Maybe protest begins at home

Writing in Counterpunch, Dave Zirin recalls the historic Olympic protests of 1968 and contrasts the statements made by Tommie Smith and John Carlos to the protests of present day Olympic athletes:

... while I support the right of any athlete to speak out and not be silenced by Olympic bureaucrats to make things pleasant for China's rulers, we should also look critically at what it is that people are protesting.

It speaks to a far different set of concerns than those represented by Tommie Smith, John Carlos and the Olympic Project for Human Rights.

Smith and Carlos came to Mexico City to raise awareness about injustices happening in their own country. They wore no shoes on the stand to protest poverty in the United States. They wore beads to protest lynching in the United States. They wore gloves and raised them during the playing of the anthem to signify dissent against the way the African American Olympic athletes were treated. As they said in their founding statement, "Why should we run in Mexico City only to crawl home?"

Yet none of this 2008 crop of athletes is daring to say that maybe protest begins at home. They are raising concerns about China's policies in Tibet or Darfur, but not the U.S. wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. There are concerns about China's labor standards, but not the way their own sponsors, like Nike, exploit those standards.