Today is day 4 (or 5, if you want to get technical on me) of the 2010 Winter Olympics, which are happening in my beloved hometown of Vancouver, BC. Personally I have some mixed feelings about this, but more importantly, there’s a significant amount of protesting going on in the streets of downtown Vancouver, and I’ve been hearing a lot of discrediting of the protesters. They’ve been written off with sentiments such as: they should “fuck off” because they are not “credible”, or they should spend their money on more useful things, or simply that it (protesting) is a waste of time and they should just enjoy the party because it isn’t going to go away.
This is significant: To say that protesting is a waste of time is to admit that the protesters have a point, but to excuse not listening to them because, well, it’s too late to stop the Olympics. Ok, yes the Olympics are not going to go away. But does that mean we should stop pressuring our government to make better decisions in the future? Should we just forget about it and pretend like everything is just dandy because the party was a success? The Olympics are going to be over in a few short weeks and our 7 billion dollars is non-refundable, but that doesn’t mean it is too late to do something about BC’s abysmal child poverty rate, or homelessness, or unresolved land claims or anything else the protesters want you to know about.
The point of protesting is to change future government action: the protesters are not unrealistic. They are not looking to harm the athletes, nor are they looking to stop the olympics in their tracks, because they know as well as you and me that it is simply not going to happen. Putting aside the window-smashing crowd, there are several very credible organized groups of protesters, such as the Poverty Olympics and the Red Tent Campaign that have some very realistic, and really not all that radical, demands.
Above all, even if you disagree with their aims, the fact remains that the protesters absolutely have the right to be there to express their views, and no one can rightfully take that away from them. We should all be glad we live in a country where this right is guaranteed. Is that not much more important than a two-week party?
I’m not judging anyone who’s watching the Olympics. In fact, I’ve done a bit of watching myself. But let’s remember what we really should be proud of: a country that is not perfect, but one that allows us to voice our grievances peacefully, and one that we are capable of making better.
