Off the field, the most under-discussed story were the people in Paris who paid for the Olympics with their shelter and sense of stability. About 12,500 unhoused and precariously housed people were bused out of the city. Making the city “Olympics ready” meant a “social cleansing”—or what activists from Le Revers de la Médaille (The Other Side of the Medal) called nettoyage social. Some were given shelter; others, their whereabouts are unknown. This was an Olympic-size human rights travesty that deserved more coverage.
Now, attention shifts to Los Angeles, host of the 2028 Summer Games. . . . When we consider the massive number of unhoused and precariously housed people in LA—10 times as many as Paris, according to Mejia—one shudders what the “solutions” will entail, especially with California Governor Gavin Newsom waging his war against homeless encampments.
The Olympics are an inequality machine, supercharging all the problems that already exist in the host city. Los Angeles brings Hollywood glitz and glamor but also homelessness, displacement, racialized policing, and a changing environment. If there is one lesson to learn from Paris it is this: Be sober-minded about hosting the Games, don’t drink the Kool-Aid, and definitely do not wait until 2027 to start organizing. There are already activists from NOlympicsLA doing grassroots activism. People should join their efforts to make sure that the most marginalized populations don’t pay the highest price for the next Games.
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