Earlier this year, as the Olympic flame made its way to China, torch carriers were harassed by activists championing Tibetan independence or protesting what they regarded as Beijing's underwriting of genocide in Sudan. Although routes were modified to minimize the disruption, many protesters broke through security lines and managed to get on television news programs throughout the world.


A pro-Tibetan activist is arrested.
Paris, April 7, 2008
© Getty Images, Inc.

While relatively few activists succeeded in bringing global attention to their causes, many poor people living near Olympic venues failed to attract much attention to theirs. You had to dig deep to unearth stories of Chinese authorities demolishing homes and refusing to offer the residents fair compensation.

Not that such bullying is unique to Beijing 2008. On the contrary, people ill-equipped to stand up for themselves are routinely displaced in pre-games preparations. The worst abuses probably occurred in Seoul in 1988, when nearly a quarter of a million people were displaced, thousands were made homeless, and several--including two children--were killed in a series of demolitions and renovations. But, like today's displaced people in Beijing, the displaced Koreans failed to elicit widespread sympathy. They failed in part because they had little influence on government ministers and little access to the media. But they may also have failed because they lost the battle of narratives.

The demolition of homes near Olympic sites should have made for a compelling narrative, but it was forced to go head to head with what ended up as a more powerful narrative--one based on Seoul's emergence as a prosperous modern city. The presence of poor people in front of the world's cameras would have threatened that modernization narrative. So entire families were hidden away and their stories were suppressed.

This English-language poster is an advertisement for the Seoul Olympics. The white clothes of the athlete and the generally pristine look of the picture suggest wholesome competition. There is no acknowledgement of the people who saw their homes demolished.

Displacement occurred on a smaller scale at the 1984 Los Angeles games, when police repeatedly swept homeless people off the streets. Pretend that it is 1984, and you have been charged with designing an Olympics poster. But your employer is not the International Olympic Committee or the City of Los Angeles. It is, instead, an activist group dedicated to protecting the rights of poor and homeless Americans.

Using Photoshop or a comparable program, transform the poster for Seoul 1988 into a poster for Los Angeles 1984. Then digitally blend in photographs of American poverty (available from SIRS Decades) in a way that calls attention to the suffering of the people harmed in the run-up to the Los Angeles games.