each member. In
addition, they met with IOC members and members of other candidate
city delegations in public spaces around the Museum and hotel. Back in
Chicago, Quellos, Francesca Rodriguez, and Rachael Goodstein did an
anti-Olympics media blitz. After the Lausanne meeting, NGC followed up
with continuous daily emails to IOC members from mid-July until the
October selection vote, touching on the points that they made in the Book
of Evidence and covering the scramble on the ground in Chicago following
the June presentation.
When Daley and the bid committee returned from Lausanne, damage
control was on their agenda. First, bid committee members met with small
groups of aldermen (perhaps to circumvent the state’s open meetings reg-
ulations). Later they went on a “50 wards in 50 days” tour across the city,
ostensibly meeting with community members to discuss the Chicago bid
and to reassure Chicagoans that the 2016 committee was listening to
them. NGC attended all these meetings and displayed signs, modeled on
the yellow, diamond shaped road warning signs that said “Staged Event
Ahead.” NGC members also met with community groups during this
time. When the Chicago Civic Federation examined the 2016 bid’s reve-
nue and expenditure projections and issued a report in support of the bid,
NGC issued a factual rebuttal and pointed out the interlocking relation-
ships between Civic Federation members, the Daley administration, and
the IOC (No Games Chicago 2009b). The NGC report also provided a
review of the 2016 committee’s budget model. NGC pointed out the
problems previous Olympic host cities experienced in getting ready to
host the Olympics and drawing heavily on the news of Vancouver’s prepa-
rations. At the end of August, the Chicago Tribune (2009) reported on
the results of a telephone survey of 380 registered Chicago voters and
found that 45% of respondents did not want the Olympics at all and 84%
did not want the games if it meant spending public money on them. The
poll also found that 75% of Chicago respondents opposed Mayor Daley’s
promise of an unlimited guarantee of funding if the games lost money
which the host city contract signed by Daley in Lausanne stipulated.
In the week before the IOC selection meeting in Copenhagen, NGC

held an anti-Olympics rally at City Hall on September 29, 2009. The rally
was endorsed by a number of organizations and included local media fol-
low up (No Games Chicago 2009c). NGC also organized “Clout Fest,” a
way for Chicagoans to respond creatively to the city’s bid. Among the
responses to the call for messaging against the bid was the “Chicagoans for
Rio” parody website that temporarily flummoxed the city’s media which
reported that it was traced to a computer in Rio de Janeiro (Gilmer 2009).
Once again, NGC raised money and sent three members to Copenhagen
to monitor the events, publicize their interests, and try to influence the
selection vote. Along with other items, the NGC activists distributed a
postcard with the Chicago Tribune/WGN poll results to IOC members,
via the IOC communications office. While in Copenhagen, NGC mem-
bers took time to meet with their counterparts from Tokyo. The
Copenhagen meeting resulted in a surprise for the Chicago bid commit-
tee, and delight for the NGC activists, when Chicago was defeated in the
first round of IOC voting (see No Games Chicago 2009d; Tresser 2009).
After the Copenhagen meeting, NGC members largely went their own
ways. Some NGC members met with activists from the Sochi 2014 resis-
tance while attending a conference sponsored by the Vancouver Resistance
Network in February 2010. Quellos spoke at that conference, but another
member of NGC, Martin Macias, Jr., was detained and interrogated for
two hours at the Canadian border and sent to Seattle (Committee to
Protect Journalists 2010). After the Vancouver 2010 winter games, NGC
members were in contact with Catalytic Communities activists establish-
ing RioOnWatch, a community observation project in Rio de Janeiro con-
cerned with the impact of the Olympics on Rio’s favelas. NGC members
also talked with opponents of the Boston 2024 Olympics and gave them
the NGC signage which was later used in Boston. In all of these instances,
NGC shared the contact information they had compiled and research
findings on the IOC, the Olympic games, and contesting the games with
this network of anti-Olympics community organizers and activists.
Although there was a fledgling effort to coordinate opposition by organiz-
ers from Chicago, Vancouver, London, and Rio de Janeiro in 2009–2010,
this action never got off the ground (Quellos, personal communication,
September 19, 2020).
The Meaning of Opposition to the Chicago

Olympic Bid
Bennett and his collaborators (2013) interviewed civic and business elites,
members of the bid committee, and some activists to determine what was
learned from the bid experience. They found that the elite insiders had not
examined why the bid failed and this lack of retrospection meant that the
bid’s failure held no lessons for future projects (Bennett et al. 2013, 375).
Community organizers and activists noted that the bid committee did not
consider process concerns, such as meeting with neighborhood residents
and community organizations, to develop the bid (Bennett et al. 2013,
374). One attributed some of the change in IOC members’ opinions to
the No Games Chicago campaign. Another team of scholars addressed the
question of learning from failed bids for the IOC and reported that the
mayor’s office had issued a memo requesting that staff not talk to research-
ers about the 2016 Olympic bid (Salisbury et al. 2017).
The rationale for bidding was based on three objectives: enhancing
Chicago’s international brand, providing a youth sports legacy through
World Sport Chicago, and improving city cohesiveness (Salisbury et al.
2017, 35–42). This latter objective focused on Chicago’s history of racial
separation and segregation. “There were hopes that bringing the Olympic
games to the city and integrating it into all of the neighborhoods would
help rally the city” (Salisbury et al. 2017, 42). Interviewees reported that
the acrimonious relationship between the USOC and the IOC over shar-
ing sponsorship and television revenues and the desire of the IOC presi-
dent to go to a new country were the factors that sunk the Chicago 2016
bid (Salisbury et al. 2017). The report also noted two other important
outcomes from the bid: the purchase of the Michael Reese Hospital com-
plex with $140 million spent and no real plan for development even
though the bid book said that housing would be built regardless of the
outcome of the bid, and the ten-year union contracts the city negotiated
with its public sector workers to ensure peace during the Olympic games
to meet the IOC host city contract requirement of a no-strike clause.
The NGC community organizers focused on issues that were relevant
on the ground in Chicago without the Olympics: cost overruns, gentrifi-
cation and displacement, and civil rights abuses. For them, the Olympics
simply would have exacerbated an already untenable situation by increas-
ing the scale of gentrification and displacement and the intensity of civil
rights abuses. So why bid for the Olympics? NGC’s Bob Quellos observed
that “the people in communities don’t believe how awful the IOC is” as
an institution (personal communication, June 18, 2019). For Quellos,
one important lesson was learning about the IOC and what the IOC
expected from the host city government. This knowledge can then inform
a conversation about what hosting the Olympics means to each commu-
nity’s right to the city. Second, it is important also to examine how deci-
sions to build the Olympic city are made and that includes everything
from how the games are financed, to the creation of special Olympic traffic
lanes, to the implementation of more intensive policing methods. Putting
out the full case, including who is included in policy decision making and
why, is an important way of understanding the larger and more intensive
scale of activities that hosting a mega-event now entails. To this end, NGC
provided links to anti-Olympics critical analyses of other cities’ experiences
on their website (No Games Chicago, n.d.). The commercialism and
gigantism of the Olympics translate into a more complex field of anti-
Olympics contestation. Looking back, opponents in Chicago understood
that the anti-Olympics struggle is time consuming and difficult and sup-
port is needed. Plugging into the international network gave organizers
and activists outside resources to call for advice, assistance, and reassur-
ance. The formation of this network of opponents was just beginning to
develop during the 2006–2009 period. Another lesson was the life chang-
ing experience of organizing against a mega-event. For some members of
NGC, the election of six Democratic Socialists of America aldermanic can-
didates in 2019 was evidence of a leftward and progressive shift in some
Chicago wards (Nitkin 2019b). In part, these organizers saw this shift
stemming from the organizing efforts that started after Chicago lost the
2016 bid, although it had deeper roots in local activism. The shift from
protest to seeking elective office perhaps demonstrated a maturing of the
activist vision and overcoming sectarian and territorial ambitions. For
Quellos, these politics focus on working on local issues, and the strategy
is: get in early, go grassroots, and say “no” (personal communication, June
18, 2019). But the organizational aspect is also important. NGC was a
coalition without an office or phone number. Their efforts took place in
an uncertain and turbulent environment (e.g., before Occupy Chicago
which started in September 2011) and they came together to oppose a
high profile event in the Olympic bid. After the bid ended, and without
other unifying issue, members largely left the coalition and went their own
ways. A last lesson was to create an effective media strategy for organizing
against the Olympics. The NGC activists were well-educated and
dedicated organizers, motivated by social justice concerns in their city.

Doing research, documenting everything, organizing it, putting it on the
internet, and maintaining and updating the website as a knowledge base
and practical resource contributed to building a discourse arena for local
and grassroots concerns in Chicago.
It is worth noting that a memorandum of understanding (MOU) was
negotiated by Alderman Toni Preckwinkle, one of the few council mem-
bers to vote against the bid (the document is on the No Games Chicago
website). Community benefits agreements—this MOU was such an agree-
ment—have become a tool for bringing an explicit concern for equity into
the negotiation of economic development projects. While the efficacy of
these community benefit agreements (CBA) continues to be debated (see
Gross et al. 2005; Chaskin 2005; Cummings 2006; Simmons and Luce
2009), the range of options associated with such agreements has been
expanded (e.g., Partnership for Working Families and the SPIN Project
2007). Mowatt and Travis (2015) examined how community organiza-
tions negotiated with the 2016 Chicago bid committee over the period
spring 2007 to November 2009 to ensure some benefits from Olympic
development would go back into the affected South Side communities,
including Washington Park, Kenwood, Grand Boulevard, Oakland and
Bronzeville/Douglas. The coalition group Communities for an Equitable
Olympics 2016 (CEO), and the Kenwood Oakland Community
Organization, along with the Chicago Urban League demanded greater
public participation by community groups and lobbied for neighborhood
employment opportunities in construction, concessions, event logistics,
and public use of facilities (e.g., Chicago Defender, 2008). This was the
second source of opposition to the Chicago 2016 bid.
CEO participated in the Chicago 2016 bid committee outreach meet-
ings in February and March 2009 and produced a document listing com-
munity demands. When Lori Healy was dispatched from the mayor’s
office to take the new position of president of the bid committee in January
2009, one of her first actions was to expand the bid committee’s outreach
committee from 10 or so members to 80 to include people who repre-
sented community organizations and non-profits across the city. The new
group then reconstituted the committee into five subcommittees, opening
up the Olympic planning process. The coalition disrupted the city finance
committee meeting in March, holding up signs saying, for example, “Our
lives are not a game” and “Better Housing, No Olympic Games” (Mowatt
and Travis 2015). When the city did not get the community benefits
agreement completed before the IOC technical team site visit in April,
CEO held a press conference at city hall to express their unhappiness. In
April, the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization led a protest
march calling out the city and the 2016 bid committee for a lack of trans-
parency, lack of community participation opportunities, and deception by
elected officials when CEO dealt with them for a community benefits
agreement (Mowatt and Travis 2015).
These actions led to the MOU with provisions for affordable housing
in the Olympic Village, Olympics contracts to be awarded to minority-
and women-owned businesses, union and local hiring, job training, and
business development programs (Lavine 2009). Whether these provisions
would have been enforceable was open to question, since the city of
Chicago was not a full party to the agreement (Blue 2009; Cholke 2009).
Still, the CBA would have only applied to Olympic construction. As a
consequence, with the Michael Reese Hospital complex now part of a
proposed $2 billion dollar development project, there was no discussion
of applying the provisions of the CBA to that project.
Efforts by community groups to negotiate benefits for their residents
from the promise of Olympic-related development are not uncommon in
the public processes surrounding Olympic bids in American cities. What
was more notable about the case of the Chicago bid for the 2016 Olympics,
however, was the creation of the No Games Chicago opposition. While
the concerns of NGC were firmly rooted in mitigating the impact of the
2016 Olympics on their neighborhoods and their city, the creation of
NGC was also something more. This organization not only opposed the
Chicago bid because its members feared the negative consequences of
holding a mega-event, but this grassroots group blazed a new trail by
explicitly raising issues about the IOC, the host city contract, and the
promises of the local bid committee. The actions of NGC to raise difficult
questions about Olympic finances and who would pay helped to shift the
conversation about the nature of the Chicago bid. Furthermore, NGC
also developed innovative oppositional tactics, such as attending IOC
meetings in protest, and developed connections to activists in other cities
such as Vancouver, London, and Rio de Janeiro. As such, No Games
Chicago marked an important transition in Olympic opposition.
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CHAPTER 3
Boston 2024 Olympic Bid and Opposition
Abstract Boston’s bid for the 2024 summer Olympics started in 2012 as
a project of two local sports enthusiasts and became real when it won the
support of a politically connected Boston developer. The city’s bid
attracted the support from business and sporting elites and secured the
endorsement of the US Olympic Committee (USOC), but the bid was
never fully embraced by city and state political leaders. The bid drew
opposition from two small but active groups: No Boston Olympics and
No Boston 2024. Although different in their composition and approaches,
these two groups were able to transform the debate over holding the
Olympics and encouraged city leaders to withdraw support for the bid
before it moved into the International Olympic Committee (IOC)
competition.
Keywords No Boston 2024 • No Boston Olympics • Public debates •

Public opinion • Traditional media • Twitter (social media) • USOC
Government and Politics in Boston

Boston incorporated in 1629, was the birthplace of the American revolu-
tion, and is currently the 22nd largest city in the United States. As Boston
made the long transition away from its working class industrial roots, the

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5094-9_3
city had a long period of regime-based urban redevelopment (Mollenkopf

1983). This period included contentious and racially-charged local politics
over issues of housing, urban redevelopment, and busing. While there are
examples of city residents getting involved in the development process to
alter or block particular development projects, the politics of urban devel-
opment in Boston have remained largely to the benefit of developers and
capital (Tulloss 1995). In recent years, the debates over race, ethnicity,
and social class are more muted but still very much a part of Boston poli-
tics. Due to a strong regional economy, anchored by education, health
care, technology, and finance, the city has faced serious issues of housing
affordability. A number of areas within the city have seen substantial gen-
trification especially areas north of downtown in Chelsea and south of
downtown in Roxbury. The changing demographics of Boston neighbor-
hoods and suburbs have also increased demand for public transportation.
While Boston has a long established system of public transportation run
by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA), it has suf-
fered from under-investment (Kassens-Noor 2019).
Massachusetts gives cities a home rule option, but the home rule pow-
ers do not include taxing, borrowing, regulating civil and public affairs, or
municipal elections. These important functions remain under state con-
trol, whether local laws conflict or not (Frug and Barron 2008). A large
city like Boston, therefore, does not have the revenue raising autonomy
one might expect. Indeed, the bulk of the city’s revenues are derived
through property taxes, which are limited, by popular consent since 1980,
to a 2.5% maximum annual increase and to state aid. The importance of
property as a revenue source underpins much of the city’s development, a
situation made more difficult by the number of exempt properties in
Boston. Furthermore, the state serves as a major land-use planner because
of its authority over projects such as the Big Dig (the Central Artery/
Tunnel Project consisting of three separate major construction projects
rolled into one), which took more than 30 years to plan and construct,
and some of the ancillary transit construction is still going on. The Big
Dig reconfigured downtown Boston, boosting property values along with
incurring cost overruns amounting to nearly $15 billion (Haynes 2008).
These overruns now cost the city over $100 million annually in debt ser-
vice payments. These payments revealed a behind-the-scenes story of how
responsiveness to local needs has shifted because the city was paying off
Big Dig investors first, and how the lack of honesty and transparency by
local and state leaders helped to diminish the trust of Bostonians (Office
3 BOSTON 2024 OLYMPIC BID AND OPPOSITION 47
of the Inspector General 2001). One manifestation of the lack of trust in

elected and civic leaders was the strength of the long-running Occupy
Boston protest against inequalities and the lack of democracy that orga-
nized in Dewey Square on the south end of the parkway that runs through
the financial district and across the street from the Boston Federal Reserve
Bank (Bongiornia and Mcinerney 2011; Norton 2011). Afterward, it was
revealed that the Boston police department and the federally funded urban
area fusion center, the Boston Regional Intelligence Center, illegally sur-
veilled protestors (Ruch 2015).
The city of Boston uses a strong mayor system with a city council of 13
members (nine members represent individual districts and four are at-large
members). Members of the city council are full time officials who are
elected to two-year terms. Councilors are not term limited, but most do
not serve for extended periods of time. City council elections are formally
non-partisan but in keeping with the city’s strong Democratic tradition,
most city councilors are Democrats (with a few independents, Green party,
and Republicans). The president of the city council is elected each year by
a majority vote. Real power in city government, however, rests in the may-
or’s office. The mayor of Boston is elected to a four-year term in off-year
elections.
Boston’s Bid for the 2024 Olympics

The mayoral election in November 2013 was a key event in the Olympic
bid process because the long-time incumbent mayor, Thomas Menino,
was not supportive of the idea and had the clout to effectively stop a
Boston bid by not supporting it. Menino had served as mayor for 20 years
and would have likely won had he run for re-election. In early March
2013, Mayor Menino conducted an interview with public radio station
WBUR and said that the idea of a Boston Olympics was “far-fetched” and
that he did not favor a bid nor spending public money because, “I need
every penny I have to make sure we continue services to the people of
Boston” (WBUR News 2013). About a month after this interview,
Menino announced that he would not seek re-election. Although the
Olympic bid was not an issue in the mayoral election of 2013, the change
in mayor ultimately gave bid supporters another chance to secure support
from city hall. Martin Walsh won the mayor’s race over city council mem-
ber John Connolly in November 2013 and took office in January 2014.
Although Walsh was not initially a supporter of the bid, he came to
embrace it in order to create connections with the Boston business com-

munity (his support in the mayor’s race was largely from organized labor
while business tended to back Connolly).
The origins of the city’s 2024 Olympic bid appeared in the fall of 2012
with two young Boston area professionals and Olympics enthusiasts,
Corey Dinopoulos and Eric Reddy (Vaccaro 2015b). Dinopoulos got the
ball rolling by contacting Mayor Menino’s office in fall 2012 in an effort
to encourage a Boston bid (Bird 2016). The mayor’s office declined to
meet but a staffer put Dinopoulos in touch with state Senator Eileen
Donoghue. After an email inquiry in September 2012, Dinopoulos got
initial encouragement from Senator Donoghue, chair of the state legisla-
ture’s joint committee on Tourism, Arts, and Culture (Bird 2016). Reddy
heard of Dinopoulus’s interest and contacted him. They met and agreed
to work together to try to promote a bid. Both men had learned that the
USOC would be seeking cities to pursue bids and wanted to talk with pos-
sible supporters about a Boston Olympic bid (Dempsey and Zimbalist
2017, 13). In February 2013, the USOC sent a letter to the mayor of
Boston, along with the mayors of 34 other American cities, encouraging
the city to consider making a bid for the 2024 games and outlining some
of the requirements.
By the fall of 2013, it was clear that there was interest in putting
together a bid from people with the resources to support such an effort
(Arsenault 2013). In October 2013, John Fish, a Boston developer and
the incoming chair of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, invited
USOC leaders to the Mandarin Oriental Boston (a luxury hotel in the
Back Bay area) to discuss the bid with interested parties (Dempsey and
Zimbalist 2017, 16). Fish was chairman and CEO of Suffolk Construction,
a major Boston area construction company. Fish was also politically well-
connected both in the city of Boston and in the Massachusetts legislature.
Fish was a close confidant of Mayor Menino and was initially not support-
ive of the idea of a Boston bid, in part because of Menino’s lack of sup-
port. “Fish was perhaps the only person in Massachusetts positioned to
attempt something as ambitious as an Olympic bid. He had been named
the most powerful Bostonian by Boston Magazine in 2012—even ahead of
the governor and mayor—and with his deep connections in the city’s
political, business, and philanthropic spheres, had an unmatched reputa-
tion as the person to go to when one wanted to get things done in Boston”
(Dempsey and Zimbalist 2017, 17).
By the end of October 2013, the Massachusetts legislature had passed

and Governor Deval Patrick had signed a resolution establishing a com-
mission to investigate the feasibility of hosting the summer Olympics in
Massachusetts in 2024. The resolution was originally introduced by
Senator Donoghue in January 2013 (Borchers 2013). Fish was the key
person lobbying the legislature to pass this resolution. Fish would be
named the chair of the Olympic feasibility commission. This special com-
mission issued its report on the feasibility of a Boston games in February
2014 (shortly after the end of the Sochi winter Olympics). The report was
largely positive about the potential for hosting the Olympic games in
Boston but, despite the state’s mandate to do so, made no effort to esti-
mate the costs of holding the games (Understanding a Boston 2024
Olympics 2014). The report and statements by Olympic proponents sug-
gested that the games would be privately financed with tax money only
used for transportation improvements and security (which would be
mostly federal money). Bid supporters pushed the idea that the games
would lead to investments and improvements in Boston public transit and
would be the best way to get transportation improvements done. “The
boosters often talked about their bid as a ‘catalyst’ for transit improve-
ments” (Dempsey and Zimbalist 2017, 31). In addition to the state’s fea-
sibility report, a study commissioned by the Boston Foundation assessing
the viability of a Boston Olympics in 2024 was cautious about claims of
benefits from Olympic-related development and noted that substantial
questions about unfunded improvements for transportation and infra-
structure remained (University of Massachusetts Donahue Institute 2015).
With the state’s feasibility study complete, the elements of the Boston
bid began to come together. Boston 2024 was established as a nonprofit
organization with the support of John Fish (the Boston developer), Daniel
O’Connell (a former secretary of economic development for Governor
Deval Patrick), Stephen Pagliuca (a former secretary of transportation for
Governor Patrick who would later become the chairman of Boston 2024),
and Robert Kraft (owner of the New England Patriots). John Fish was a
key player in getting the bid going as he moved from the feasibility com-
mission chair to the chair of the Boston 2024 Partnership. Getting sup-
port from Marty Walsh, the newly elected mayor of Boston, was also
critical. “Walsh was both a forceful supporter of the construction industry
and a rabid sports fan. Thus, the idea of a Boston Olympics—and a poten-
tial legacy as ‘the Olympics Mayor’—held great appeal to Walsh” (Dempsey
and Zimbalist 2017, 29). In June 2014, the USOC included Boston on its
shortlist of possible American bid cities along with Los Angeles, San
Francisco, and Washington, DC (Bird 2016). Mayor Walsh named Dan
Koh, his chief of staff, as the city’s primary point person with the Boston
2024 organization in August 2014.
The Boston 2024 organization was privately funded and is reported to
have raised $2.8 million in the first quarter of 2015 while spending nearly
$2 million during that period (Arsenault 2015e). Among the top donors
were John and Cyndy Fish, EMC Corporation (a computer storage and
data company headquartered in Hopkinton, MA), and Mintz Levin, a
Boston law firm. As the Boston Globe reported: “The list of major donors
is filled with prominent figures from Boston’s high finance and real estate
circles, many with ties to Pagliuca” (Arsenault 2015e). Steve Pagliuca was
a co-chairman of Bain Capital and co-owner of the Boston Celtics. Pagliuca
participated in Boston 2024 early on by serving as the co-chair of the
finance committee and later as a vice president. In May 2015, Pagliuca
became the chair of the bid organization replacing John Fish who became
a vice chair (Arsenault 2015b; Leung and Arsenault 2015). Along with
Pagliuca, other key Boston 2024 officials include Erin Murphy (COO),
Richard Davey (CEO), David Manfredi (partner in Elkus Manfredi
Architects and primary consultant on venue development), and Juliette
Kayyem (Boston 2024 board member and chair of security committee).
In April 2015, Boston 2024 named a board of directors for the non-
profit organization (Arsenault 2015a). The 30-person board included a
number of Boston professional sports figures (Larry Bird, Jo Jo White,
David Ortiz) and Olympic athletes (Michelle Kwan, Meb Keflezighi)
intended to help improve the bid’s image. The board also included a num-
ber of USOC officials such as Scott Blackmun (CEO USOC), Anita
DeFrantz (USOC board and IOC member), Daniel Doctoroff (USOC
board and former NYC bid committee chair), Whitney Ping (USOC
board), Angela Ruggiero (USOC board and IOC member), and Kevin
White (USOC board and Duke University athletic director). Also on the
board were other prominent Boston area business, education, and labor
leaders, and Eric Reddy, the co-founder of the initiative to bring the 2024
Olympic games to Boston.
Boston 2024 submitted its bid to the USOC on December 1, 2014.
This “proof of concept” document did not have all the details of revenues,
costs, or even venues that a bid book would typically contain but it had the
endorsement of the mayor of Boston and his agreement to the USOC
terms. In the middle of December 2014, Mayor Walsh and members of
the Boston bid committee met privately with members of the USOC in
California to pitch the Boston bid (Dempsey and Zimbalist 2017, 43). In
January 2015, the USOC announced that it had selected Boston as the
American candidate city for the 2024 games. This announcement was
made, coincidently, on the same day that the new Republican governor of
Massachusetts, Charlie Baker, was being sworn into office. Later it came
to light that the USOC decision was a close vote between the Los Angeles
and Boston bids. USOC CEO Scott Blackmun and other key executive
staff had apparently preferred and recommended the LA bid, but the
USOC board members narrowly voted for Boston’s bid (Dempsey and
Zimbalist 2017, 48).
Most of the public debate over Boston’s Olympic bid came between
the time when Boston 2024 submitted its initial bid in December 2014
and the USOC withdrew its endorsement from Boston at the end of July
2015 in advance of the September deadline for the USOC to nominate a
candidate city to the IOC. The credibility of the bid suffered during this
period from mistakes by Boston 2024 and its allies, external events (most
notably a winter with a lot of snowfall that caused repeated slowdowns or
lack of service from public transportation which underscored public con-
cerns about the reliability of public transportation infrastructure), and a
small but persistent opposition that continued to raise questions about the
value of the bid. One key reason for the USOC pulling its endorsement
was the lack of strong public support in Boston and statewide for the
Olympic bid (O’Sullivan and Arsenault 2015). The USOC would likely
have kept Boston as its choice had the city or state agreed to provide the
financial guarantees that the IOC required despite the apparent lack of
public support. But, the newly elected Republican governor was cautious
(if not skeptical) about the bid’s financing and delayed making a public
commitment. The mayor had initially agreed to the USOC’s terms in
December 2014, but began to back away from a full-fledged endorsement
as the bid continued to evolve. Ultimately, Mayor Walsh was given a finan-
cial ultimatum by the USOC and when he demurred, the USOC pulled its
endorsement and went with Los Angeles.
Among the events of the December 2014–July 2015 period that were
problematic for the bid, several themes emerged: secrecy, lack of detail, a
sense that the bid was an “insiders” game for the benefit of the well-off
and well-connected with little regard for public taxpayers, and on-going
tension between the demands of the USOC-IOC and the lack of a mean-
ingful public engagement process in the host city and state (Kassens-Noor
and Lauermann 2018; Lauermann 2016). Several matters helped raise

doubts about the bid and the bidding process. One problem that illus-
trated what Dempsey and Zimbalist (2017) called the “boosters’ dilemma”
was a lack of transparency. The initial bid to the USOC was not made
public because, following the IOC’s Agenda 2020, the USOC did not
want the cities to release much detail and, as Boston 2024 officials noted,
it was not a complete bid but more a “proof of concept.” The chapter in
the bid book on “Overall Games Concept” was incomplete and contained
only an explanation of the Boston bid, its key infrastructures, and its
intended legacies. Olympic opponents noted that while the public did not
have information about costs or venues, many of the bid’s supporters had
not read it either. Eventually, the initial bid was released, first in a redacted
version and later in a full version, but the lack of willingness to provide
information hurt the bid committee and fed public skepticism about what
was really being planned and who would pay for it (Clauss 2015a).
The bid committee’s second bid (called Bid 2.0) was not released until
June 29, 2015. While the second bid provided a better sense of where
venues would be located and generally got a positive public reception, it
was still short on important details such as how the Olympic Stadium and
athletes’ village developments would be funded. Also contributing to the
view that the bid was only a game for insiders was a public disclosure that
the bid committee had arranged for Governor Deval Patrick to lobby the
IOC for $7500 a day (Arsenault 2015d). While the bid organization
regarded this as a limited expense necessary for the next phase of the bid,
the organization refused at first to respond to questions about whether the
former governor would be paid, and only released the information when
urged to by state and city officials. Members of the public saw this as a case
of a political insider cashing in on the bid. Even though Patrick ultimately
said that he would support the bid and work for it but not accept any pay,
the damage to the bid’s image was done. Tension between Boston 2024,
public officials, and the USOC also contributed to uncertainty over the
status of Boston’s bid. For example in May 2015, the Boston city council
held the first of a series of meetings to discuss the bid. The topic was the
IOC’s Agenda 2020 and the council invited USOC and IOC board mem-
ber Angela Ruggiero to speak. While the bulk of what was discussed con-
sisted of standard IOC talking points about the benefits of the games,
Ruggiero told the council: “Right now the USOC is going through a
similar vetting process to make sure that Boston is the right city. So there’s
no guarantee Boston will be the city in September” (Ryan and Arsenault
2015). Coming after a report in the Wall Street Journal that USOC offi-
cials had been in contact with LA and San Francisco about possibly replac-
ing Boston as the American 2024 candidate city, this comment from a
USOC board member once again raised doubts about USOC’s commit-
ment to Boston.
Contesting the Olympic Bid

Boston had two groups that organized to oppose the city’s Olympic bid:
No Boston Olympics and No Boston 2024. No Boston Olympics was the
first to organize and tended to focus on questions of finance, policy, and
process. No Boston 2024, a neighborhood and grassroots group that
emerged from the ethnically diverse, working class Jamaica Plain neigh-
borhood, was the second group to organize. No Boston 2024 focused on
the effects the Olympics and Olympic-oriented redevelopment would
have on communities and questioned whether displacement, inequality,
and the lack of fairness were good for the city (Vaccaro 2015a). The two
groups differed in terms of style, leadership, and membership base. No
Boston Olympics was composed mostly of professionals and was more
centrist and policy establishment. In contrast, No Boston 2024 was made
up mostly of neighborhood organizers and activists and this group took a
more antagonistic path because, as an organizer noted, “we didn’t have
bridges to burn, they did” (Jonathan Cohn, personal communication,
September 4, 2020). These differences kept the two groups separate, but
they shared similar goals and by design often worked together or worked
in ways that were complementary (Dempsey and Zimbalist 2017, 35–37).
The first signs of an opposition to the Boston bid began in November-
December 2013 with two young political activists: Liam Kerr and Chris
Dempsey (Dempsey and Zimbalist 2017, 19–27; Golen 2015). Both men
had been involved in the mayoral campaign but had supported the losing
candidate. These early activists appear to have been primarily motivated by
their concern for public policy and how the Olympics might impact their
city (Dempsey and Zimbalist 2017, 19–27). Conor Yunits, a friend of
Kerr’s, briefly joined the other two as co-chairs of the group, although he
later switched sides and endorsed the Boston bid (Leung 2014). In August
2014, the No Boston Olympics group added another co-chair when Kelley
Gossett joined. Gossett was a lawyer who had worked in the Massachusetts
legislature and had done some lobbying on behalf of various social service
organizations (Dempsey and Zimbalist 2017, 28–29). Her connections
would prove to be useful as the debate over the merits of a Boston bid
continued in 2014 and 2015.
These early opponents were active on social media with posts about
their concerns about the Olympic bid even before they had an organiza-
tion. No Boston Olympics had its first appearance on Twitter in January
2014 using @NoBosOlympics (Bird 2016). No Boston Olympics got an
early media boost when it was featured in an article in Boston Magazine in
February 2014 before the state’s feasibility study was published (Annear
2014c). The group also got another media boost in March 2014 when an
interview with Liam Kerr was televised on Boston Neighborhood News
(BNN), airing from the Boston University College of Communication.
These early media appearances helped to get the group’s message out and
helped to increase the credibility of the opponents. Boston media reports
often included a comment from the No Boston Olympics group in an
effort to present a “balanced” report on Olympics-related topics and this
helped to frame No Boston Olympics as the equal of the Boston bid com-
mittee. Dempsey and Zimbalist (2017, 32) note that of the four US cities
competing in the USOC 2024 domestic competition (Boston, LA, San
Francisco, Washington), only Boston had an organized opposition group
at this early stage.
The second anti-Olympics group got underway in November 2014
when Robin Jacks and Jonathan Cohn, residents of the Jamaica Plain and
Fenway neighborhoods respectively, organized a meeting of No Boston
2024. The group’s initial meeting was held at the First Baptist Church in
Jamaica Plain. This meeting attracted both community residents and
members of the Boston bid’s PR firm, who got an early taste of commu-
nity sentiment toward the bid when they were not allowed to present
information but were permitted only to answer questions from commu-
nity members, which focused on concerns about the lack of public involve-
ment and the lack of transparency (Oliveira 2014).
An important moment for Boston bid opponents occurred in December
2014, when the Boston Globe sponsored a debate between the Boston bid
committee and anti-Olympics opponents (Vaccaro 2014). The bid com-
mittee was represented by Juliette Kayyem, a member of the Boston 2024
executive committee, former Massachusetts state security official, and for-
mer Democratic candidate for governor. The anti-Olympics perspective
was represented by Chris Dempsey. The Boston Globe debate helped to
showcase the differences between the No Boston 2024 group and the No
Boston Olympics group. While Dempsey debated costs and policy
priorities with Kayyem, the No Boston 2024 group protested outside with
homemade signs (Annear 2014a). This debate was important not only
because it was a public debate about the merits of bidding for the Olympics,
but also because the debate setting established the opposition as on par
with the bid proponents even though proponents had far more resources
and the support of Boston elites. Later in December, Dempsey appeared
in a local television debate with Mike Ross about the Olympic bid on the
WGBH program Greater Boston. Ross, a former Boston city council mem-
ber, argued for the Olympic bid and claimed the process for constructing
the bid did have public oversight because Olympic proponents had
appeared before the state legislature on several occasions. Finally, as a
bookend to the No Boston Olympics media campaign, Dempsey and
Zimbalist appeared in a debate with Dan Doctoroff and Steve Pagliuca,
who represented Boston 2024, on the local Fox affiliate at the end of July
2015, less than one week before the USOC pulled its endorsement.
Although a number of area politicians were either favorable to the city’s
bid or cautiously neutral, there was some political support for the opposi-
tion’s position. For example, the day after the Boston Globe debate the
Cambridge city council voted to oppose the Boston 2024 bid (Annear
2014b). The council vote was requested by two Cambridge city council
members, Nadeem Mazen and Leland Cheung, in part in response to the
unwillingness of the bid committee or the Boston mayor’s office to make
the bid document available to the public (Dempsey and Zimbalist 2017,
43–44). Later in the bid period, a Town Meeting in nearby Brookline
voted to formally oppose the Boston 2024 bid on the grounds that city
officials had not been consulted about the possible venues or impacts
(Arsenault and Ishkanian 2015; Ishkanian 2015).
The USOC announced that it had selected Boston as the United States
candidate city in early January 2015. According to Dempsey and Zimbalist,
the No Boston Olympics group added more than 1000 people to their
email list in the 72 hours after this announcement (2017, 49). Shortly
afterwards, No Boston Olympics held a public meeting in Boston to rally
the opposition with Zimbalist as the featured speaker (Annear 2015). Not
long after that meeting, the Boston 2024 bid committee announced that
it would make the bid document public (except for some redacted por-
tions to preserve its competitive advantage) even though the committee
had previously maintained that the bid would not be made public.
Meanwhile, No Boston 2024 had started filing Freedom of Information
Act (FOIA) public records requests (e.g., Brown and Lipton 2015; Reilly
2015). These FOIA requests served multiple purposes. Results could be

shared with the Boston media, with the process of filing and the costs of
obtaining information made part of the story. The FOIA results showed
that statements made by the bid committee and city hall regarding the
relationship between city hall and the bid committee, and the use of public
funds, were not accurate (Jonathan Cohn, personal communication,
September 4, 2020).
Despite efforts by the Boston bid committee to improve its public
image, there was still an element of elite skepticism about the bid and the
role of tax money. An illustration of this concern occurred in early
February 2015, when Boston city council member Josh Zakim filed a
legislative order that, if approved, would place four nonbinding
Olympics-related questions on the municipal ballot in November (Ryan
2015). The four questions proposed for the ballot were: “Should Boston
host the 2024 Summer Olympics & Paralympic Games?”; “If Boston
were to host the 2024 Olympics, should the city commit any public
money to support the Games?”; “If Boston were to host the 2024
Olympics, should the city make any financial guarantees to ever the cost
overruns for the Games?”; and “If Boston were to host the 2024
Olympics, should the city use its power of eminent domain to take pri-
vate land on behalf of the Games?” Although getting these questions on
the ballot would have required the support of the city council and mayor,
Zakim’s proposal put the topic up for debate and raised many of the
same issues as anti-Olympics opponents. Between February and July, No
Boston 2024 attended and provided live commentary on social media
for at least 13 meetings conducted by the bid committee or city (see the
No Boston 2024 website).
The concern among political elites extended, more importantly, to the
governor’s office as well. The newly elected governor, Charlie Baker, was
a key figure that Olympic boosters needed. The governor’s support was
crucial both as a means for securing state tax funds for Olympic-related
development activities but also as a signal to the IOC and the business
community that the bid had state backing. While Boston would be the
host city, it did not have the resources or jurisdiction to support the level
of development necessary. Since the USOC’s decision had been
announced on the day Baker was sworn into office, it was not clear
whether the newly elected Republican governor would support Boston’s
bid. While some assumed that Baker would support the bid because he
was a pro-business Republican, Baker took a wait-and-see approach. As
an indication that the governor was undecided, his staff arranged for the
most public opponents of the Boston bid to present their case to the
governor. In May 2015, No Boston Olympics leaders Dempsey, Gossett,
and Kerr conducted a briefing for Governor Baker and his cabinet. As
part of their presentation, No Boston Olympics noted that: (1) the bid
required taxpayers to agree to cover cost overruns or revenue shortfalls;
(2) the Olympics would set the public policy agenda statewide regardless
of other priorities; and (3) state leaders would bear responsibility for
Boston 2024 actions without having control over those actions (Dempsey
and Zimbalist 2017, 112). At the same time, No Boston 2024 hosted
two community meetings. One was a panel of local activists from com-
munity organizations on the effects of the Olympics on displacement and
housing rights and another was on police militarization and surveillance
featuring sports journalist Dave Zirin and Massachusetts ACLU’s Kade
Crockford (Oliveira 2015).
A few weeks after the No Boston Olympics briefing, Governor Baker,
Senate President Stanley Rosenberg, and Speaker of the House Robert
DeLeo announced that the Brattle Group, a consulting firm in Cambridge,
would serve as the state’s outside consultant to analyze the Olympic bid
(Levenson 2015b). The consultant’s report was to be provided to state
officials in August, prior to the September 15 deadline for the USOC to
forward the American candidate city name to the IOC. At a press confer-
ence, Governor Baker said that the consultant’s report “would give us
what we’ve looking for here, which is an independent, third-party, expert
opinion on what would be expected of the Commonwealth here, which
has been our concern all along” (Levenson 2015b). Speaker DeLeo
“echoing the concern of other state officials, said Boston 2024 has not
provided enough detail about its budget since it first released its plan for
the Games in January. ‘I’m very hopeful that, with the consultant we have
coming on, some of the financing questions can come to fruition’ the
speaker, also a Democrat, said” (Levenson 2015b). In short, neither the
governor nor the legislative leaders were fully on board with the Boston
bid; and the consultant’s report provided them with a way to assess what
costs and risks the state might have to be aware of prior to submitting the
bid. Boston 2024 chief operating officer, Erin Murphy, responded to the
announcement saying “We welcome the decision to bring on an indepen-
dent expert to advise state leadership on this effort and pledge to work
closely with the Brattle Group as we move from proof of concept to a
detailed plan” (Levenson 2015b).
Even as the bid effort struggled later in the summer, Governor Baker
stuck to his position that he would not endorse the Boston bid until after
he saw the consultant’s report (Levenson 2015a). When the Brattle Group
report was published, after the bid had been pulled at the end of July
2015, it suggested a number of concerns including that the cost estimates
in the bid for new construction were likely too low, that there was greater
uncertainty surrounding the potential for private developers to undertake
and pay for the Midtown (Olympic Stadium) and Columbia Point
(Athletes’ Village) projects than the bid indicated, and some potential
existed for obtaining lower revenues than were projected in the bid
(Bazelon et al. 2015).
A persistent concern for the Boston 2024 bid was public support for
holding the Olympic games in Boston. Two weeks after the USOC’s
announcement that it had selected Boston, WBUR public radio released
the results of a public opinion poll of registered voters in the city of Boston
and surrounding areas showing that 51% supported the Olympic bid and
33% opposed the idea of bringing the Olympics to the Boston region in
2024 while 16% said they did not know (WBUR News 2015b). The poll
also asked, “Do you think that voters in Boston and other cities and towns
that will host Olympic venues should vote on whether or not they want to
host the Olympic games, or not?” and 75% of registered voters responded
that they should vote and only 18% said they should not. Fully 53% of area
respondents thought that taxpayer funds would be required for the games,
while 29% said the games would be paid for with private money. The poll
also asked, “If public funds are used to build Olympic stadiums and other
venues, would this make you more likely or less likely to support bringing
the games to Boston, or would it make no difference?” Fully 44% said it
would make them less likely to support the Olympics, 43% said it would
make no difference, and 10% said it would make them more likely to sup-
port the games.
By July 2015, Boston city council members expressed concern about
the host city contract’s financial guarantee, linking its open-ended guaran-
tee to cover costs as a potential violation of the city charter, which requires
specific city appropriations (Vaccaro 2015c). Although the 51% support in
January 2015 was not overwhelmingly, it was the highest level of support
for the bid (Nickisch 2015). By February 2015, support for the bid
dropped to 44% and opposition rose to 46%. In March, opposition to the
Table 3.1 Boston Area Public Opinion for 2024 Olympics

January February March April July
Support 51% 44% 36% 40% 40%

Oppose 33 46 52 50 53
Don’t know 16 10 13 10 7
Question wording: “As you may be aware, Boston was chosen by the United States Olympic Committee
to be the U.S. city that will bid on the games. Do you support or oppose the idea of bringing the Olympic
Games to the Boston region in 2024?”
Note: WBUR/MassINC Polling Group telephone surveys of approximately 500 registered voters living
in the Boston area, inside/along Route 128. The margin of error for the surveys ranges from 4.4% to 4.9%
Source: Nickisch (2015)
bid rose to 52% and support declined to 36%. In April 2015, support rose
slightly to 40% with opposition at 50% and the same pattern held in early
July with Boston area support at 40% and opposition at 53% (Table 3.1).
After the Boston 2024 bid was pulled by the USOC in July 2015, both
of the opposition groups’ co-chairs remained active in contesting the
Olympics, sharing their knowledge and experiences with other anti-
Olympics groups. Both groups maintained their websites, providing addi-
tional organizational resources for future opposition groups. Three
months after the Boston 2024 bid collapsed, No Boston Olympics co-
chairs Dempsey and Gossett joined Andrew Zimbalist in Hamburg at an
Olympia Congress hosted by NOlympics Hamburg and shared their expe-
riences ahead of the referendum in that city (Clauss 2015c). The referen-
dum overturned Hamburg’s 2024 Olympic bid (Lauermann and
Vogelpohl 2017). Dempsey also spoke with anti-Olympics opponents in
Budapest and Rome about public referenda in those cities. Dempsey was
a panelist on the IOC’s first “Olympism in Action” forum in 2018 and was
invited to make a presentation for the Calgary 2026 winter games explor-
atory committee in March 2017 (Klingbell 2017). Dempsey visited
Calgary and spoke with the anti-Olympics opposition before the public
referendum in November 2018 that ended Calgary’s bid (see Hiller
2020). No Boston 2024’s Robin Jacks and Jonathan Cohn shared their
experiences with NOlympics LA members, and published a short essay in
The Nation on what it takes to say “no” to the Olympics (Cohn and
Jacks 2015).
The Meaning of Opposition to the Boston

Olympic Bid
In his final press conference regarding Boston’s 2024 bid, Mayor Walsh
tried to downplay the role of anti-Olympics opposition, calling the two
groups contesting the games “about 10 people on Twitter and a couple
people out there beating the drum beat” (Clauss 2015b). There were a
number of reasons why the bid was dropped, including a lack of public
support in Boston, concerns about financing and infrastructure from key
political figures, notably the governor, state legislators, and later even the
mayor of Boston. The bid effort also suffered from a lack of transparency,
lack of detailed plans for venues, uncertainty over whether key develop-
ments would work, and a lack of commitment and perhaps even subter-
fuge from USOC officials (Jonathan Cohn, personal communication,
September 4, 2020). One key reason why the Boston bid did not make it
through the USOC process to the IOC bidding stage was because of the
formation of an effective local opposition to the bid early on. The opposi-
tion groups were never large in terms of their membership or resources,
but they were effective in capturing the Olympic narrative and raising
doubts about the merits of an Olympic bid.
No Boston Olympics contested the bid not as opposition to the
Olympics per se and certainly not to Boston being a city capable of hold-
ing the games. Instead, No Boston Olympics focused its opposition on
asking whether it really made sense for the residents and taxpayers of
Boston and Massachusetts to support a bid simply because of the appeal of
the Olympics. No Boston 2024, on the other hand, focused more on the
everyday problems such as displacement and other inequalities that might
result from large scale gentrification and might make Boston’s neighbor-
hoods less livable. In some ways, No Boston 2024 followed a tradition
begun by Occupy Boston and its co-founder Robin Jacks. No Boston
2024 used the Olympic bid as a way to express some of the fears of work-
ing class people living in an increasingly expensive city and region. Both
groups were effective at using social media to communicate with each
other and the traditional media, to promote their causes, and to keep
debates alive in the community of activists and, to a lesser extent, the
broader public. No Boston Olympics also benefitted from coverage by
local media in Boston who treated the group not like a small bunch of
malcontents but as the voice of the loyal opposition who deserved equal
time and respect in media coverage of the Olympic story.
This style of contestation was effective in part because the groups

understood local politics, public policy, basic economics, and the way to
mobilize people when needed. They also attribute some of their success to
Bostonians and their appreciation for the policy process. In a city filled
with well-educated residents, nobody believed the Olympics would cost
nothing or that the Olympics could be a catalyst to repair all that ailed
their city (Robin Jacks and Jonathan Cohn, personal communication,
September 4, 2020). In this sense, both opposition groups benefited: No
Boston Olympics played the inside game, courting the traditional media,
and offered policy positions countering the bid committee, while No
Boston 2024 used their media skills and contacts developed during
Occupy Boston to draw attention to the anti-Olympics message. The
Boston media covered stories on the Olympics almost every day, contacted
the opposition groups regularly for their stories, and followed these groups
on social media. The widespread use of social media by the opposition
groups was revolutionary at the time, but the organizers “came out of
Twitter” (Robin Jacks, personal communication, September 4, 2020).
Both groups maintained message clarity and discipline, something the bid
committee was unable to accomplish (Kassens-Noor and Lauermann
2018; Lauermann 2016; McGillivray et al. 2020).
How much of a role did the opposition play in undermining the Boston
2024 bid? The opposition appears to have been valuable in raising doubts
about the wisdom of the Boston bid among members of the public and
among some public officials both in Boston, in other cities and towns in
the area, and in the state legislature. But, there were several other reasons
why the Boston bid did not go forward including mistakes by the bid
committee and lack of clear support by USOC officials. As the Boston
Globe noted when the bid was pulled: “ it was not one thing that sank the
bid, but an accumulation of mistakes and missed opportunities, a mish-
mashed message, unanswered attacks from aggressive opponents, and bad
luck—in the form of 100 plus inches of snow. Supporters were never able
to ignite much visible passion for the Games, and the public debate
descended into a joyless cost-benefit analysis of financial risks and rewards,
which seemed to inspire only the dissenters” (Arsenault 2015c). A report
by WBUR drew a similar conclusion by listing seven reasons why the bid
failed, one of which was “a small but mighty opposition” (WBUR
News 2015a).
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CHAPTER 4
Los Angeles 2024 Bid and 2028 Opposition
Abstract Los Angeles hosted the Olympics twice before and the bid
for the 2024 summer games appeared to be business as usual for the
city’s leaders. The International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) deci-
sion in 2017 to award games to Paris in 2024 and LA in 2028, how-
ever, transformed the usual bid process into an extended period of
preparation for the games. Shortly before the IOC’s decision was
announced, opposition to hosting the games emerged in the form of
a local group of activists calling itself NOlympics LA. While the IOC’s
decision short-circuited opposition to a 2028 bid, this group recog-
nized the value of starting a conversation about the future of the city
and region in the ten-year run up to 2028. Building on the work of
other Olympic opposition groups, NOlympics LA has developed
extensive ties to local grassroots organizations and anti- O lympics
opposition groups in other Olympic cities as it raises fundamental
questions about urban life and the Olympics.
Keywords 2028 Olympic games • NOlympics LA • No Olympics

Anywhere • Olympic polling • Right to the city • Sociospatial
inequalities • Tokyo 2020 • Transnational teach-ins • USOC

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5094-9_4
Government and Politics in Los Angeles

Los Angeles is the second largest city in the United States today, with a
population of nearly 4 million, and it anchors a metropolitan region of
nearly 15 million. Originally settled by Spanish explorers in 1781, it
became an American city after the War with Mexico in 1850 when
California became a state. Today Los Angeles is a charter city with home
rule under the state constitution. While LA is one of 88 cities in Los
Angeles County, due to its size and population it dominates the region
politically and economically. The City of Los Angeles and the metro area
surrounding it are highly diverse in terms of race, ethnicity, languages
spoken, and recent immigration, making it a truly multicultural city
(Qadeer 2016). The Los Angeles metro area is overlaid with five different,
and some would argue even more independent, supervisorial districts of
Los Angeles County and a host of special districts with independent regu-
latory power over various functional and infrastructural activities. The
sheer complexity of these jurisdictional arrangements tends to fragment
governance and discourages civic participation and activism (Andranovich
and Riposa 1998).
The city government of Los Angeles is governed by a home rule charter
that was revised in 2000, under pressure from a secession movement in the
San Fernando Valley that sought greater civic participation in local affairs
(Hogen-Esch 2001). City government is organized in a mayor-council
system (the mayor has weak executive powers) with 15 council districts
each serving as many people as a US congressional district. The council is
organized into 16 standing committees and includes four ad hoc commit-
tees with the Ad Hoc Committee on 2028 Olympics and Paralympic
Games being the council’s largest committee by membership (LA City
Clerk 2017). Executive power is fragmented, with a number of boards and
commissions holding managerial oversight roles for city departments
including the Los Angeles Police Department.
Los Angeles was built on real estate speculation (McWilliams 1994).
The consensus that growth is good has been an underlying value since the
nineteenth century (Fogelson 1993). As a consequence, most local gov-
ernments in the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area follow economic
development policies providing an array of incentives supportive of growth
and property interests, but these are broadly shaped by state policies
(Neiman et al. 2000). Opposition to public policy issues that might have
4 LOS ANGELES 2024 BID AND 2028 OPPOSITION 69
a slowing effect on growth—specifically around real estate speculation—

has been fierce but also limited and fairly conservative.
Two paradigmatic cases demonstrate the conservative values underly-
ing these LA politics. One was the shutting down of national public
housing initiatives in Los Angeles in the 1950s. This move was spear-
headed by the local real estate industry and it demonstrated the
entrenched power of real estate interests over policy agendas (Parson
2005). The second case was the passage of Proposition 13, the property
tax limitation initiative of 1978, that led to a greater role for redevelop-
ment agencies in the physical redevelopment of cities to make up for
revenue shortfalls in local government and shifted redevelopment policy
decision making to a quasi-public agency. These redevelopment agencies
(RDAs) operated independently of municipal governments and were
authorized for tax increment financing (permitted by state law in 1952),
eminent domain (including taking property for retail development), and
had the capacity to borrow without voter approval. The use of RDAs
effectively removed redevelopment projects from public scrutiny and
oversight. Although growth politics provides an oeuvre for understand-
ing LA, as Mike Davis (1990) noted, this oeuvre leaves out almost as
much as it reveals. Questions about growth completely bypassed a large
segment of the population, such as non-affluent homeowners, renters,
recent immigrants, youth, and the poor whose social interests were “sup-
pressed in civic controversy” (Davis 1990, 212).
As the scale and scope of redevelopment expanded and land-use regula-
tion was increasingly financialized, an audit conducted in 2011 found that
these redevelopment projects had underperformed and 18 RDAs had kept
$40 billion from public education, resulting in a state bailout and the gov-
ernor abolishing these agencies (Beyer 2019). These events happened
after the “housing bubble” burst in late 2006 and the foreclosure crisis hit
in 2007. The state’s large housing construction sector made California the
biggest producer of mortgages and the affordability crisis meant that spec-
ulative California mortgage banking practices (e.g., subprime mortgages)
disproportionately affected non-affluent buyers and renters as the rental
market was squeezed. All of this resulted in state and local financial gov-
ernmental crises and the adoption of austerity measures across California
(Bardhan and Walker 2010).
Today LA is a majority minority city (49% Hispanic, 28% White, 9%

Black, 12% Asian) and a gateway city for immigrants (40% of the people
are foreign born, with 58% coming from Asia), with over 224 languages
spoken (Romero 2016). As a consequence, new issues and interests are
finding their way onto the public agenda and confronting policy makers.
These issues include combating anti-immigration policies and advocating
for affordable housing, fair wages, school funding, public transit, and envi-
ronmental justice (Shiau 2018). Yet in June 2019 the annual homeless
count showed 58,936 homeless people in LA County, a 12% increase since
2018, and 36,300 homeless people in the City of Los Angeles, a 16%
increase over one year (LAHSA 2019; also see Wolch et al. 2007).
Growing economic inequality and increased precarity have played out
during the two mayoralties of Antonio Villaraigosa (2005–2013) and his
successor, and former LA city councilperson, Eric Garcetti (2013–2022)
both of whom have been ardent Olympics supporters. With the 2028
Olympics scheduled for Los Angeles, there is a powerful rationale for
redevelopment of LA’s amenity infrastructure and this topic now seems to
be at the top of the policy agenda. For example, LA’s convention and
tourism business flourished in 2017, with a record 48.3 million visitors
coming to the city, resulting in one out of every nine jobs being in the
hospitality sector. According to Mayor Garcetti’s introduction in the 2017
Annual Report, from 2014–2016 more than 24% of the city’s employed
youth (16–24 years old) were working in hotels, restaurants, museums,
and venues (Board of Los Angeles Convention and Tourism Development
Commissioners 2017, 1). Leisure and hospitality was the second largest
employment sector, behind professional and business services, in LA
County (LAEDC 2019a). Furthermore, non-residential development in
2019 was projected to grow at 6.4%, and nationally, the spending pace in
spring of 2018 was 4% ahead of the previous peak in 2008 (the year of the
financial crisis), according to research and consulting firm MGAC (2018).
The City of Los Angeles was ahead of its 2017 construction permits issued
for several reasons, including “an ambitious urban revitalization plan
which includes preparations for the upcoming 2028 Olympics” (MGAC
2018, 1). Although foreign investment had slipped a bit, most construc-
tion includes luxury residential units and interest in acquiring “trophy
assets continues to remain strong” (MGAC 2018, 3). On the public sector
side, 20 infrastructure-upgrade projects targeting either aging infrastruc-
ture or the 2028 Olympics are in the pipeline to be completed over the
next 10 years (MGAC 2018, 4).
The Los Angeles 2024 Olympic Bid

Los Angeles hosted the Olympic summer games in 1932 and 1984. Both
these events introduced innovations to the Olympics (e.g., the creation of
an Olympic village in 1932 and the limited corporate sponsorship model
in 1984) and they are generally considered to be successful examples of
hosting the games. After the 1932 Olympics, Southern California
Committee for the Olympic Games (SCCOG) was formed and one of its
primary objectives was the pursuit of future Olympic games for Los
Angeles (Burbank et al. 2001, 55–58). The organization produced bids
for all Olympic games that the US Olympic Committee (USOC) opened
to domestic competition (Andranovich and Burbank 2011). A sister orga-
nization, the LA Sports Council, was formed after the 1984 Olympics to
bring sports-related activities and events into southern California. In a
recent report for the LA Sports Council, the LA County Economic
Development Corporation (LAEDC 2019b, 2) estimated that the impact
of sports on the region in 2018 was substantial: $6.2 billion in economic
output, nearly 40,000 jobs, and $327 million in tax revenues for state and
local governments. A common refrain used by LA’s Olympics boosters to
gain support, or to mute criticism, is “we have done it before, we can do
it again,” presenting the Olympics as a way of life in Los Angeles
(Andranovich 2017) and secrecy and opaqueness as a way to conduct
Olympic affairs in the city (Kassens-Noor 2020).
When the USOC opened bidding for the 2024 Olympics with its
invitation-
to-bid letter to 35 mayors in February 2013, Los Angeles
Mayor Villaraigosa was the first to respond (Mackay 2013b). LA was soon
followed by expressions of interest from city leaders in Seattle and
Philadelphia. There was even talk of a joint bid by San Diego and Tijuana,
although this went against requirements in the IOC Charter at that time
(Mackay 2013a). The USOC conducted unpublicized site visits to a half
dozen cities in November 2013 and narrowed its list of potential candi-
date cities to Boston, Dallas, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Francisco,
and Washington, DC (Osborne 2013). At the end of 2013, the IOC
encouraged the USOC to field a candidate city. SCCOG once again initi-
ated the bidding process on behalf of Los Angeles (Goddard 2013).
SCCOG’s president, David Simon (personal communication, February 7,
2014), noted that unlike in past bids, the USOC was going to run its bid-
ding process differently in response to the changes to the IOC’s process
(e.g., Agenda 2020). Bids created by SCCOG had followed a simple
pattern—use existing facilities and emphasize the experience of being in

southern California. For example, its domestic bid proposal for the 2016
Olympics noted that 35 event venues already existed, 30 were ready for
Olympic-level competition, and only five sports out of 23 would be in the
same venues as 1984 (SCCOG 2007, 12). SCCOG’s 2024 bid proposed
the LA River as the spine of city’s efforts, with three clusters of venues and
an Olympic Village near the river and a second village in downtown
LA. Once again, the Coliseum would be the focal point and Exposition
Park would serve as the Olympic Park. The bid book described LA as “a
city in constant ferment and reinvention” and “LA presents to the USOC
a canvas upon which to paint a custom-made, collaborative and winning
American bid” (Mackay 2014). The bid was put up on SCCOG’s web-
page and then taken down a day later (Barragan 2014).
After LA was named as one of the four 2024 finalists by the USOC in
spring 2014, responsibility for the bid shifted from SCCOG to the LA
mayor’s office. In August 2014, Mayor Garcetti and sports executive
Casey Wasserman formed a nonprofit bid organization, called the LA
2024 Exploratory Committee, that worked quietly with the
USOC. Wasserman posted a link to the bid proposal on Twitter when the
LA24 bid went before the LA city council in late August (Wharton 2015a).
In January 2015, the USOC selected Boston as the US candidate city for
2024. The Los Angeles bid team continued to meet informally and when
Boston withdrew in July, the USOC sought LA’s candidacy (Beyer 2018).
An updated bid book was presented to the LA city council at the end of
August, after the USOC permitted the document to be shared (Jamison
2015b). This bid was approved by the LA city council on September 1
after a quick review that focused on the city council’s oversight role in any
negotiations with the USOC and IOC, and the city’s financial liability
given that the city budget was still recovering from the effects of the 2007
financial crisis. Shortly after the action by the city council, the USOC
named LA as the American candidate for the 2024 Olympics in an
announcement on the beach in Santa Monica (Wharton and Jamison
2015). The bid committee, LA24, named a 30-person board and an exec-
utive committee that included the USOC chairperson and CEO along
with local executives and sportspersons. LA24 also hired several consul-
tants with previous Olympics ties and experience to help develop its bid:
Teneo Sports and Ted Burns, Jon Tibbs, Assn., and George Hirthler
(Wharton 2015b). USOC consultants also shifted from Boston to Los
Angeles (Kassens-Noor 2020).
The updated 2024 bid used much of the SCCOG approach to facilities
and venues and, following Agenda 2020 guidelines (IOC 2015), did not
provide a vision/legacy section (LA 2024 Exploratory Committee 2015).
The bid projected a surplus of $161 million and initially had an operating
budget of $4.1 billion that was recalculated to $5.3 billion during the
international competition and then to $6.9 billion for 2028 (Wharton
2019). The LA24 bid relied on existing sports facilities for the most part,
noting “Los Angeles is home to more venues, arenas and stadiums than
any other city.” Initially, the bid focused on constructing an Olympic
Village on a rail yard next to the LA River, east of downtown LA, at a cost
estimated at $1 billion, with the goal of spurring development along the
LA River (Barragan 2015; Jamison 2015a). As the bid evolved at the start
of the international competition, the grandiose plans to revitalize the LA
River gave way to siting the Olympic Village at UCLA (as in 1984) and
the media at USC. Also part of the broader proposal was construction of
extensions to LA’s new light rail system (Linton 2017), development of
additional hotel capacity, and the completion of a state-of-the-art NFL
stadium in the nearby City of Inglewood for a new dual-stadium concept
for the opening and closing ceremonies with LA’s Olympic stadium and
the LA Memorial Coliseum. This mix of old and new concepts was pitched
by the USOC as meeting the IOC’s Agenda 2020 reforms. The state
Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) conducted two reviews of the 2024 LA
bid with the second assessment published a month after the February
2017 bid documents were completed. LAO analysts found that LA24 and
the independent analyses of its documentation were proper and financial
risks would be minimized if the organizing committee followed the bid
proposal guidelines (LAO 2017).
In the international competition, the candidate cities had to provide
results of a poll showing public support and an impact analysis. LA’s eco-
nomic impact analysis was conducted by Beacon Economics and the
University of California, Riverside and released at LA’s downtown Grand
Central Market with the LA24 Committee and IOC representatives pres-
ent. In its press release, UC Riverside noted that the 2024 games would
generate $11.2 billion in LA, and $18.3 billion nationwide, driven by
tourism and games operations since no construction was featured in the
bid. Olympic visitors to LA would spend twice as much as typical visitors,
offsetting the 3% reduction in visitors during the staging of the Olympics
(Beacon Economics 2017; UC Riverside Today 2017).
A poll commissioned by the LA24 Exploratory Committee and the LA

City Chamber of Commerce was conducted in January and February
2016 by the Loyola Marymount University (LMU) Center for the Study
of Los Angeles (Guerra et al. 2016, 7). The question asked was “How
supportive are you of the City of Los Angeles hosting the Summer Olympic
Games in 2024?” Results showed that 88% of Angelenos supported host-
ing the Olympics (56% strongly supported hosting, and 32% were “some-
what” supportive), and 12% opposed (6% each were strongly or somewhat
opposed). Of those who were supportive, the reasons cited included the
economic boost (31%), the jobs created by the games (18%), the honor of
hosting the Olympics (16%), and increased tourism (9%). Those who
opposed hosting the games focused on traffic congestion (21.5%), the
costs being too high (20%), more important things to focus on (17%),
safety concerns (10.7%), and too many people (7.3%). Before the IOC
Technical Evaluation site visit was conducted in May 2017, the IOC com-
missioned its own polling in February. The IOC’s results showed that 78%
of Angelenos supported LA’s candidature (8% opposed it), 72% of
Californians supported it (9% opposed it), and 64% of Americans nation-
ally supported it (5% opposed it; IOC 2017, 178).
In June 2017, after Budapest, Hamburg, and Rome withdrew from the
competition, the IOC awarded the 2024 games to Paris and the 2028
games to LA, along with cash and financial concessions. The IOC agreed
to provide the LA organizing committee $2 billion toward the games,
including $180 million over five years ($160 million to go toward youth
sports programs) and reduced Olympics fees to the IOC. The deal was
reached at the end of July 2017 (Wharton 2017). The re-branded LA28
bid committee had to revise its bid agreements with the USOC for 2028,
and the LA city council once again had to approve the bid and other docu-
ments. The IOC set a short timeframe for approving the 2024 and 2028
arrangements so that the official announcement could come at its
September meeting in Lima, Peru. As soon as the LA28 bid committee
revised its materials—without a new budget or any analysis of it or any
public engagement regarding the new proposal or timeframe—the council
approved the 2028 Olympics on August 11, 2017 (Lloyd 2017). This city
council meeting was attended by anti-Olympics activists from NOlympics
LA, who argued that the council should do due diligence instead of
rubber- stamping the bid, given the long timeframe before hosting
(Wharton 2017).
As these events were unfolding in July, LMU’s Center for the Study of
Los Angeles conducted a follow-up poll (Guerra et al. 2017, 4). In this
poll, 83% of those surveyed supported hosting the 2028 Olympics (54%
strongly supportive, 29% somewhat supportive), 17% were opposed (8%
strongly opposed, 9% somewhat opposed). In response to a question on
involvement with the future games, 44% said they would volunteer (while
55% would not), 21% said they would leave town during the games, and
88% said they would watch the Olympics on television. A year later, in late
September 2018, anti-Olympics opponents conducted their own poll after
questioning the validity of the LMU polls. NOlympics LA’s 2018 poll
showed that 47% of Californians, and 45% of LA county residents, were
opposed to hosting the Olympics in 2028, while 26% were supportive of
the games (9% strongly supportive), and 27% were neutral (neutral was
not a response category in the LMU polls). Furthermore, 36% said that as
they learned more about the IOC and the Olympics, their opinion of the
games worsened (12% said it improved their opinion). Only 1% indicated
that they were following the bid very closely, however, and 54% said they
were not following the selection process closely or at all. Finally, 35%
thought bringing the games to LA would worsen their lives, 43% were
worried about the impact of hosting on increasing their rents, and 51%
were concerned about the impact of hosting on LA’s homeless crisis
(NOlympics LA 2018).
Contesting the 2028 Olympics

The primary opposition group, NOlympics LA, emerged from the orga-
nizing efforts of the Los Angeles chapter of Democratic Socialists of
America (DSA) in May 2017. Their concerns centered on the sociospatial
inequalities increasingly evident across the city including the lack of afford-
able housing, increased homelessness, and the securitization of urban
space and a concomitant police militarization. As activist began discussing
taking on these issues, it became clear that there were benefits to linking
them to the platform of a high profile sports mega-event. The visibility of
the Olympic bid provided opportunities to clearly identify how the
Olympics accelerate intensifying land uses to realize higher rents and prof-
its, exacerbating inequalities in poorer communities across greater Los
Angeles. The visibility of the Olympic games also opened space to provide
a counter narrative for the future of the city. The vision of a more transpar-
ent, accountable local democracy—that is, for a right to the
city—underpinned their organizing strategy. When the IOC awarded LA

the 2028 games in September 2017, NOlympics LA saw the opportunity
to start a ten-year conversation with Los Angeles leaders, the media, and
community members about the future of the city.
NOlympics LA is a grassroots organization staffed entirely by volunteer
community organizers and activists who are educated, professional, expe-
rienced, and seeking an alternative vision for transforming urban life
(Andranovich and Burbank 2018). They believe that working together
with like-minded groups locally and in other cities provides better oppor-
tunities to get their message out and engage with communities. These
activists also believe that hosting the Olympic games should not be imag-
ined as benign, especially in today’s political environment where some
national leaders threaten to revisit the political, social, economic, and envi-
ronmental battles of the past including those over postwar economic
development in urban America. NOlympics LA’s strategy for contesting
the Olympics has several components, including using media to educate,
mobilize, and connect; taking direct action; and collaborating with other
like-minded community and issue groups, both locally and in other
Olympic cities. At its heart is empowerment at the grassroots level, with
community organizers, activists, and members encouraged to take the lead
and participate in any relevant activities.
The NOlympics LA platform is spelled out (in English, French, Spanish,
and Portuguese) on its website, stating the group’s values, its anti-
Olympics counter narrative, and the core elements of its alternative vision
for a better Los Angeles. This vision includes, first, insisting on homes so
that all Angelenos have safe accommodations and equal access to urban
life; second, a radical rethinking of law enforcement so that the most vul-
nerable in the city are not criminalized or the focus of harsh policing prac-
tices; and third, the creation of a more transparent and accountable local
democracy where city residents are engaged in public decisions, especially
when these decisions have consequences for the everyday lives of residents
and communities. Anti-Olympics activism by NOlympics LA and its coali-
tion partners addresses these values and learns from and builds on the
lessons from other bid and host cities including Chicago, London, Rio de
Janeiro, Hamburg, Boston, PyeongChang, Paris, and Tokyo.
The group’s website is organized for access to news, announcements,
and critical analyses of its platform issues. One of the objectives of their
critical analysis is to go beyond what constitutes the boundaries of the
official city government-sponsored policy debates to build critical
awareness. The link to the group’s blog, for example, provides current and
archived information about the inequalities at the heart of contestation in
Olympic cities. Contributions range from analyzing city incentives for
hotel development, agreements for hospitality platforms, issues with the
LA homeless count, developer influence in city hall, police surveillance
practices, and news from other Olympic cities. NOlympics LA co-chair
Jonny Coleman notes that connecting the narratives is a central concern of
strategy (personal communication, February 27, 2020). NOlympics LA’s
research unmasks how consumption-oriented economic growth—redevel-
oping urban space into a tourism, amenity, leisure and luxury infrastruc-
ture—has many deleterious consequences. Among these are evictions and
displacement, gentrification and social cleansing, criminalization of pov-
erty and homelessness, separating the interests of organized labor and ten-
ants organizations, diverting resources away from social needs, and
neglecting housing development while instead providing incentives for
hotel development and person to person hospitality platform urbanism.
The group’s analysis starts with official documents but goes beyond those,
covering the controversies that are suppressed or are not a part of the
business-as-usual approach taken by city hall, the LA 2028 organizing
committee, or the IOC.
A “resources” link on the website provides background on Olympic
bidding and bid cities, hosting and host cities, the IOC, and issues on the
NOlympics LA platform. In addition, there is background information on
a number of topics that are part of the broader Olympic movement (e.g.,
sexual abuse, labor abuse, doping). The resources link also archives the
transnational “NOlympics teach-ins” conducted during the summer of
2020 when the Tokyo games would have been held, and there is a
“NOlympics guide to Tokyo 2020” that provides information on the
postponed Tokyo 2020 (and a different orientation to the city than the
official “Tokyo 2020 guidebook” on the Tokyo 2020 website).
A “media” link provides a trove of critical journalism and other materi-
als on past Olympic games, host cities, bid cities, and the IOC. This link
also provides access to podcasts, including a series dubbed the “Rings of
Hell,” made in collaboration with another grassroots activist group,
Ground Game LA. Mayor Eric Garcetti has featured prominently in
NOlympics LA activities, given the group’s criticism of his lack of leader-
ship on issues of affordable housing, homelessness, and policing. Among
the videos are several spoofing Mayor Garcetti, who was absent from LA
during 2018 when he was considering running for president of the United
States. NOlympics LA has an active Twitter account (@NOlympicsLA),

Facebook page, along with Soundcloud and Instagram accounts to
broaden their reach and visibility. The group uses social media to publicize
events and protest actions and to provide support to other anti-Olympics
groups and their activities. An example of NOlympics LA’s active media
presence included supporting the anti-PyeongChang 2018 winter games
resistance using the hashtag #NoOlympicsAnywhere.
At present, about 30 grassroots and community organizations are
involved in some form of collaboration with NOlympics LA. The collabo-
rations include activities conducted by or supported by NOlympics LA
and many have been timed to matter in terms of crises in communities
across LA. In its first two years of anti-Olympics activism, NOlympics LA
focused on “in real life” protest actions. These actions have taken place on
the streets around LA and at the institutions supporting LA 2028. The
NOlympics LA coalition hosted a public forum called Stop Playing Games
in August 2017 as a culmination of four months of protest activities
around the bid. This meeting was billed as the first and only public forum
to discuss the LA bid and, although invited, neither Mayor Garcetti nor
any members of the LA24 bid committee attended. The forum featured
panel discussions on community issues such as housing and displacement,
policing and militarization, and accountability and oversight.
After the IOC gave LA the 2028 games, IOC President Thomas Bach
came to LA in September 2017 to meet with Mayor Garcetti and bid chair
Casey Wasserman and attend a ceremony to light the Olympic cauldron at
the LA Memorial Coliseum. NOlympics LA attended the ceremony as
well, chanting “IOC go away, no Olympics in LA” and displaying an anti-
Olympics banner before being asked to leave. In March 2018, the group
followed up with a protest event called Disasterpiece Theater. This event
included a bicycle tour of skid row in downtown LA called the Ride for
Justice and a screening of short documentary films capturing the evictions
and displacement of communities in the run up to the 2016 Olympics in
Rio de Janeiro. NOlympics LA also has protested at the mayor’s residence,
the American Institute of Architects meeting on designing LA for 2028,
and at events hosted by the LA84 Foundation. This foundation is a legacy
of the 1984 Olympics, funded with $90 million of the surplus from those
games (Andranovich et al. 2001). Other activities have included street
team actions, such as putting up protest public art, educational outreach
through speaking engagements in colleges and universities, establishing
student organizations, conducting educational outreach through
testimony and protest actions, supporting the protests and direct action
activities of coalition members, and gathering information by making
public records requests through the Freedom of Information Act.
In the summer of 2018, NOlympics LA held a retreat to focus on strat-
egy, since so much of its biweekly meetings focused on what was happen-
ing next. The group noted the importance of acknowledging and
celebrating the accomplishments of the previous year as a perspective for
understanding the group’s work so far. The effects of the retreat were
evident in the general meetings as each meeting starts with a statement of
the long-term goals and short-term priorities. The long-term goals include
stopping the 2028 Olympics; fighting for a better Los Angeles by organiz-
ing around the idea of the right to the city; and influencing media narra-
tives and public perception of the Olympics. The group’s short-term goals
include working with communities on projects that enhance material gain
and reduce harms; educating the public and building awareness; and sup-
porting its coalition partners to build better relationships in LA and
beyond including opportunities for transnational organizing and support.
To commemorate the one-year mark before the Tokyo 2020 games and
to contest and offer an alternative to the IOC inspired “One Year to Go!”
event, a week-long transnational anti-Olympics summit was held in Tokyo
in July 2019 and was organized by Japanese anti-Olympics groups
(Andrews 2020). This anti-Olympics summit was sponsored by Hangorin
no Kai (No Olympics 2020b), which works with the unhoused in Tokyo,
and Okotowalink, a collaboration of academics and activists focused on
housing, feminism, and anti-imperialism (Friedman 2019). This summit
included anti-Olympics activists from Tokyo, Paris, Los Angeles, Seoul
and PyeongChang, Rio de Janeiro, and London. Activities included pro-
test marches and visits to various communities that will host Olympic ven-
ues including Fukushima, the New National Stadium, and Tokyo Bay. The
event also included an academic symposium at Waseda University featur-
ing Jules Boykoff, panel discussions with anti-Olympic activists at Sophia
University, and a press conference at the Foreign Correspondents Club of
Japan (Boykoff 2020; Robertson 2019a). This transnational anti-Olympics
summit examined how the games accelerate real estate speculation and
displacement, securitize urban space, militarize the police, criminalize
already marginalized communities, greenwash environmental damage,
and prioritize investing in amenities rather than local residents’ needs
(Robertson 2019b). In an analysis of a legacy of the 1964 Olympics,
NOlympics LA’s Spike Friedman (2019) described the rise of Japan’s
modern security industry, represented by the security company ALSOK

which was founded and led by the deputy general secretary of the 1964
Tokyo organizing committee. At the official “One Year To Go!” Festival,
ALSOK displayed its Reborg-X model robot as part of what it termed “the
first AI-secured Olympics” that will be deployed at event venues using
facial recognition software to identify “problem” people. At the festival,
ALSOK had a booth encouraging children to dress up in police riot gear
and pose for pictures in front of an Always Security OK/ALSOK poster to
receive a free t-shirt.
In addition to the groups in Tokyo, residents of Rio de Janeiro’s Villa
Autodromo filmed a message of support for those being displaced in
Tokyo, and organizers from Hamburg, Seoul, Los Angeles, and elsewhere
documented their local actions using the hashtag #NoOlympicsAnywhere.
A new website, called OlympicsWatch, was established by NOlympics
LA’s Cerianne Robertson as a resource for current and future Olympic
opponents. The inclusion of transnational organizing and community
building was part of NOlympics LA’s focus in the year after the transna-
tional summit. In a return visit to the United States in November 2019,
members of Tokyo’s Hangorin No Kai and Okotowalink joined NOlympics
LA, the LA Tenants Union, and Street Watch LA at a forum sponsored by
UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs, LA CAN, and NOlympics
LA. The forum was held at LA CAN’s office in Skid Row and was called
“How the Olympics kill the poor: Organizing against criminalization from
Skid Row to Tokyo.”
Even the onset of the Covid-19 global pandemic in 2020 did not stop
the work of the anti-Olympics resistance, including doing limited direct
actions (NOlympics LA 2020a). Indeed, interest in anti-Olympics activ-
ism spiked, as it did for other forms of social activism, particularly in the
aftermath of the killing of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis in May
2020 (Jonny Coleman, personal communication, December 29, 2020).
Local organizing, transnational community organizing, and community
building continued on the internet when it was no longer possible to meet
in person, along with activity on the group’s social media platforms.
Meetings shifted to Zoom and NOlympics LA used Slack and Google
documents to communicate, share materials, and keep people engaged.
During this time, the group’s efforts covered the “homes not hotels” cam-
paign, transnational teach-in planning, editorial/social media/press rela-
tions, film projects, and LAPD policy. In addition, organizing at USC and
UCLA continued and new member meetings were held over the internet,
addressing the purposes and practices of anti-Olympics opposition.

Community building included reading and discussing books and engag-
ing in social activities (e.g., trivia night). NOlympics LA hosted a series of
transnational teach-ins in July and August 2020 featuring anti-Olympics
community organizers and activists from Tokyo, Seoul, PyeongChang,
Paris, London, and LA (see the OlympicsWatch website). The transna-
tional teach-ins averaged nearly 80 participants each as work schedules and
Covid-19 “expanded the net of transnational organizing” (Anne Orchier,
personal communication, December 29, 2020). NOlympics LA also
hosted a number of additional teach-ins in the “Stop Playing Games”
series focusing on ongoing organizing challenges around gentrification
and displacement in Inglewood near the new NFL stadium, securitization
and policing in LA, and other events. One was a virtual town hall meeting
“Pick a Side,” held in mid-October 2020, with Black Lives Matter-LA and
the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition joining NOlympics LA for a discussion
of “how LA 2028 is incompatible with the fight to reimagine public safety
and the struggle for racial justice” in Los Angeles. NOlympics LA also col-
laborated with the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project to develop a reporting
tool to track the growth of illegal Airbnb units in the city in conjunction
with an organizing campaign—called “Locks on My Block”—against the
conversion of neighborhood units into “tourist zones.” Resources for this
campaign include downloadable posters and a Zine, in English and
Spanish. NOlympics LA also joined seven other anti-Olympics organiza-
tions in a show of transnational anti-Olympics solidarity. Their joint state-
ment against the Olympic torch relay starting in J-Village in Fukushima,
Japan argued that people and public health ought to be governmental
priorities, not profits.
The Meaning of Opposition to the 2028 LA Olympics

By awarding the 2024 and the 2028 games together, the IOC dispensed
with the competition for selecting a 2028 host city. This circumstance
presented an unusual challenge for anti-Olympics contestation, which
typically has a shorter and more intense lifespan during the bidding pro-
cess. This change opened a new horizon in the mega-event strategy. It
effectively extended the period for the redevelopment of urban space in
the image of the Olympic city to a full decade. The LA organizing com-
mittee’s self-proclaimed “no build Olympics” refers to the promise of no
construction for new sports facilities for the games. NOlympics LA,
however, has uncovered a number of new ways that the city government
has aided in the intensification of land use in the urban core of Los Angeles
and promoted consumption-oriented tourism infrastructure. The means
to this end have included financial incentives for hotel development, new
policies for home sharing platforms, and the increased securitization of
urban space.
The extended development timeline in Los Angeles has allowed oppo-
nents to frame this period as a conversation about the future of the city.
Yet, this timeline also created challenges for anti-Olympic opposition and
other grassroots social justice groups in Los Angeles because the 2028
Olympic organizing committee has largely been absent from local affairs
and the glare of the media spotlight, but local governments have contin-
ued to promote public policies supportive of Olympic city development.
As an example of its low-key approach, when updating the IOC on the
LA28 Committee’s progress toward the 2028 games in July 2020, the
committee’s presentation highlighted financial issues, specifically the
securing of commercial sponsorships, and noted the launching of the
2028 “brand,” and support of youth sports in LA with funds from the
IOC. As Rich Perelman (2020), a longtime observer of the Olympics and
a former member of the 1984 LA Olympics Organizing Committee,
noted about this presentation, “if you can’t remember hearing much
about the 2028 Olympic games in Los Angeles—even if you live in Los
Angeles—you are not alone.”
NOlympics LA’s approach to contestation has been to use the interna-
tional sports platform provided by the Olympics to highlight, oppose, and
resist the production of local inequalities and contribute to the building of
a transnational coalition that links similar efforts across cities globally. In
the main, this approach has meant forging ties and strengthening local
social justice efforts while continuing to contribute to the development of
a transnational anti-Olympics resistance movement. Both efforts are ener-
gized by the work toward each other. For example, activists identified the
interpersonal aspects of organizing as most beneficial in their reflections
on the value of attending the Tokyo summit (Robertson 2020a, b).
Experiencing another city’s urban space, observing and sensing its mate-
rial conditions, meeting with people suffering from and struggling against
inequalities, and having time to discuss their conditions in-depth—even
across language barriers—helped to express support and build solidarity.
In part, this is a recognition that urban life in globalizing cities—Olympic
cities—is similar in many respects. Global capitalism, and its neoliberal
policy path, exists in these cities even if there are cultural variations in
administrative policies and practices such as policing. Members of
NOlympics LA left Tokyo convinced that the Olympics were an accelera-
tor to inequalities. But, they also recognized that the Olympics provide
sites of resistance that are local in each city and served as touchstones
across cities. This realization is grounded in being open to hearing and
accepting what is important to fellow community organizers and activists
in Los Angeles. NOlympics LA came out of Tokyo with ten shared politi-
cal conditions and social justice struggles including the disenfranchise-
ment and erosion of democracy, privatization and financialization, mass
displacement, environmental destruction and greenwashing, police milita-
rization and surveillance, criminalization of poverty and informal econo-
mies, imperialism and nationalism, eugenics and ableism, sexism and
reinforcement of the gender binary, labor exploitation, and media hege-
mony (see Robertson 2019a). The importance of sharing these values is in
building strength in critical analysis and awareness for actions, and the
capacity to empower and sustain the decade long anti-Olympics opposi-
tion and resistance movement. As NOlympics LA co-chair Anne Orchier
put it during the September 2020 London Transnational Teach-in: anti-
Olympics organizers have “the power to present an alternative vision for
the city, not for the Olympics because the Olympics are a Trojan horse to
take back our right to the city. Our project is to create a different type
of city.”
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CHAPTER 5
Anti-Olympics Protest as a Political Legacy
Abstract Early research on the nature of opposition to hosting the

Olympics in American cities suggested that opponents sought only to mit-
igate specific impacts of the event rather than try to create a more robust
anti-growth movement. The evidence from Chicago, Boston, and Los
Angeles suggests that the nature of urban opposition to the Olympics has
changed. Drawing on the research of other scholars as well as our case
studies, we argue that contemporary opponents to the Olympics have
developed a broader counter-narrative to the assertion that consumption-
oriented economic growth results in widespread benefits for urban resi-
dents. In pursuit of this alternative vision of urban life, opponents have
adopted new tactics that question the material as well as the symbolic
value of building the Olympic city.
Keywords IOC • Internet based platforms and social media •

Opposition • Right to the city • Transnational opposition
Introduction
When we first examined the issue of opposition to the Olympics, within
the context of urban regime theory and conflicts over growth politics, we
noted that hosting a sports mega-event could provide an opportunity for

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5094-9_5
resistance movements to develop (Burbank et al. 2000). We wanted to

find out if anti-growth movements were galvanized around the large-scale
redevelopment of urban space for building a consumption-oriented ame-
nity infrastructure. The evidence from opposition to Olympic-related
development in Los Angeles in 1984, Atlanta in 1996, and Salt Lake City
in 2002 indicated that the scope of opposition was narrow and the focus
was to divert development from a specific location or to mitigate negative
neighborhood effects. The tactics used were publicity, negotiation with
local government or Olympic officials, and public protests. Other tactics
that might have broadened the scope of conflict were not the preferred
tactics of local opponents. The nature of opposition to Olympic develop-
ment reflected each city’s history of urban growth politics and tended to
emerge out of these long standing cleavages. Since hosting an Olympics
tends to be presented, organized, and conducted largely outside of local
political channels, opposition to mega-event driven development faced
numerous challenges. For this reason, we concluded that anti-Olympics
opposition would be piecemeal at best: when an American city “won” the
right to host the games, the urban redevelopment agenda in the five- to
seven-year window to prepare for the games presented the best opportuni-
ties to resist the games’ intrusions into communities. This window was
also problematic for creating a broader resistance to growth politics
because public controversy during the lead up to hosting the games pro-
vided Olympic proponents opportunities to shift to less controversial loca-
tions or give minor concessions when opposition became politically viable.
Our examination of the more recent opposition to the impact of the
Olympics in Chicago, Boston, and Los Angeles, however, suggests that
something different is happening in American cities. The American cities
fostering bids to host the Olympics in the current conjuncture are witness-
ing a new type of opposition. Anti-Olympics groups are calling out the
predatory structures, behaviors, and practices of capital and the state—
practices that these groups claim are increasing inequality and the precar-
ity of everyday urban life. Anti-Olympics opposition groups have
criticized the IOC for the contradictions between its values and the condi-
tions for hosting the Olympics as a globalized and commercialized sports
entertainment event. These groups have engaged in a struggle against the
contradictions underlying the application of state power to build
consumption-oriented landscapes to attract high-end professional jobs,
engendering gentrification and displacement, while cutting social services
and the support infrastructures that once were available to city residents.
5 ANTI-OLYMPICS PROTEST AS A POLITICAL LEGACY 91
Recent research is providing a nuanced assessment of the nature and pur-

poses of opposition as a call to action (see Hiller 2020), and resistance
perhaps should no longer be characterized solely as “piecemeal” (Burbank
et al. 2000) or “flashy one-off efforts” (Boykoff 2014).
In this chapter, we provide an analysis of the anti-Olympics opposition
in Chicago, Boston, and Los Angeles. The three cities under study were
selected by the USOC as representing American cities capable of mount-
ing and implementing a 10-year urban growth strategy focused on global
imaging and large-scale physical redevelopment that emphasizes con-
sumption- and luxury-oriented amenities. From our perspective, these cit-
ies are valuable cases for exploring economic growth politics and urban
policy formation processes that, historically, have paid scant attention to
existing patterns of sociospatial inequalities in bid cities. In each of the
case chapters, we briefly described the political and economic context in
each city, paying attention to conditions underlying the city’s politics
when these three cities’ Olympic bids emerged. We also examined the
emergence of the anti-Olympics opposition as a means of struggle against
the structures, processes, and practices of global sport and their impact on
contemporary American cities. These cases reveal how contestation serves
both to develop an awareness of the limitations of state power and imag-
ines the emergence of a potentially new transnational form for contesting
this power.
The Nature of Anti-Olympic Opposition

This chapter presents an analysis of the similarities and differences across
these three cities. More specifically, our research attempts to learn more
about the form of anti-Olympics opposition because the large number of
Olympic bids that had been withdrawn since 2013 suggests that a thresh-
old has been crossed regarding the perceived validity of claims made by
opposition groups. Following Lefebvre (1969, 1976, 1996), anti-
Olympics opposition claims have found a void in the Olympic bidding
requirements and have transformed it into a new political space where
spontaneity and contestation have emerged to replace the uncritical accep-
tance of the status quo. Where the IOC wants to tame commercialization
and gigantism with an emphasis on recently implemented legacy and sus-
tainability requirements and a softer bidding competition, anti-Olympics
opponents have used these openings as opportunities to rally against the
transformation of urban space through public giveaways, forgone
opportunities, and enhanced state powers for social control and repression
against poorer and working class communities in the pursuit of short term
profits for investors, speculators, and the wealthy. Before examining the
evidence from Chicago, Boston, and Los Angeles, we briefly review recent
research critiquing the Olympics in areas where our project contributes to
understanding anti-Olympics dissent. Doing this highlights the institu-
tional context of the Olympic mega-event in urban development policy
and politics, the characteristics of the process of contentious politics, and
the mechanisms of contestation used by anti-Olympics opponents. The
three studies noted below are valuable for our purposes because they high-
light the Olympic city as both a fact and an idea, indicating where institu-
tional weaknesses can be identified and probed to reassert the right to
the city.
Müller (2015) examines the transformation of sports events into urban
events in the Olympic games in 11 countries. The results led Müller to
conclude that there is a “mega-event syndrome” consisting of seven com-
mon symptoms that affect mega-event planning across Olympic cities and
sites. The elements of this mega-event syndrome include overpromising
benefits, underestimating costs, event takeover, public risk taking, rule of
exception, elite capture, and event fix. Overcoming these symptoms is dif-
ficult because mega-events are layered urban events and the IOC, urban
growth elites, and ordinary people all play a part making reform difficult.
The IOC sets minimum standards, which bids often exceed due to the
perception of a highly competitive bid process. Local growth elites con-
tinue to put forth these bids because mega-events are profitable for them.
For ordinary people, “the spectacular character of mega-events grips peo-
ple and fires their imaginations, often sidelining rational deliberations
about benefits and costs, especially during the bidding phase” (Müller
2015, 12). There are a number of consequences that affect both Olympic
cities and the IOC. Political consequences include event-led priority set-
ting as the event becomes the quick fix for planning challenges, opportu-
nity costs for public spending with limited or no public benefit, wasting of
resources on the event as a lever of urban development, gentrification and
displacement, loss of public oversight, bypassing the public planning pro-
cess, limited citizen participation, and loss of trust in the policy making
process. Economic consequences include the misallocation of resources,
subpar construction, budget shortfalls, oversized and unfinished infra-
structure, and profiteering. Societal consequences come from the inequi-
table distribution of resources, the suspension of regular rules of law,
limited citizen participation, misallocation of resources, opportunity costs

for public spending, gentrification and displacement, and spatially uneven
urban development. Müller is interested in how this affects planning, and
in this context, he suggests radical and incremental changes in the rela-
tionship between mega-events and cities. Incremental reforms include
seeking public participation early in the bid stage, fixing the terms of host-
ing at the time of bidding, creating a separate organization in charge of
legacies, decentralizing the event, building temporary structures when
future use is uncertain, engaging in knowledge exchange, and not bypass-
ing regular planning procedures. More radical changes in the rules of the
games, that is “in how the games are planned, awarded, and governed”
(Müller 2015, 15), include: avoid tying mega-events to large-scale urban
development, bargain with event government bodies, cap and earmark
public expenditure, obtain independent expert assessment, and reduce the
size and requirements of events. Whether these remedies and reforms
could overcome the symptoms that turn mega-events into obstacles to
resolving inequalities remains an open question because the mega-event
strategy is premised on entrepreneurship and the bid process allows inten-
tions to be masked as information about the content of bids is released
slowly over time.
In an intensive field study conducted in Newham in East London,
Giulianotti et al. (2015) identified anti-Olympics dissent expressed with
various levels of intensity by residents, small businesses, and activists dur-
ing the London 2012 Olympics. It is important to couch this dissent in
the context that many of the dissenters were not necessarily against the
Olympic games but instead were against certain types of outcomes. The
London 2012 Olympics followed the mega-event strategy in evidence in
large-scale developments in the UK since the 1980s, in this case situated
in economically impoverished East London (also see Girginov 2012;
MacRury and Poynter 2008; Raco 2014; Raco and Tunney 2010). This
development featured Keynesian style consumption-oriented spending on
facilities, infrastructure, and physical redevelopment in the initial stages of
preparation, followed by a harder neoliberal set of policies that privileged
the profits of construction companies and property speculators with new
“privatized, commercial, and sanitized post-industrial spaces” that would
attract transnational capital investment, wealthy residents, and consumers
(Giulianotti et al. 2015, 103). Beneficiaries included the wealthy and well-
connected. For example, the West Ham United soccer team leased the
newly-built Olympic stadium and was able to sell its existing London
stadium. Similarly, Europe’s largest shopping mall, Westfield Stratford

City mall, opened adjacent to Olympic Park in 2011 and featured a high-
end shopping experience. The new Stratford master plan focused on
20,000 new residential homes and 46,000 jobs as the levers to transform
the city’s education, transport, retail, and cultural face (Giulianotti et al.
2015, 104). But this process also meant that the 400 residents of Clays
Lane Estates and 200 small businesses were displaced by administrative
order (Giulianotti et al. 2015, 103–104; Raco and Tunney 2010). The
researchers identified broad opposition based on national criticism of
overall costs, uneven development related to core-periphery issues and
resource distribution, and community complaints of broken promises and
false assurances regarding the negative impacts of the Olympics on host
community residents and businesses. In addition, the researchers identi-
fied four categories of smaller scale, more localized activism: issue-specific
protests (e.g., environment, security, industrial disputes); “glocal” pro-
tests (e.g., for human rights and against Olympic sponsors); situationist
spectacles and neo-tribal transgressions (e.g., the Critical Mass cycle ride
during the opening ceremonies and more subversive performances); and
anti-Olympic protests and forums (e.g., the Counter Olympics Network
and Games Monitor). For the most part, dissent was not coordinated in a
consistent or collective way until 2012, seven years after the games were
awarded to London. In addition, protest activities were “spatially margin-
alized” and were closely regulated by the police. Finally, the researchers
question whether traditional forms of protest are the most effective way to
oppose and challenge mega-events suggesting that “forming alliances with
radical community rights organizations” might enhance the impact of the
resistance (Giulianotti et al. 2015, 115).
Lauermann and Vogelpohl (2017, 2019) examined the nature of oppo-
sition against the 2024 Olympic bids in Boston and Hamburg, where
public opposition derailed potential Olympic bids. The theoretical frame-
work that they developed is what they term “fast activism”; this term sug-
gests a mode of activism in direct response to fast and mobile policy
(Lauermann and Vogelpohl 2019). The researchers note that mega-events
are fast and mobile policy solutions that come with an assemblage of inter-
national standards, models, and experienced consultants who can serve as
the architect-designers or general contractors of the Olympic city. Fast
activism brings local concerns and voices to the discussion at the earliest
point—during the bid phase, where the design of the Olympic city is pre-
pared and presented. Lauermann and Vogelpohl note that this is necessary
for efficacy because once a bid is won and a host city contract is signed, the
challenges become more complex. Fast activism against mega-event plan-
ning rests on three tactics: temporary activism, relationally local activism,
and ideologically diverse activism. The temporary nature of anti-Olympics
activism during bid campaigns works along the short deadline- driven
timetable imposed by the IOC’s bid process, so the resistance campaigns
face the same deadlines as the bid committees. The opposition organizing
and resistance messaging is relational, “engaging with local and global
policy circuits, deconstructing success stories from elsewhere, and articu-
lating local alternatives” (Lauermann and Vogelpohl 2019, 1243). The
third tactic fits with the broad platform presented by the Olympic games
and the range of issues that can be publicized. Ideological diversity brings
different oppositional perspectives into the mix, along with varying resis-
tance processes and practices able to reach different audiences, but this
diversity also makes cohesion difficult and may limit the viability of longer-
term alliances. Yet Lauermann and Vogelpohl (2019, 1247–1248) are
optimistic because they see two important preconditions for fast activism
existing in democratic nations—a supply of experienced organizers and
the existence of local political networks to carry the message and mobilize
support. They are careful to note that although the Olympic bids in west-
ern democratic cities have been rejected by public opposition, “there were
neither intensive nor long-lasting ties between protests in other cities” and
“a more fundamental opposition would require institutions and networks
that are able to match the durability and global scope of fast policy pro-
moters” (Lauermann and Vogelpohl 2019, 1248).
These studies point to the importance of examining anti-Olympics
opposition in relation to the mega-event strategy. Olympic bidding estab-
lishes a political space for urban development and, while rhetoric abounds,
reality is hard to spot. In the gap are voids, or institutional weaknesses,
that rhetoric cannot overcome. The sheer complexity of the organizational
undertaking involved in planning for a mega-event makes it difficult for
opponents to contest strategically. At the neighborhood or community
level, the right to the city is at play (or questions of membership and con-
stitutive participation; see Sassen 2014, 222). Unity may represent a polit-
ical victory for opponents, yet unity alone has limited efficacy because
contestation often is narrowly focused. Opposition strategy needs to move
beyond managing existing resources or thinking up new techniques or
alliances against a single infrastructure—it requires establishing an opposi-
tional overlay.
Contesting the Olympic City in the USA

In Chicago and Boston, anti-Olympics opposition groups were able to put
enough pressure on those bids to see them ended. In Los Angeles, the
struggle continues toward 2028. Our findings from these cities describe
who the opposition activists were, what they fought against and advocated
for, and how they did it. We examine the linkages across cities, bids, and
time. We begin with the bids, which establish the grounds for
contestation.
The three case study cities—Chicago, Boston, and Los Angeles—are
representative of cities with Olympic bids generated by growth regimes. In
this way, policy choices around Olympic bidding could be channeled
through policy mechanisms and in arenas that might yield the greatest
chances for success and benefits. As researchers who examined the experi-
ence in Vancouver, Canada noted, these growth regimes now have a dis-
tinctive transnational flavor, with distant stakeholders and influencers
participating in the politics of urban development, establishing network
ties and seeking to extract material and symbolic gain (Surborg et al. 2008;
Holden et al. 2008; VanWynsberghe et al. 2013; also see Bason and Grix
2017). The bid books were similar in that each proffered a mix of global
imaging strategies, the physical redevelopment of the downtown focused
around consumption-oriented amenities and infrastructure, with future
investment in real estate, businesses, and tourism in mind. All relied on the
progressive values of the philosophy of Olympism to buttress these policy
choices. One element that was different about these bids was the require-
ment included in the IOC’s Olympic Charter in 2007 that bid committees
describe how the Olympic legacy fit with the city’s long term development
planning. Bason and Grix (2017) note that as part of the continuing
reform of the bid process and the critique of the increasing size, scale, and
commercialization of the Olympics, the IOC asked Olympic bidders to
answer the question: “what will be the benefits of bidding for the Olympic
Games for your city/region, irrespective of the outcome of the bid?” In
specifying the particulars of the Olympic legacies early in the bid process—
that is, just how they will be leveraged in urban development—opportuni-
ties and an opening to question local government spending priorities
across a broad spectrum of purposes beyond the scope and scale of market-
oriented economic growth now exist in conjunction with proposed
Olympic bids. Declining to specify legacies in the publicly released bid
book should raise red flags regarding a lack of local democracy, a lack of
public representation, and a lack of transparency in the policy process. In

the context of the recent history of Olympic-led development in cities, a
case can be made that the outcomes might include profiteering, facilitat-
ing displacement through gentrification, and increased social control and
repression through securitization and intensive policing.
Each city’s bid narrative emerged from its urban growth context and all
reflected the local government’s role in backing the bid, directly and indi-
rectly. The bids were generally linked to planning horizons and were fairly
clear regarding the intention of spatially targeting poorer neighborhoods,
occasionally offering community concessions including job creation con-
tingent upon winning the hosting rights, and emphasized well-being
through a larger sense of economic purpose and community benefit. The
bids typically were less clear in terms of financing the development or the
broader community benefits that would accrue in the Olympics-induced
future (other than encouraging and emphasizing youth sport). None of
the bids specified the legacies in their first local publicly released docu-
ments, claiming that this information was proprietary. The lack of specific-
ity in the bid document is consistent with the IOC’s reforms of the bidding
process.
One example describes the overall tenor of the bid strategies. In
response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) public records requests,
the official Boston bid was released along with an analysis of what was not
said publicly (Clauss 2015). In Boston’s bid, for example, the innovation
economy was going to generate 100,000 jobs and Boston would need
50,000 new residences. According to the bid “the Olympics…are strategi-
cally aligned with who we are and where we want to go as a city” privileg-
ing consumption-oriented economic development with “intense
development of underutilized areas in the urban core; continued engage-
ment of our waterfront and enhancement of open space; and acceleration
of our innovation economy” (Boston 2024 Partnership 2014, 20–23).
Describing its legacy for the local community and local economy, the bid
suggests the following for the community: “creating 3000–4000 new
units of affordable workforce housing; developing an Olympic health cur-
riculum for our public schools … importance of nutrition and exercise;
building a ‘world class’ regional ‘smart planning model’ … sustainability,
resiliency, and durability” and accelerating the development of the public
university to be a first-class research university (Boston 2024 Partnership
2014, 29). The local economy would see more job creation, accelerating
$5 billion of transportation development including rail connections and
superstations, “creating a new neighborhood with commercial and resi-

dential opportunities at Midtown,” and “reclaiming underutilized land at
Midtown, at Columbia Point, at Beacon Yards” that would provide link-
ages with the ongoing “transformation” (Boston 2024 Partnership 2014,
29). The large-scale redevelopment plans targeted the transformation of
Boston as a place of innovation, displacing poor and working class com-
munities who happened to occupy under valorized land and relegating
these residents to the periphery, where they could be smartly transported
back into the city to work.
Anti-Olympics opposition in all three cities emerged spontaneously to
contest the bids, but the opposition emerged in the context of continuing
discontent with existing institutions and policy processes in each city. This
discontent has become more urgent since the 2007–2008 financial crisis
and the austerity measures implemented in its wake, and followed by the
impact of the global Covid-19 pandemic beginning in 2019. The opposi-
tion consisted of both grassroots and policy professional perspectives and
interests and therefore different processes and practices were evident in
the opposition. Furthermore, some of the grassroots activists came out of
a progressive orientation that, in itself, is marginalized in the center-right
orientation of American politics. A number of the grassroots activists in
Chicago and Los Angeles are part of the Democratic Socialist movement.
All of the anti-Olympics organizers, however, brought knowledge and
skills to the table and were able to critique and counter bid committee
expertise (see Standring 2019).
An important precursor to launching the opposition in all three cities
was establishing a solid foundation of research for identifying interests,
making claims, and staking out positions. Based on their research, anti-
Olympics activists then developed the materials to organize opposition
and resistance activities in the city, established the media platforms for
initiating them, and thought strategically about the counter narratives for
taking on the IOC. No Games Chicago spent the first year of its existence
doing research and preparing for direct action, an important step for these
grassroots groups (only one opposition group, No Boston Olympics, reg-
istered itself as a 501c4, a nonprofit social welfare organization). In Los
Angeles, research and analysis has been a consistent theme underpinning
NOlympics LA’s opposition activities and membership expansion. Early
on, NOlympics LA conducted its own survey research and provided a
critique of the survey instrument and methodology of the officially com-
missioned opinion poll conducted by a university research center. Although
its survey was conducted after the games had been awarded to Los Angeles,
the NOlympics LA survey showed that popular support for the Olympics
in Los Angeles had been overstated.
Opposition groups in all three cities used internet-based platforms and
social media to conduct their anti-Olympics campaigns alongside more
traditional protest activities. Although it might be hard to remember given
today’s media environment, the use of the internet and social media by
anti-Olympics groups in Chicago and Boston was novel at the time and
these groups successfully broadened their reach by adopting these com-
munication techniques. These techniques included organizing and com-
municating internally as well as disseminating information to the broader
public, especially to reporters in the traditional news media who monitor
social media for news tips (also see McGillivray et al. 2020). For example,
No Boston Olympics representatives appeared regularly in local news and
in national and international coverage of the 2024 Olympic bidding. The
range of protest activities included a variety of both traditional actions and
a number of newer, more innovative activities that could be enhanced by
technology. Among the more traditional protest related actions were
holding rallies and marches; attending, speaking out, or disrupting public
meetings and Olympic organizing events; and shadowing the bid commit-
tee at events not intended to be open to the public (No Games Chicago
was particularly effective here). Among the more inventive resistance
activities included employing well-known academic scholars, journalists,
and activists as speakers for events and then posting video recordings of
these events on social media sites to allow broader dissemination of the
protestors’ views. Another technological variation included the use of
social media, especially Twitter, to provide running commentary of events
such as public meetings or debates. This commentary allowed opposition
groups to provide their perspectives on events that otherwise would have
been presented only by traditional coverage. Under the limitations
imposed by the Covid-19 global pandemic and the very low public profile
adopted by the LA 2028 organizing committee, NOlympics LA has
pushed the use of internet-based tools and applications to organize its
activities. These tools provide important infrastructural support in the
complex arena of grassroots organizing by building awareness, facilitating
communication, and reducing the costs of engagement. It is worth noting
the centrality to all of these opposition groups of conducting public edu-
cation campaigns and disrupting public events. In support of these cam-
paigns, opposition groups used traditional tools such as Freedom of
Information Act public records requests to supply evidence in support of

their perspective or at least to raise questions about the narrower or lim-
ited policy choices as discussed in the media. Notably, in their efforts to
educate policy makers and members of the public, anti-Olympics opposi-
tion groups formed coalitions with other local groups to share, enhance,
and extend their messaging. Even more innovative was the degree to
which these local opposition groups offered assistance to groups in other
cities both at home and abroad and sought to develop and sustain rela-
tionships with other anti-Olympics groups.
In all three cities, the opposition highlighted two different types of
claims in their anti-Olympics counter narratives. One narrative focused on
claims addressing the deficit of democracy in local politics and the inequal-
ities produced or reinforced by urban policy processes and practices. A
second narrative aimed to show how these local issues would be exacer-
bated under the conditions imposed by the IOC and related specifically to
hosting the Olympics. In this way, these claims provide a critique of the
ideology of growth underpinning economic development policy choices.
These claims contest the idea that urban space is a neutral and inert canvas
and that consumption-oriented economic growth via amenities, luxury
housing, leisure and entertainment, and large-scale projects is a path
toward well-being or widespread benefits. The claims of these opposition
groups provide a critical understanding of: (a) the evolving relationship
between economic growth and state power and how urban and transna-
tional elites benefit because this relationship is served by the elision of vital
questions regarding the use of urban space, and (b) how a common fea-
ture has been the exclusion of community values regarding the use of the
urban space these communities occupy. In terms of the relationship
between economic power and public authorities, for example, the anti-
Olympics opposition in all three cities focused on the costs of the Olympics.
In particular, in each city opponents asked what the IOC host city guaran-
tee potentially meant for the city’s residents. This question led to broader
discussions of who the IOC is and how, from the carrots of the bidding
process to the stick of the host city contract, the IOC could command
such a position of power in the city. From this perspective, the IOC’s
demands formed the normative orientation for making policy choices in a
number of different functional areas including planning, security and sur-
veillance, policing, and transportation. The counter-narrative of anti-
Olympics opponents sought to raise questions about who participates in
public decisions affecting neighborhoods, whose neighborhoods would
be subject to Olympic-led speculation and development, and who would

be impacted by sanitizing streets and public spaces and the use of aggres-
sive policing and surveillance techniques. All these questions raise the issue
of membership and constitutive participation. The focus on this right to
the city was on the issues that were important at the time and would be
experienced and talked about in the neighborhoods in the specific city. In
this way, the focus was on the direct experiences of residents who were
fighting back against the lack of policy access, increasing economic dispos-
session, declining urban habitability, diminishing public space, and the
repressive effects of surveillance and policing in everyday situations.
Opposition campaigns were framed around the Olympics by noting how
hosting the games would exacerbate these conditions rather than amelio-
rate them as suggested by Olympic supporters. An example is the “homes
not hotels” campaign in Los Angeles. This campaign has addressed issues
that have surfaced in some local neighborhoods but remain latent in oth-
ers. In this ongoing campaign, NOlympics LA has participated in direct
actions with other community organizations already working on these
issues in the affected communities. This collaboration provides the politi-
cal space to raise concerns about ways the “no build Olympics” claims of
the mayor and the LA28 organizing committee are actually false. Claims
have been contested around three such issues—the planning and con-
struction of new hotels, the increase in the city’s homeless and unhoused
population, and person-to-person home sharing platforms (e.g., Airbnb, a
Worldwide Olympic Partner since November 2019). Outside of Los
Angeles, NOlympics LA collaborates with community and tenant rights
organizations to contest the gentrification, eviction, and displacement
stemming from the new state-of-the-art NFL football stadium completed
in the summer of 2020 in Inglewood. At the same time, city council meet-
ings are attended and sometimes disrupted, and the power of social media
is used to make calls for action and to archive them for policy education
and recruiting new members.
Each of these three cities has a rich ecosystem of grassroots, neighbor-
hood, and community organizations. Such networks may seem like fertile
ground for developing a broader coalition of groups or even a social move-
ment, but institutional mechanisms seem to mitigate against the creation
of such an alliance. In our three cities, as is true elsewhere, these commu-
nity organizations are tied to public and philanthropic authorities for
funding and support and these authorities are often allied with the pro-
growth Olympics boosters. In Chicago, for example, the MOU that
established a community benefits agreement is an example of how power

is wielded to maintain, control, and suppress dissent by channeling inclu-
sion in narrow, technical ways. This type of politics was what No Games
Chicago and the other anti-Olympic groups rallied against: a politics that
marginalizes poor and working class communities as a basis for including
these communities in urban outcomes. In Boston, the two anti-Olympics
groups worked together to complement each other’s strengths and com-
pensate in areas that were risky for the other group, demonstrating that
collaboration can overcome factionalism and perceptions of turf. In Los
Angeles, in part because of the longer timeline, NOlympics LA has close
ties with other grassroots organizations whose community organizing
work around the issues on the group’s platform is in full swing. For exam-
ple, several projects around safe urban habitability have brought organiz-
ers in Strategic Actions for a Just Economy (SAJE) and Ground Game LA
closer together. And, projects on securitization and policing have con-
nected activists for Black Lives Matter and Stop LAPD Spying.
One important objective across opposition groups in the three cities
was policy education and building awareness of the gaps between the rhet-
oric and reality of hosting the Olympics. The broad umbrella of “the right
to the city” encompassed many of the social justice concerns of the oppo-
sition and resistance and it expanded the playbook to include innovative
practices. To this end, we note that the repertoire of opposition activities
expanded over the time of these three bids and the increasingly important
role that social media and the internet played. This finding suggests a
development in the knowledge base of opposition organizers and activ-
ists—how to access information, how to produce data, and how to use and
critique data. These areas of knowledge utilization are not accidental.
Developing a critical framework requires first identifying ideological claims
and the gaps in knowledge that result. In all three cities, the anti-Olympics
opposition put sociospatial inequalities on display. Doing this to counter
the bid narrative, however, requires developing not only the knowledge
about how these inequalities are a part of the business-as-usual approach
to economic development in cities, but also to present it appropriately to
different audiences. This process became a way for developing teachable
skills to question and overcome the ideological claims made or passed
along by Olympic bid committees and their allies in local government and
in various communities. The development of teachable skills revealed the
importance of considering different cultural norms and the gender biases
entrenched in societies. For example, organizers and activists in NOlympics
LA, because of its long tenure and explicit forging of transnational ties,
have gained more experience with these issues and the way they relate to
overall strategy including recruiting members, developing leadership in
and beyond Los Angeles, and organizing transnationally. It is important to
point out that street actions remain the currency of contestation.
Establishing a presence and being seen and heard—by the objects of con-
testation and by the activists themselves—are central to identifying,
describing, and exposing institutional weaknesses through analysis
and action.
A final area of interest for our research in these cities is identifying spe-
cific examples of “knowledge transfer” activities. Because of the large
number of bids that were stopped or canceled in the 2013–2018 period,
we examined the extent of activity occurring between opposition groups
across sites, bids, and time. Collaborating by disseminating and communi-
cating information holds the potential for serving multiple purposes.
Among these purposes are the creation of a new urban and transnational
democratic space for reclaiming the importance of community, social jus-
tice values, and the right to the city in narratives of urban growth and
development, facilitating the sharing of oppositional repertoires, and pro-
viding a training ground for empowering the next generation of leaders.
There is evidence that the anti-Olympics opposition and resistance is
transnational and that it is becoming institutionalized. We found a num-
ber of contacts between opposition groups in different cities. For example,
No Games Chicago brought in academic and activist Chris Shaw from
Vancouver and several members of No Games Chicago went to Vancouver.
The No Games Chicago activists shadowed their bid committee to both
its IOC presentations, first in Lausanne and then in Copenhagen. At these
meetings, the NGC activists met their counterparts from Tokyo and Sochi
and shared information. The No Games Chicago group provided their
protest sign templates to the Boston opposition and kept its website and
documents up to serve as a resource for other Olympic opposition
organizations.
The situation was similar with both resistance groups in Boston. No
Boston 2024 brought in sports journalist Dave Zirin to speak and was in
contact with activists in Vancouver, London, Rio de Janeiro, and Los
Angeles. These activists discussed both strategy and tactics for their cam-
paigns. These discussions often shared contacts, tips, research, tricks of the
trade, and provided an important dose of camaraderie in otherwise fast
moving, intense, and highly local campaigns. No Boston Olympics worked
closely with Andrew Zimbalist, a well-known academic economist in

Massachusetts who is a critic of the Olympics. Shortly after the Boston bid
ended, No Boston Olympics members discussed their strategy with a
number of other anti-Olympics opposition and resistance groups in
Hamburg, Budapest, and Rome. One of the founding members of the No
Boston Olympics group, Chris Dempsey, spoke to both the Calgary 2026
exploratory bid committee and to the anti-Olympics group in Calgary
before the public referendum on the 2026 winter games. Dempsey also
participated in the IOC’s first “Olympism in Action” forum in 2018, serv-
ing as a panelist on city perspectives. Both Boston anti-Olympics groups
have keep their websites and documents available to serve as resources
for others.
NOlympics LA, by virtue of a decade long wait for the Olympics, is
working with anti-Olympics groups in various ways. As in Chicago and
Boston, the LA anti-Olympics opposition has been in contact with its pre-
decessors in Chicago, Boston, Rio de Janeiro, London, and PyeongChang,
and with their contemporaries in Tokyo and Paris. NOlympics LA is pro-
moting an anti-Olympics counter narrative locally in Los Angeles and sup-
ports similar efforts in other Olympic cities. In LA, anti-Olympics
opponents have linked actions across several functional areas such as seek-
ing safe urban habitability, rethinking policing, and exposing the lack of
government accountability. The hashtag #NoOlympicsAnywhere repre-
sents an effort to establish a transnational social justice network (Boykoff
2020; Robertson 2019). As a step in this direction, NOlympics LA estab-
lished a website, OlympicsWatch (modeled on the RioOnWatch site), that
is a transnational archive of content and ideas challenging the IOC narra-
tive and boosters’ claims. This website has documented the approaches
and activities of anti-Olympics groups’ counter-narratives in contempo-
rary Olympic cities including Tokyo, Paris, and LA. This website is
intended to make it easier for other anti-Olympics opposition groups to
access and understand the approaches taken and the challenges faced.
The OlympicsWatch website also serves to highlight ongoing transna-
tional organizing. In July 2019, to mark the one-year-to-go official com-
memoration, a week long anti-Olympics transnational summit was
organized and held in Tokyo, attended by community organizers and
activists from Tokyo, Los Angeles, Paris, Rio de Janeiro, PyeongChang,
and others. It consisted of a variety of events and activities, kicking off
with a symposium featuring Jules Boykoff and Japanese academics, fol-
lowed up by a tour of Fukushima, and a Tokyo picnic to establish
camaraderie. A number of activities unfolded as attendees participated in

street actions, educational events that included participation by people
displaced by Tokyo 2020, and sessions on strategies and tactics. In
November 2019, a contingent of anti-Olympics organizers from Tokyo
visited Los Angeles. In 2020, several transnational teach-ins were hosted
by NOlympics LA which featured organizers from PyeongChang, Tokyo,
Paris, London, and LA. These activities aimed to provide a foundation for
transnationalizing anti-Olympics opposition and community organizing
and to show how to mobilize for and take action.
Conclusion
We began by stating that sport reveals choices in communities. Choosing
Olympic sport, as seen through the perspectives of anti-Olympics com-
munity organizers, has favored pro-growth interests and privileged the
types of large-scale amenity and luxury real estate projects in the intensifi-
cation of land use in the urban cores of Olympic cities. This policy path
organizes certain interests into the policy making process and automati-
cally gives them political agency while leaving other interests out, disem-
powering them and subjecting them to the dictates of political power. In
cities, this exclusion has a spatial correlate. Choosing Olympic sport has
illuminated spaces of institutional weakness where a counter-narrative can
be launched. This counter-narrative is focused on social justice values
driven by resistance to these market-based politics and policy outcomes.
The significance of the recent anti-Olympics contestation has been
acknowledged by the IOC, leading to changes in the bid process and a less
strident tone in public relations, national Olympic committee processes,
and ultimately by local bid committees. Reflecting on the experiences con-
testing the 2016 Olympics, Talbot (2019) identified five lessons from the
anti-Olympics opposition in Rio de Janeiro: embrace a diversity of tactics;
work together to show the “recipe for destruction;” data are your friends;
internationalize everything; and support those who suffer from the impacts
of Olympic-led development. Taken together, the lessons offer a deeper
awareness of policy choices and their consequences, and then ask whether
a democratic society should include those who are less well-off the oppor-
tunities to participate in decisions that affect their future.
These lessons were evident in anti-Olympics tactics utilized in all three
cities we examined. Indeed, we seem to be on the brink of continuous
contestation forged through transnational organizing supported by a
loose network of anti-Olympics groups whose opposition is calling out the

contradictions, distortions, and deficiencies of state power courtesy of
implementing the IOC’s model of global sport. This loose network is
coming together through hard work and the use of technology to over-
come the challenges of time and distance. The anti-Olympics opposition
questions the material as well as the symbolic and rhetorical value of build-
ing the Olympic city in Chicago, Boston, and currently in Los Angeles. In
each city, anti-Olympics groups questioned whether promises of widely
spread benefits promised by boosters and bid committees could be real-
ized or whether they were ephemeral. The successes of anti-Olympics con-
testations are attributed to building broad public political awareness of the
sociospatial inequalities in each city, including the lack of policy access,
increased economic and environmental dispossession, declining habitabil-
ity, diminishing public space, and the repressive effects of intensive surveil-
lance and policing methods on residents. Their approaches have been
grounded in research and based on official data and available information,
including about the IOC’s track record in previous Olympic cities and the
past performance of the public authorities in each city for similar projects.
The opposition groups ask what is being given up, and by whom, in order
to host the Olympic games. Thus, the first step of contestation is describ-
ing the urban world as it is. In so doing, the anti-Olympics community
organizers ask residents to think about and participate in the processes to
create the Olympic city. Anti-Olympics opponents invoked right to the
city claims grounded in the normative orientation of social justice values
as a basis for seeing how the right to the city is not, and has not been,
extended to all the people. In these ways, contestation represents a path
toward expressing political agency, regaining rights of membership and
constitutive participation. Invoking the popular imagination in this way
calls for seeing and naming alternate urban futures for all, not just as a way
of informing or reforming planning processes or for demanding local
options within the scope of market-oriented austerity urbanism (Peck
2015; Fainstein 2016). The popular imagination can be a source of trans-
formative change, although this certainly is not automatic nor is the nor-
mative orientation necessarily progressive.
In his assessment of the explosion of spontaneity in Paris of May 1968,
Lefebvre (1969) cautioned that many of our privileged institutions lagged
behind the changes occurring in society. The cumulative effect of these
lags produces responses that veil, blur, or reduce the contradictions, but
do not resolve them so the distortions and disparities are experienced in
everyday urban life. As the anti-Olympics opposition has demonstrated,

hosting the Olympics does not produce policy choices or urban outcomes
that take any steps toward resolving existing sociospatial inequalities, but
instead will accelerate and exacerbate them. On the surface, the recent
anti-Olympics protests are small scale, localized endeavors. But if the suc-
cesses in streets can be linked across cities, this provides a hopeful sign
because it is at the local level where people can take action and see results
on the ground. Still, making a difference is a challenging prospect because
the inequalities at the heart of anti-Olympics contestation are deeply
rooted and interdependent. Connecting struggles across cities requires
analysis and strategy: being open to seeing, hearing, and accepting the
struggle of others as your own is a first step on this path. Following
Lefebvre (1969), we end with the observation that any new normative
orientation has to be process-oriented and open to the confusion, disor-
der, and challenges of involving the interests of “the people,” who also
need to be present.
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Index
NUMBERS AND SYMBOLS C

1932 Olympics, 71 Chicago, city of, 3, 23–39, 76, 90–92,
1984 Olympics, 71, 78 96, 98, 99, 101, 104, 106
2024 Olympic bid, 45–61, 71–75, 94 Chicago 2016 bid committee, 31, 38
2028 Olympic games, 82 Cohn, Jonathan, 53, 54, 56, 59–61
Coleman, Jonny, 77, 80
A
Agenda 2020, 7, 8, 10, 52, 71, 73 D
Anti-Olympics activism, 76, 78, 80, 95 Dempsey, Chris, 10, 11, 48, 49,
Anti-Olympics counter narrative 51–55, 57, 59, 104
(deficit of democracy, sociospatial Dinopoulos, Corey, 48
inequalities and the IOC), 2, 100
F
B “Fast activism” (Lauermann and
Baker, Charlie (Governor), 51, Vogelpohl), 94, 95
56–58 Fish, John, 48–50
Big Dig, 46 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
Boston, city of, 3, 7, 8, 35, 45–61, 71, public records request (police
72, 76, 90–92, 94, 96–99, spying; Olympic bid
102–104, 106 documentation), 33, 55, 56,
Boston 2024 bid committee, 55 79, 97, 100
Boykoff, Jules, 11, 14, 79, 91, 104 Friedman, Spike, 79

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5094-9
112 INDEX
G No Boston Olympics
Garcetti, Eric (Mayor), 70, 72, 77, 78 No Boston Olympics website, 103
Gentrification, 25, 30, 31, 36, 46, 60, transnational anti-Olympics
77, 81, 90, 92, 93, 97, 101 organizing, 59
Gossett, Kelley, 53, 57, 59 No Boston 2024
direct action (protests, rallies,
community events), 55
I Freedom of Information Act
International Olympic Committee (FOIA) public records request
(IOC), 2–13, 28–30, 32–37, 39, (police spying), 55
50–52, 56, 57, 59, 60, 71–79, media strategy, 54–56, 60–61, 99
81, 82, 90–92, 95–98, social media, 56
100, 103–106 transnational anti-Olympics
organizing, 103
website, 56, 59
J No Games Chicago (NGC)
Jacks, Robin, 54, 59–61 Book of Evidence, 34
direct action (protests, rallies,
community events), 32, 35,
K 102, 103
Kerr, Liam, 53, 54, 57 Freedom of Information Act
(FOIA) public records request
(police spying), 33
L media strategy, 32
Lefebvre, Henri, 3, 13–16, 91, 106, 107 NGC website, 32, 33, 37, 38
London 2012 dissent (Giulianotti public opinion surveys, 34
et al.), 93 transnational anti-Olympics
Los Angeles, 3, 7, 9, 50, 51, 68–83, organizing, 35, 39, 103
90–92, 96, 98, 99, 101–106 NOlympics LA
Los Angeles bid committee (Los analysis (public opinion survey;
Angeles 2024 Exploratory resources on webpage), 79
committee, LA24, LA28), direct actions (rallies, protests,
68–83, 101 disruptions), 78
media strategy (social media), 78
organizing (coalition partners, social
M justice), 76, 79, 83, 104
“Mega-event syndrome” (Müller), 92 transnational anti-Olympics
organizing (transnational
teach-ins,
N #NoOlympicsAnywhere), 78,
Neoliberal, 15, 23, 25, 26, 82, 93 80, 81, 104, 105
New Norm, 9, 13 website, 76, 77, 104
INDEX 113
O S
Occupy Boston, 47, 60, 61 Shaw, Chris, 31–33, 103
Olympic bids Social justice, 14, 38, 82, 83, 102–106
commercialization, 91, 96 Sociospatial inequalities, 2, 31, 75, 91,
gigantism, 37, 91 102, 106, 107
institutional weakness, 13, 95 Southern California Committee for the
legacy, 13, 36, 91, 96, 97 Olympic Games
sustainability, 13, 91 (SCCOG), 71–73
Olympic Charter, 5, 6, 10, 96
Olympic games
bidding for, 11, 32, 55, 71, 96 T
hosting (host city; Olympic Tokyo 2020, 77, 79, 105
city), 3, 5–13, 15, 30, Tresser, Tom, 32, 34, 35
32–34, 36, 37, 39, 51,
56, 58, 76, 77, 81, 82,
92, 94–106 U
Orchier, Anne, 81, 83 United States Olympic Committee
(USOC)/United States Olympic
& Paralympic Committee
P (USOPC), 6, 7, 27, 29, 36,
Public opinion, 10, 58, 59 48–61, 71–74, 91
Q V
Quellos, Bob, 30, 31, 33–37 Vancouver 2010 Olympics, 35
Villaraigosa, Antonio, 70
R
Reddy, Eric, 48, 50 W
Redevelopment, 25, 28, 46, Walsh, Marty (Boston Mayor), 47,
53, 69, 70, 81, 90, 91, 93, 49–51, 60
96, 98
Right to the city (Lefebvre), 13, 15,
37, 75, 79, 83, 92, 95, Z
101–103, 106 Zimbalist, Andrew, 2, 9, 11, 12, 48,
Robertson, Cerianne, 79, 80, 49, 51–55, 57, 59, 104
82, 83, 104 Zirin, Dave, 30, 57, 103

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MEGA EVENT PLANNING

SERIES EDITOR: EVA KASSENS-NOOR

Contesting the Olympics

More information about this series at

ISSN 2633-5859 ISSN 2633-5867 (electronic)

1 Cities and the Olympics in Urban Politics 1

2 Chicago 2016 Olympic Bid and Opposition 23

3 Boston 2024 Olympic Bid and Opposition 45

4 Los Angeles 2024 Bid and 2028 Opposition 67

Contesting the 2028 Olympics 75

5 Anti-Olympics Protest as a Political Legacy 89

Greg Andranovich attended his first year of college at Boğaziçi University

Cities and the Olympics in Urban Politics

Abstract This chapter examines policy choices by taking a closer look at

Keywords Agenda 2020 • IOC • Mega-event strategy • Olympic bids

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

postponement of the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Summer Games for at least a

individualism, self-reliance, and the sanctity of private property rights

Mega-Events and Cities

The staging of the Games is an extraordinary undertaking for any city,

• 45,000 hotel rooms.

• An international airport that can handle thousands of international

While the Games require a formidable commitment, they also provide

candidature process. According to the IOC website, the invitation phase

outcomes where residents of Atlanta and Sydney valued emotional out-

Contesting the Mega-Event Strategy

mega-­events facilitate the restructuring of urban space to make it more

2017; Lauermann 2017; Silvestre 2013). These changes introduced a new

recreational opportunities, safe and efficient transportation—are included

counter-narratives, and practices of anti-Olympics opponents. In each city,

Davis, J., and C. Groves. 2019. City/future in the making: Masterplanning

Morgan, L. 2019. Critics will be welcome at Olympism in Action Forum event,

Chicago 2016 Olympic Bid and Opposition

Keywords 2016 Olympic bid • Book of Evidence • Community benefits

Government and Politics in Chicago

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 23

wards, with aldermen elected to four-year terms to represent district resi-

received and the deterioration continued. The terrorist attacks of

The 2016 Olympic Bid

In the period 2006–2009, Chicago bid to host the 2016 Olympic

$400 million stadium would be a temporary structure capable of seating

Contesting the Olympic Bid

infrastructures of housing, schools and hospitals, and question the mayor’s

In the week before the IOC selection meeting in Copenhagen, NGC

The Meaning of Opposition to the Chicago

dedicated organizers, motivated by social justice concerns in their city.

Boston 2024 Olympic Bid and Opposition

Keywords No Boston 2024 • No Boston Olympics • Public debates •

Government and Politics in Boston

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 45

city had a long period of regime-based urban redevelopment (Mollenkopf

of the Inspector General 2001). One manifestation of the lack of trust in

Boston’s Bid for the 2024 Olympics

embrace it in order to create connections with the Boston business com-

By the end of October 2013, the Massachusetts legislature had passed

and Lauermann 2018; Lauermann 2016). Several matters helped raise

Contesting the Olympic Bid

2015). These FOIA requests served multiple purposes. Results could be

Table 3.1 Boston Area Public Opinion for 2024 Olympics

Support 51% 44% 36% 40% 40%

The Meaning of Opposition to the Boston

This style of contestation was effective in part because the groups

Los Angeles 2024 Bid and 2028 Opposition

1 Cities and the Olympics in Urban Politics 1

2 Chicago 2016 Olympic Bid and Opposition 23

3 Boston 2024 Olympic Bid and Opposition 45

4 Los Angeles 2024 Bid and 2028 Opposition 67

Contesting the 2028 Olympics 75

5 Anti-Olympics Protest as a Political Legacy 89

mega-events facilitate the restructuring of urban space to make it more