Hundreds Rally & March – “No Games!”
Thanks to the hundreds of No Gamers who showed up and made their voices heard!
Email your pictures from the rally and march to us at nogameschicago@gmail.com.
Were you there? Tell us your comment or reaction to the rally here.
I think we should have the Olympics in Minnesota. There are plenty of possible destinations for the games.
I didn’t know they were going on; if I had, I would have been there!
Have you noticed most of the people in favor of the olympics are from the suburbs?
And if we have so much money, let’s help with my mortgage!
I totally understand the idea of city needs that take priorities before the Games, but the idea of criticizing the Games only on the basis of a theory that if there were no Games there would be more money for Chicago infrastructure is false (since these systemic problems exist in every world major city that do NOT have the Games). It is the kind of incorrect thinking that ultimately leads to the problems we all face in our world: “if only we had more money projected for education, jobs and health care…” The reality is that in capitalism there will and can never be enough money for our needs (while I am not a traditional Marxist, Karl Marx proved this, but the Left still don’t understand this economic fact). This is because the amount of money in the world is always determined by the value of all commodities, and that in turn is determined by how much money exists to spend on them. It is a chicken and egg relationship that leaves millions in the Third World to starve (mostly children) because they don’t have enough money to spend on food. There will never be enough money to clean up the planet because it is being destroyed by a rapacious industrial-capitalist need to develop, develop, and develop, consume, consume and consume, and progress, progress, and progress. The computer you used to write your blog (or I used to type this) was built by an Asian female worker being paid low wages and facing four times the rate of cancer than you or I – why is that any more tolerable than the Games robbing the city of millions of dollars? The human world is a class-based exploitative system that sees people and nature as justifiable fodder for the procurement of money. Simply saying “No Games and we’ll have more money for other things” is naive. I understand the emotional spirit behind your argument but the logic is false. Also, the Olympics is supposed to be about something beyond money. It is supposed to be about upholding a vision of a unified world through sports, in contradistinction to its actual division in the world of politics and economics. Thus, whether Chicago loses hundreds of millions or billions to the Olympics does not phase me one bit. I know that no matter how much the City loses the system will continue as usual, based on wage slavery, poverty for many, stress for all, and a planet going down the toilet that we should be doing much more to protect. Only those deluded that only if spending priorities changed the system would operate more efficiently are likely to support your cause. Only capitalists should worry whether the City loses billions from the Olympics, not ordinary working people. I am actually looking forward to the Olympics coming to Chicago, as it would be amazing to watch a 50K walk coursing through my home town or to talk to Olympic champs from around the world who sacrificed a great deal to excel at their sport. Your argument about money is simply wrong. Money is after all a crap institution too that has done more harm than good – we need LESS of it, not MORE of it. Let the city lose billions, I say! Maybe that would help awaken our population that what we need is a real change in our thinking and in how we live to keep us from extinction.
danny (www.worldsocialism.org)
hmmmm, what happened to the 2,000 people expected to be at the rally? I heard only 200-300 showed up.
I’m really impressed by Danny’s comments on this issue. Those are really important insights that we don’t hear expressed as rule,