Editor’s Note:
The following is a copy of a communique released by the Olympic Resistance Network (ORN) prior to the start of the RBC and Coca-Cola sponsored Olympic Torch Relay, which called on activists across Canada to mobilize and organize protests as the torch passed through their towns, cities and communities. As the following pages will show, the call was answered by people all across this country - with many of the grievances outlined in this document echoed in cities from Victoria to Montreal. Iconoclast congratulates all those who took the time to organize and participate in these protests, which were often maligned or ignored by the country’s corporate media outlets, led by CTVglobemedia (owners of the Globe and Mail and a large number of Canadian television stations) - themselves an important Olympic sponsor.
CALL FOR CROSS-CANADA MOBILIZING:
EXTINGUISH THE OLYMPIC TORCH!
From October 31 2009 - February 12 2010, the Olympic Torch Relay “A Path of Northern Lights” will be traveling across Canada. The Olympic Resistance Network, based in Vancouver, Unceded Coast Salish Territories, is calling on and encouraging our allies to coordinate efforts in over 2000 communities to oppose and resist the Torch Relay.
The origins of the Torch Relay lie in the dark history of the 1936 Games in Berlin, where it was devised as a means to spread Nazi fascism and to promote the Third Reich. The Royal Bank of Canada and Coca Cola are the main sponsors of the 2010 Torch relay. RBC is the top financier of the environmentally devastating Alberta Tar Sands, while Coca Cola has been responsible for health degradation as part of the junk food industry, massive depletion of groundwater and toxic waste pollution in India, and involved in hiring paramilitary groups to violently repress union organizers in Colombia.
It is becoming increasingly evident that far from being simply about sport, the 2010 Olympics is rooted in displacement, corporate greed, militarization, and repression. While Olympic corporate sponsors are getting bailed out, Indigenous lands are being stolen, more people are becoming homeless, thousands are losing their jobs and access to public services, the environment is being destroyed, and civil liberties are being eroded as over a billion dollars are being sunk into security and surveillance measures.
This Torch Relay will be the longest in-country relay in Olympic history, giving us the chance to make some anti-Olympic history! No Olympics on Stolen Native Land!
