The Olympic Games are both target and backdrop for protesters this February.
On the U campus, activists’ plans peak just as the Games commence. For several days prior to Feb. 8, Orson Spencer Hall will host the Global Justice Conference, which culminates on the day of the Opening Ceremony with a march against poverty.
These events will focus on social and economic justice, a call more or less aimed at the Olympics, according to Amy Hines, Student Green Party member and a representative of the Citizen Activist Network, the organization sponsoring the conference.
The anti-poverty March for Our Lives ends with a rally in Presidents Circle. Here, CAN and the Greens have planned a mock Olympic torch run?weighing down an activist/torchbearer with various products in a protest of the corporatization of the Games.
However, not all groups involved with the conference and the march will share this slant.
“CAN is the only group that is specifically targeting the Olympics, every other group is a single-issue group,” Hines said.
But she sees a definite connection exists between poverty issues and the Olympics funds spent on hosting the Games would be better spent elsewhere.
Cheri Honkala, spokeswoman for the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign, agrees. She said she arrived in Utah to see an enormous amount of tax payers’ dollars spent on Olympic accommodations, parking lots and other frivolities.
“The same time, here in Salt Lake City, I watched a family go into a car to sleep because they could not get into a shelter,” she said.
Some local chapters of the national organization Honkala represents are sending members to join the demonstration.
She’s not sure how many.
“We’re expecting 10 to 10,000,” she said. Members include farmer workers, those in public housing, homeless people and formerly homeless people, like herself.
These visitors will stay in private homes and churches, and will not deplete city resources. And they will not disrupt the Games or linger in town after the Olympics have departed, despite rumors, said Heather Muse, a member of the Philadelphia chapter.
This march is especially timely, according to Honkala, not because of the Olympics, but because the five-year lifetime limit on welfare is approaching, putting more on the streets.
Honkala’s organization will hold events prior to the march, among them a vigil outside University Hospital for those without health insurance workshops during the conference.
The conference will also feature speakers, training, panel discussion, performances and other events.
“Our focus is on educating local people as well as people who come nationally,” Hines said.
U student groups, such as Terra Firma and the Student Organization for Animal Rights, plan to attend.
The Student Labor Action Project?which has yet to become a registered student group?will use the conference as a chance to recruit, said Hines, who helped organize the project.
Not all demonstrations planned center around the conference and march.
Members of Falun Gong, a spiritual practice that originated in China, have several events on the docket.
On Feb. 4, they plan to hold a press conference in the Union to decry their persecution by the Chinese government.
“We want the world to know what is happening in China,” said Sheng Mei, a senior in business and electrical engineering who is involved in organizing the events. “The reason we want to do this is we want to show people what Falun Gong practitioners really are.”
During the Opening Ceremony, Falun Gong plan to hold a candle-light vigil on Foothill Drive. They will also host a free piano concert in Kingsbury Hall on Feb. 15.
Mei shys away from the words “demonstration” or “protest” to describe the plans, saying Falun Gong has no objections to the 2002 Games or future ones.
“We are not against the Chinese government holding the Olympics [in 2008]. All we are against is the viscous persecution,” he said. In the past two years, the Chinese government has tortured more than 350 Falun Gong practitioners to death, according to him.