Boss, Mike Royko's take on Mayor Richard J. Daley, tells how the Machine distracted attention from its first big scandal in 1959 by focusing on making Chicago into "fun town." It was a police scandal when Venetian Night was created. These days, while CPD continues to exhibit shameful behavior and innocent kids are daily being shot and beaten to death, especially in the black neighborhoods, Richard M. Daley is promoting the next big idea for Chicago, the 2016 Olympics. If history is to repeat, it will bring greater police injustice and increased gentrification while mostly benefittng elite corporations. And Daley has Obama sold on it.
Global financial meltdown and looming climate catastrophe, is not enough, reforming healthcare and wars galore is not enough, Daley is dragging Obama to Copenhagen to convince the International Olympic Committee to come to Chicago in 2016.
Do not be like Obama. Do not be distracted. We need sensible, sustainable, infrastructure projects, not more crap from the Chicago Democrat Machine.
David Zirin, sports reporter for The Nation, courtesy of No Games Chicago,
Unless you're part of a corporate elite of a given city that stands to make just insane amounts of money off the real estate development, speculation, or you're with some international conglomerate who wants to use the olympics to sell its products, the Olympics are a lose-lose-lose-lose situation.
As this diary and this diary indicate, residents of Chicago agree.
Zirin explains,
The first great modern Olympics began in 1896, the first great period of empire, the fight to carve up the world,
and I'll add, the beginning of the age of mass consumption.
The running of the torch began in Berlin in 1936 as a way for Nazism to propagandize throughout Europe as the torches journey was made.
Fascism/Nazism: corporate economic ideology characterized by one-party rule (see Chicago, believe it or not). We need to change that paradigm.
As Zirin says,
We need athletic endeavors and international competition a la carte, and without all the budget busting, bombast, and patriotism that now comes with the Olympic games.
The IOC prefers "the push for fascist regalia" to continue, with each successive Olympic needing to dwarf the previous one. Thus, Chicago's plans to construct multiple temporary venues, including one Olympic-sized stadium on top of a historic meadow (note as recently as 2002, Chicago's Soldier Field received one of the largest government contributions in the history of professional sports, and is now dubbed the "Eyesore on the Lake Shore," and was delisted as a National Historic Landmark).
Steve Balkin, teaching economics at Roosevelt University in downtown Chicago, suggests
Chicago should use only existing sporting venues within a 300-mile radius. For example, the massive Pontiac Silverdome, near Detroit, could host the opening ceremony. Chicago could build high-speed rail to Detroit and other co-host cities throughout the Midwest. "It's infrastructure that's already on the books to be built, and it would be used for years," Balkin contended.
The IOC prefers all the events and athletes to be in one place at one time. EARTH TO IOC, WE ARE ALL TOGETHER!
In Daley's own words, in 2004, when asked bout the Olympics
"The Olympics is a construction industry," the mayor scoffed as listeners chuckled . . . They want to build everything new."
Eleven months later, when the Fed's had just accused city officials of scheming to illegally award jobs to political cronies, the Tribune reported that Daley was seriously considering a bid for the 2016 Summer Games.
At a time when global climate catastrophe is looming, we do not need massive projects that lead to nowhere, and distract from the important issues. Do not be distracted by dirty Machine tricks. We need sensible, sustainable, infrastructure projects, not more crap from the Chicago Democrat Machine.