The anti-Olympics group NoBoston2024 is staging two panel discussions in Jamaica Plain on Olympics-related housing and security impacts. Among the speakers is Dave Zirin, the sports editor at the magazine The Nation.
The first event, May 14, 7 p.m. at Hope Central Church, is “Olympic-Sized Displacement: What Boston 2024 Means for Housing Rights.” The topic will be the history of gentrification and displacement sparked by the Olympics in other cities. NoBoston2024 will host a panel with representatives from Black Lives Matter Boston, the Boston Homeless Solidarity Committee and JP-based City Life/Vida Urbana. The moderator will be DigBoston news editor Chris Faraone.
The second event, June 2, 7 p.m. at Hope Central, is “The Olympics: More than a Game,” about such Olympic “legacies” as displacement, police surveillance and militarization. The speakers include Dave Zirin, sports editor at The Nation, and Kade Crockford, director of the Technology for Liberty Project at the ACLU of Massachusetts.
Zirin is also the author of “Brazil’s Dance with the Devil: The World Cup, The Olympics, and the Struggle for Democracy.” He has been a critic of the Boston 2024 bid and earlier this year had NoBoston2024 members Jonathan Cohn and Robin Jacks write an article about it for The Nation.
“Dave reached out to us and offered to come,” Jacks, a JP resident, told the Gazette. “He has been following our city’s struggle against the Olympics since before NoBoston2024 was formed. Kade is concerned about security measures taken during past Olympics and has written about it, so we asked Kade to present.”
“We hope [the event] will give Bostonians more information about the huge risks of hosting an Olympics here,” she said.
NoBoston2024—which then did not have a formal name—held the first public community meeting about the Olympics bid, which happened in JP in November. The group has been active on social media as well, especially through its @no_boston2024 Twitter account.
Hope Central Church is located at 85 Seaverns Ave. in Sumner Hill.
For more information about the group and the events, see facebook.com/NoBoston2024.