A press release from the 2016 Committee dated May 1 boasts that an “Unprecedented Chicago-Area Participation Expected for Olympic Week in America.” The press release goes on: More than 230,000 Chicago-area students and 15,000 teachers are gearing up for Olympic Week in America, which will take place next week, May 4–May 8. The 700 percent …
Jake Tapper is ABC News senior White House correspondent. He broke this story on his blog: On Friday night, the White House posted on its website a special ethics waiver allowing senior adviser Valerie Jarrett to lead the White House’s efforts to bring the 2016 Olympics to Chicago. Jarrett had previously served as Vice Chair …
The Chicago Tribune reported today that Michael Scott, the President of the Chicago Public School’s Board of Education, sent an email to ALL of the city’s public schools urging them all to plan events at their schools to promote the 2016 bid. Scott is also a member of the 2016 Committee and the co-chair of …
A member of the No Games Chicago Coalition visited a public high school history class on Thursday, April 30. The students were studying the Olympic bid process. They had one large, over-arching question: “What will be the impact of the Olympic Games on the poor, working class and people of color?” Here is the complete …
Simon Jenkins writes in the London Guardian, ” Any fool can raise a tax. But it takes a gutless one to splurge it on this stuff. Austerity vanishes when it comes to the prestige projects saddled on Britain. Ministers fear the IOC more than the IMF.” He writes at the witless and seemingly endless river …
Lynn Becker writes in the April 23rd Chicago Reader that the bulldozers are coming to the Michael Reese Hospital campus. On June 4, Mayor Daley will be recognized by the National Building Museum in Washington, D.C., as one of their “Visionaries in Sustainability” for his “long dedication to a sustainable urban environment.” Yet within a …
Not only has the city and pledged hundreds of millions to the games, not only are we promising to destroy priceless public parks and turn acres of land and lakefront over to a private organization, not only are we writing a blank check for security for the games, not only have we spent $86 million …
The New York Times reports today that although the city is $300 million in the red, it is proceeding with plans to purchase the Michael Reese Hospital site and tear it down for the Olympic Village. Just weeks after inspectors with the International Olympic Committee visited here as part of a bid for the 2016 …
Wendell Hutson writes in Wednesday’s Chicago Defender that the IOC Evaluation Commission has takens note of No Games’s objections to holding the 2016 Olympics in Chicago. After meeting with protest groups while visiting Chicago last week, members of the International Olympic Committee’s Evaluation Commission said they are concerned about possible displacement should Chicago win the …
Steve Chapman reports online the results of a recent economic study by scholars from the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. These authors confirm what No Games has said from the beginning, namely that grandiose claims of economic benefits from producing the Olympics is just another soap bubble …