Paris activists prepare to boycott the 2024 Olympics

The idea is simple, and legal: as the Olympic Committee launches its campaign to sign up 45,000 volunteers for the Paris 2024 Games, activists seek to disrupt their organization with bogus volunteer applications.

The campaign, open until May 3, is denounced by activists, who point out that the thousands of volunteers without accommodation and barely paid will be asked to be “available for at least 10 days” during the summer of 2024, the period in which who may be hired up to 10 hours a day and 48 hours a week, according to the letter published by the Olympic Committee.

“Alice”, 33 years old, is one of these “false volunteers”, the number of which is difficult to estimate. She comes from a “sports background” and is an organizer of various sporting events. She relies on the strength of her candidacy to get recruited. If she succeeds, she still hasn’t decided between “withdrawing at the last moment”, going on a “strike” or taking advantage of the presence of cameras from all over the world to attempt a media action. She affirms that clearly the volunteers will not have “any permanent legal relationship of subordination”, essential in France to establish an employment contract and the scope of the tasks that will be assigned to them disturbs her.

“I find it shameful that, with a budget of 8.8 billion euros, the Olympic Games resort to volunteers and ask them to get so involved,” he argued. “It is a job close to the occult, and I want to contribute to disrupting these Games , which are problematic at all levels, be it in social, economic, security or environmental terms,” ​​he added.

“The Games are accelerators of destruction.”

Their discomfort is shared by the Saccage 2024 collective, created in November 2020 and which brings together residents of Seine-Saint-Denis to denounce the degradation caused by competition in the area.

“For us”, says “Clément”, a member of the collective that regularly organizes public meetings and demonstrations, “the Games are accelerators of destruction. Under the guise of collective jubilation, they allow the approval of security laws, such as the one adopted on Wednesday, the destruction of green spaces and the acceleration of gentrification processes that will not benefit the inhabitants of Seine-Saint-Denis. And this despite the fact that this department, which will host a large part of the facilities and events of the Games, is the poorest in metropolitan France”.

The activist also protests the working conditions of the workers employed in these works, some of whom are undocumented. According to him, the call for false volunteers “is not so much a form of sabotage but rather a way of making a dissenting voice heard, while the authorities, such as the Olympic Committee, highlight the benefits obtained by holding the Games in Paris.” and Seine-Saint-Denis”.

“We want to denounce that the Olympic Games are a private brand, a for-profit organization with sponsors, which uses a lot of public money and volunteers. It’s outrageous, and it’s done under the guise of Olympic values, but in reality it’s hypocritical, individualistic and competitive. We’re told it’s a ‘great human adventure,’ but nothing happens,” he added.

completed works

The various Olympic works in progress in Seine-Saint-Denis are, for some, the object of local resistance. Since 2017, the residents of the city of Saint-Denis, which will host the athletes’ village and various sporting events, have created a “vigilance committee” and organized “toxic tours” that lead the various Olympic works to denounce their ecological impact. .

Cécile Gintrac, one of its spokespersons, is particularly concerned about the impact the Games will have on her city, where two neighborhoods are currently being built to host the sporting event.

“The Games will transform Saint-Denis and worsen an already deteriorated situation from an environmental point of view,” says this geography teacher. The neighborhoods under construction, which must survive the Olympics to accommodate the new inhabitants, lack green spaces and they are sandwiched between major road axes.As much as they promote the use of ecological materials, despite all the money invested, the legacy of the Olympics risks being detrimental to the population.

administrative inquiries

For Arthur, a member of Saccage 2024, in addition to having “anti-environmental” consequences, the argument in favor of the Olympics on job creation and the revitalization of territories has no foundation.

“The jobs created for the Olympics are precarious and short-lived,” he says, “and the massive use of volunteers adds another layer. We know there won’t be 45,000 fake volunteers for the Olympics, but this campaign encourages people to act at their own level, while also sending a message to the organizers.”

The organizing committee for the Olympic Games seems to have realized the threat posed by false applications. The organizers affirm that, although the “mobilization process must guarantee the sincerity of the commitment of the candidates” and their “adherence to the project and the values ​​of Paris-2024”, the accredited volunteers will be subject to a “prior administrative investigation” to avoid the risk of sabotage.

It is also planned to hire a team of extra volunteers, who will be mobilized in case there are too many false applications.

*Some names have been changed for security

This article is adapted from the original report by Lou Roméo for France 24 in French