As the city develops the South and West Sides in the hopes of winning its bid for the 2016 Olympic Summer Games, the Communities for an Equitable Olympics [1] (CEO 2016) rallied today to ensure every Chicagoan will benefit.
Members of CEO 2016, the newly formed coalition of Chicago community groups and labor organizations, held the rally to encourage the city to enter into a community-based benefits agreement that would protect housing and jobs for low-income families.
CEO 2016 is not opposed to Chicago’s Olympic bid, but fears that low-income residents will be priced out of the neighborhoods in which the Olympics will be held and not share in the economic benefits that the Summer Games could bring to the city.
“We are here today to break new ground in the city of Chicago to create the political will that it will take to make sure that the people that are here when the Olympics start are the people that are here when the Olympics are done,” said Jay Travis, the executive director of Kenwood Oaklawn Community Organization (KOCO) and CEO 2016.
To highlight their concerns, CEO 2016 held its rally at the historic Michael Reese Hospital [2], which recently announced that it will be demolished [3] and redeveloped as an Olympic Village for the 2016 games.
Beneath an old hospital Emergency sign, Joe Smith, a member of CEO 2016, said that competing for the Olympics “will be a great opportunity to showcase our city to the world, but residents of these communities must not be an afterthought as we rush for the gold.”
Smith’s concerns are based on the past experiences of cities that have hosted the games. A 2007 study [4] by the Chicago Urban League, for example, found that both the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles and the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta resulted in the loss of low-wage jobs and destruction of housing for low-income people.
CEO 2016’s attempt to secure a community-based benefits agreement with the city is unprecedented.
Even if the city fails in its bid, CEO 2016 leaders fear that the bidding process will be used to speed up gentrification and school closings that are already taking place in the South and West Side of the city.
“What people don’t realize about the Olympics,” said Jitu Brown, an organizer for KOCO and CEO 2016, “is that it can be used as a tool to eliminate a population that the city doesn’t want here right now because of what they say the land value is.”
South Side [5] resident Dollie Perkins-Moore, who is also a leader with KOCO, agrees.
“Right now there is no place for us as a whole to even be a part of this," she said. "How can you bring the Olympics here when my boys go to Doolittle Elementary School, and they don’t have a computer lab, they don’t have a music room? The Olympics is not going to do anything for my boys right now. I need a computer lab, I need a music room, a library – we have none of that on 35th street.”
Brown said he is hopeful that the publicity of the city’s Olympic bid and CEO 2016 organizing efforts will bring attention to what is happening on the South and West Side of Chicago and create the conditions for change.
“We believe that this is an opportunity,” he said. “We recognize that it’s very important that Chicago get the bid. We support Chicago getting the bid, but not on our backs.”