Outside of the odd professional piece, graffiti is usually pretty immature. Whether it’s some wanna-be gangster scrawling his one word moniker on the side of a dumpster or a particularly committed pervert drawing a lewd sketch of a woman on the inside of a bathroom stall, tagging most often appeals to the lowest common denominator. But no piece of clan nomenclature or illustration of an excessively nymphomaniac lady is more poorly thought out or shamelessly attention seeking as this mantra I see popping up all over town.
Riot 2010.
For those of you not in the know, Riot 2010 is the latest trendy movement to name drop to “ooo’s” and “aaah’s” around those hovering well below the poverty line. Like its older sibling, Resist 2010, the motive is as clear as it is ridiculous. Simply put: they seek to ruin our fun.
Ok, we get it, prospective rioter: you’re still upset over the forthcoming Olympics. They have indeed gone far over budget. They will certainly continue to direct funds away from social causes. And yes, Natives are still getting a raw deal. We don’t all like sports. You have every right to feel that the Olympic games will be an abysmal failure that may take decades from which to recover.
The problem is, you lost the ability to “resist” anything to do with the games over six years ago.
Prior to that fateful July afternoon in 2003 where the International Olympic Committee decided once and for all that Vancouver was, in fact, cooler than Pyeongchang, there was a fair amount of action taken in opposition to Olympic bid. Anti-Olympic rallies competed for attention against their boosting adversaries, while many demanded via petition or protest that a public referendum be held on the matter. It was a fine effort that, as we all know, failed miserably to convince anyone in a Liberal seat to scrape off his or her “Backing the Bid!” bumper stickers.
At this point, any reasonable Olympic hater should have heeded their mother’s timeless advice that when one is given lemons, it is best to make lemonade. Our riot crowd unfortunately seems to prefer to vandalize the lemon tree, cut it down, light it on fire then urinate on it for not providing better care for the homeless.
Perhaps that analogy was a little stretched.
The point is, taking drastic action against the Olympics at this point offers absolutely no benefit to anyone and just comes off as sour grapes. The expensive venues whose construction you opposed as the money could be better spent on health care? They’ve already been built. The widening of the Sea-to-Sky highway that you fought so hard to stop from damaging the environment? It’s done. The six billion dollars of your hard earned cash that’s necessary to fund the games as a whole? Spent. It’s difficult to understand how one could fail to grasp this sense of finality.
If you are outraged at the irresponsible government spending that these games have elicited, than there is no action more hypocritical one could take than causing thousands of dollars of property damage by rioting. Even if you are furious about the social consequences of the Olympics, you only risk doing more harm by endangering innocent people through violent protest. We are under six months away from the entire world turning its attention to us, so do us a favor, rioting hopeful.
Don’t.
//Jordan Potter
Opinions Editor
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