Glenn's little ugly blog

Photo by Leona Shanana

Here's a crazy idea: What if the city of Vancouver and VANOC had officially sanctioned dissenting views and activist events?

It would be a pretty strange and delicate move to make, but I wonder what it would look like if activist events had been included in the Olympic plans. Delicate because they would need to legitimately give the activists the space and respect to reach a real audience, without being deliberately pushed off into a corner somewhere.

Just imagine if VANOC had listened to protest groups and sat down with them to coordinate promotion and safety for their events. They could have included the protests and other activist events in the official event listings, bringing a bigger audience to the events, legitimized them, and made them a safer and more fun time.

I definitely don't mean an allowance for dissent through the use of "free-speech zones" or other schemes that hide protests so far away from the rest of the event that the activists are only talking to themselves. That's what usually happens, and only exacerbates the frustration felt by activists. I also don't mean a government-sanctioned PR presentation of some of these issues.

This idea is probably crazy, and neither group would have likely agreed to it, but sometimes crazy ideas work.

Communities that exist because of geographic boundaries (like a city or neighborhood) are composed of many different people who think and feel many different ways. The residents of Vancouver are not all patriotic sports fans who drink Coke and eat at McDonald's. Even making the slightest effort to present the fullness of Vancouver would have gone a long way to making the Olympics more interesting and true to who and what we really are.

I mean, the protests and events are going to happen anyway. Couldn't we make something more positive out of them?