Comment 38057

By schmadrian (registered) | Posted February 15, 2010 at 20:12:24

"I am not happy with the Pan Am games, as I feel that these dollars for an elite event, could go to other things that are much more needed. I mean we have people starving in our streets."

This sounds like the 'Bread, Not Circuses' consortium in Toronto during the attempts to land the 1996 Olympics. They wanted the energies and monies that were proposed for the Games to instead be applied to the myriad extant social problems. (That would be at least partially be affected by the stimulation, the overspill from the Olympics, converted athlete lodgings for affordable living, etc.) In the end, this effort essentially torpedoed the bid.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not saying 'Athletic competitions at all cost!' I'm saying that wishing that we'd take care of our 'problems' first before doing anything like the Pan-Am or Olympic Games, that the monies 'available' should instead be applied to what grassroots has pointed out...wishing this doesn't make it happen. Life doesn't work this way. (And probably never will.) I want a better world, a more livable world just as much as the next person. But I can't get behind efforts that aren't grounded in reality...so I'm not convinced such wishing actually accomplishes much. The world can be changed. But not in the wholesale ways that some people seem attached to believing.

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