Setting the Record Straight on Violent Protest and the Olympics

Nat Marshik
Feb 7th, 2010
Vancouver Observer

“Will you go on record denouncing violent protest?”

You can bet that any member of the Olympic Resistance Network, and most anyone publicly opposed to the Olympics, has heard that question at least once -- whether it's from newscasters, neighbors, family, or co-workers. In the lead-up to the Anti-Olympic Convergence in Vancouver this February, it's understandable that people want some solid answers.

Unfortunately, they are asking trick questions.

The concept of violent protest is linguistic smoke and mirrors. Not only are most so-called “violent protests” actually instances of police violence, but the term “violent protest” has been over-used by headline-hungry media to the point of meaninglessness. Ask someone to define it and they hem and haw. Some will point to images of black-clad youth with covered faces, shouting slogans in the streets. People like Liberal MLA Harry Bloy will point to “noisy” and “inconvenient” demonstrations like the one at the Victoria Torch Relay kick-off, and will throw in the moniker “terrorist” for good measure.

Others speak anxiously of property destruction, dragging out the tired broken-windows cliché (a rarity at most demonstrations). At best, someone might dig up an example, like the smattering of anonymous arson attacks against the unoccupied buildings of RBC, an Olympic sponsor and financier of the Alberta Tar Sands.

The greatest commonality between these remarkably diverse scenarios is perhaps the fact that in none of them did protesters target human or animal life. This begs the question: What really constitutes violence, and which kinds of violence go unnamed? Ironically, groups like the Olympic Resistance Network oppose the Olympic industry precisely because the Olympics are destructive, violent and disruptive. While the corporate media trumpets headlines about possible “protester violence” as an apologia for police repression, the real perpetrators of violence fly right under the radar.

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