“We want these to be the last Olympics”, say opponents of the Olympics
A Sixty demonstrators opposed to the Olympic Games or opposed to projects linked to the Paris 2024 Olympic Games mobilized on Sunday December 11 in front of the Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games (Cojo), on the border of Saint-Denis and Aubervilliers. A mobilization at the initiative of Saccage 2024, a collective which brings together associations and inhabitants of Seine Saint Denis. This gathering was organized on the eve of the presentation of the new budget of the Board of Directors of the Cojo, a reassessed budget with a 10% increasei.e. an additional 400 million euros, partly financed by the State and local authorities.
Among the demonstrators, many inhabitants of Seine-Saint-Denis like Hamid Ouidir, member of the 2024 Olympics committee and parent of a student elected in the department. He has been closely following one of the big problematic files in Saint-Denis for 4 years: the construction of motorway ramps at the Pleyel crossroadsall around the school group of 600 students. “We will have 12 to 13,000 vehicles per day on the elementary side and 13 to 14,000 vehicles on the kindergarten side”, he protests. “There is still a problem of pollution and public health. The Olympic Games catalyze this project and as they have deadlines, we forget the health of hundreds of children.”
With regard to sports equipment, despite all the developments and works in Seine-Saint-Denis the inhabitants could not benefit from it according to Ysé de Saccage 2024: “Obviously the communities cannot maintain them because these infrastructures such as the aquatic center are made for athletes and are oversized”, he said.
“That the Olympics persist, it is not possible”
The associations represent are sounding the alarm on the gentrification of the department, the concretization, the public money also used but the working conditions of workers on construction sites. “We want to pay tribute to the workers on the construction sites of the World Cup in Qatar, explains Nora from Rampage 2024, because it’s the same mechanism on the Olympic Games”. “The Olympic Games are based on the work of people without papers and there have been a lot of accidents for two years.”
Activists recognize that their room for maneuver is limited for Paris 2024 but plan for the next editions: “We want these to be the last Olympics”Nora adds. “That the Olympics persist if only for the environmental situation in which we are, it is just not possible”, she concluded.