VANCOUVER -- The history of protest at the Olympics is a century-long strand. Ever since the modern Games' beginning, people and groups and countries have used the world's biggest sporting stage to communicate displeasure or refusal. At the 1908 London Games, the United States team wouldn't dip their flag to King Edward VII. "No earthly king," they said. There have been many boycotts over the years, which are protests that a government makes.
But most of the most memorable Olympic protests have been carried out by small and coordinated groups, each set to shake the somber, serious Games out of their self-styled rhythms. There have been black gloves and disruptions of torch relays. Each action carried a message, which usually had to be explained later, out of context. The most deadly of all, when hooded Palestinian operatives descended on the Olympic village at Munich 1972 and stole and killed 11 athletes from Israel. That was a retaliatory protest of Israeli military aggression in their home region.
Thankfully, most Olympic protests have been peaceful; people make their point, and hope that the world at large will change after being notified or reminded about an inequity. A few, though, use violence to put their messages across.
Friday night, as I watched the Opening Ceremonies of Vancouver 2010 on the side of a building, there was a tense standoff just blocks away. Two thousand protesters stood nose to nose with Vancouver police on the other side of the Vancouver Art Gallery, chanting and waving signs. Earlier, demonstrators had blocked the Olympic torch relay, forcing a reroute. We were close enough that some of their signs were planted in the ground where we stood watching the giant screen. Nobody touched them or threw them away; they just looked at them for a second, tried to figure them out, and moved on.
The signs had messages like, "5 RINGS SHACKLE US TO DEBT" or "STOP THE CORPORATE CIRCUS." Some had addresses of websites to check out later, which contain statements like "No Olympics on Stolen Native Land" and instructions on when to show up and where for the next march. Within this resistance are many disparate causes; the only common thread is that they were complaining about issues of dominant finance and military power.
The protests of Friday night were tense but ended without violence. That was not the case with the second wave, which occurred late Saturday morning as I was four kilometers to the southwest at the University of British Columbia trying to get into a women's hockey game. Anarchist demonstrators marched through the city on a rampage, smashing the windows at the Hudson Bay location that serves as the Olympic Superstore. They wore black hoods that unfortunately and sadly recalled the approach of the Black September terrorists of Munich 1972. Vancouver police and Olympic security forces put down the uprising, dispersing the demonstrators and making arrests.
When I got back to downtown Vancouver at 4 p.m., the Olympic Superstore was still selling items by the thousands. So many that a pretty girl stationed near the door had to repeat over the public address system that the only entrance was on the other side of the building. There was a line a block long over there. A line of white vans from "24 Hour Glass" sat along the sidewalk of the south-facing side of "the Bay," and workers were replacing the windows.
Commerce was unencumbered, the Superstore was in full swing, and the window displays that must have inspired the anarchists' righteous anger remained untouched.
But just then, there was a loud eruption of noise from across the street. Approximately 50 riot police in yellow jackets, clear shields and batons wielded, were rushing towards a scene. It was another flareup. There were demonstrators in black, with those unfortunate hoods, trying to execute a sit-in of some sort. Police dragged a few of them away; I noticed that they had white rags pinned to their backs that read, "Legal." Order was restored in less than three minutes, and by the time I crossed the street, all that was left was journalists.
One of the group, who identified himself as "D," told reporters of his earlier detention and complained of "over-responsive" behavior by police.
"Are you an anarchist?" one reporter asked.
"Yes," D. replied.
What the protesters don't seem to realize is the inherent irony in their violent actions. Anarchy is technically the advocation of the abandonment of state, but all the anarchist demonstrations of Vancouver 2010 are doing is perpetuating the need for more of it. If the 2010 Games are shackling Vancouver to debt, a $177 million security budget (split by the national and provincial governments) that has reportedly jumped to nearly $1 billion is definitely a big reason why. All these protests are doing is justifying those enormous expenses, and fail to take into account that the bill for that property damage will be paid by the people. They're also ensuring that future Olympics will enrich the security industry beyond measure. This Olympic Resistance Movement backfired when the first window broke.
Or perhaps this is simply a matter of multiple factions of resistance with different goals, which are all on different pages in terms of how to get their messages across. In that case, this is a grand failure of organization. Either way, there are many non-violent and non-self-congratulatory ways to grab people's attention at the Olympics. One day, long ago, all it took was a black glove.
These folks could aim to capture the imagination of the assembled world instead of get in its way. Demonstrators could, for instance, bring gallons of generic cola into the Olympic Zone and challenge the Coke logo police. Or hold its own Olympics in public places, making satire and mockery of the IOC's self-seriousness. What the protesters are winning is unclear at this point; it's definitely not hearts or minds.
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Sportswriter 
