The governing BC Liberals decided to come back to work after an extended summer vacation, and in the opening question period, Cariboo North NDP MLA Bob Simpson asked if the $4 million allocated to security for the Olympic Games was going to be enough, given the recent actions at the countdown clock unveiled on Vancouver’s Art Gallery lawn. The Minister of Economic Development, Colin Hansen, responded, “How can the member stand behind this bunch of hooligans?” which was followed by Liberals yelling, “Hooligans! Hooligans!” Simpson tried to respond, “We in this house believe in people’s rights to peaceful protest,” but he was drowned out by Liberal members yelling “Hooligans!” and thumping their desks while Premier Gordon Campbell sat silently in the middle of it all. Smiling.

It’s Monday, February 12, 12 noon, and three years until the opening of the 2010 Olympic games. A crowd gathers for the unveiling of the Omega Countdown Clock near the Vancouver Art Gallery fountain. Police patrol the gallery on horseback. Organizers of the event distribute red balloons, “thunder-sticks,” for the crowd to clap together. Two giant TV screens show shots of athletes, and on the stage is Premier Gordon Campbell, Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan, Stephen Urquhart, President of Omega, John Furlong, President of VANOC, a speaker from the “four host nations,” some Olympic medalists, and several RCMP in red regalia.

Protesters arrive

At that point, other groups cross Georgia Street in a parade of shopping carts and red-and-black helium balloons, waving flags of the first nations. They march onto the gallery lawn, banging noise makers and drums, chanting “Homes Not Games!” and “No Olympics on Stolen Native Land!” Some protesters have brought their own clock, the “Doomsday Clock,” that illustrates a projected rise in homelessness. The Anti-Poverty Committee release their flag, suspended nine meters high in the air with balloons, declaring “Stop 2010!”

Fifty uniformed police march into the fray to intercept the protesters on the muddy lawn, destroy their banner, and release the balloons to float up over the gallery like flags rising into the sky. David Eby, of Pivot Legal services, is on hand and trying to keep mud off his suit. He tells me, “I didn’t think the police had the authority to destroy a banner like that.”

“This is Canada!” a protester yells at the police, “You swore an oath to uphold the constitution of Canada that guarantees us the right to free speech!”

How did we get here?

Some of the protesters, their sign destroyed, walk around the police, and suddenly Gord Hill and David Cunningham from the Anti-Poverty Committee, are standing on the stage looking stunned at having made it up there, only to be hauled off and charged. Then the police get rough.

One really big officer goes through the demonstrators administering open-handed body shots. An older female officer starts smacking demonstrators in the head. People’s arms are twisted and they’re thrown down into the mud. One young girl is grabbed by a bandanna around her neck and thrown to the ground. Officers grab at people’s throats. Mud is everywhere. A plainclothes officer in green comes through with three uniformed officers, a “snatch party”; plainclothes officers identify protesters, seemingly at random, and the police tackle them and carry them away to a paddy wagon flanked by officers on horseback. The volume of the speaker system is turned up to a deafening level, blasting out pre-recorded cheering at the crowd. Kim Kerr, Chief Executive Officer at the Downtown Eastside Residents Association, says to me, “It looks like we’re living in a police state!”

The melee past, Premier Campbell speaks about what strong companies BC has, and what strong sponsors the Olympics have. Mayor Sullivan speaks about getting the Olympic flag in Turin. Musqueam dancers do a warrior dance in full regalia, and the curtain drops to reveal the Omega Countdown Clock.

The ugly clock

The clock is neo-corporate art, like a false idol to the money god of corporate greed. It’s made of tempered glass, stainless steel, processed cedar, and concrete. The timber stands tall like some kind of mutant totem pole bedecked with logos and a dancing neon inukshuk. Neon blue digits count down days, hours, seconds. The unveiling is framed against a backdrop of the Art Gallery’s banner for the Fred Herzog exhibition that runs until May. On the banner is Herzog’s photo of a man walking with his daughter down Pender Street towards Carrall in 1968. Herzog’s image speaks to ethnic diversity, class struggle, and Vancouver’s demolished heritage. It seems strangely juxtaposed, next to this sculpturally incarnate gentrification, Vancouver’s new Countdown idol.

The dignitaries pose quickly for photographs and leave. The protesters back away from the police line. “Oh, we’ll get the clock,” says a masked youth with a microphone, “don’t worry.” The protesters then march to the police station on Main Street, gathering in the back to drum and sing and wait for their comrades to be released from the cells. An older woman drummer says of the demonstration, “This was a wake-up call for everyone to join us against the Olympics and what’s been going on here in Vancouver,” she says. “The Art Gallery lawn was split in two. On one side you had the sheep clapping with their red balloons, and on the other side you had us standing up for the truth, that the public has been lied to about these Olympics.”

Big media side with police accounts

The media coverage of the action favours the police department’s opinions against the Anti Poverty Committee. Michael Smyth and Alan Ferguson’s columns in the Province are predictably anti-activist, just as they’ve spoken against social and human rights activism for years, appearing to copy their columns straight out of police press releases. To its credit, the Province runs a photo of a gargantuan officer clearly lifting a young lady up by the crotch of her pants. In the Province text, however, rattles made of paper mache are described as rocks wrapped in paper, and musical instruments are made out to be terrorist weapons of minor destruction. “I don’t even want to refer to this as a protest,” Vancouver Police Inspector Steve Schnitzer is widely quoted. “It’s a criminal act by a bunch of hooligans that just came to disrupt an event that people wanted to partake in peacefully.” Then Campbell and Sullivan come out saying that freedom of speech is what makes Canada great.

Private security guards are standing there watching this clock day and night since the unveiling, watching their shifts tick past on our new digital watch.

Speculation has risen as to what BC can do with its clock when our 17 days of games are over. Maybe it could count down how long the tax-payers will be paying for these money grabs for private interests. For now, it can count down to the city’s March 12 Olympic Flag Lighting Ceremony.