To the Friends of the Aubervilliers Workers’ Vegetable Garden against the Eviction for Building a Training Pool for the Paris Olympics

From a pandemic-stricken Tokyo, we send a solidarity appeal to our friends who continue to occupy the Jardins à défendre to resist the destruction of their vegetable garden, which has fed the stomachs and kept the greenery of the working people of Aubervilliers, Seine-Saint-Denis, since the 1930s, for the construction of the training pool for the 2024 Paris Olympics.

This destruction of “garden to protect”is undoubtedly one of the “Olympic Disasters”repeated wherever the Olympics are held; in Tokyo many people have been evicted from parks and Metropolitan housing complex to construct a new stadium.

“Today, July 16, the deadline for eviction from the Jardins à défendre, we are holding a rally in front of the former site of the Tsukiji Market, which has been filling the stomachs of the common people of Tokyo. The purpose of the rally is to protest IOC President Bach’s visit to Hiroshima and Vice President Coates’ visit to Nagasaki to stage the “Olympics of Peace”. The Tsukiji market was the “fish market to protect” that filled the stomachs of Tokyoites for 83 years from 1935 to 2018. However, in October 2018, before the Tokyo Olympics, the market was shut down in defiance of calls to keep it open, and the vast vacant lot is now used as a base for transporting vehicles for the Tokyo Olympics.

Many people in Tokyo and elsewhere in Japan are now opposed to the Olympics on reasons of pandemic. However, the fact that the Olympics using Fukushima for the “Olympics for Reconstruction” and Hiroshima for the “Olympics for Peace” has been an “Olympic disaster” that has been destroying people’s lives for a long time is clear to all those people who have been fighting for their”vegetable garden to protect,””fish market to protect”, “health to protect, “houses to protect,””green to protect,””human rights to protect” , and”peace to protect” The coronary pandemic has only made this more apparent.

The Olympics are completely parasitic on the two dominant systems of nationalism and capitalism, and the rulers cannot stop them. The only way to stop the Olympics and eliminate it forever is to challenge these two dominant systems themselves. Paris was one of the first cities that shook the world by launching that challenge in the past. We will continue this challenge with our friends in Auvervilliers and around the world.

Don’t let the Olympics take away the Aubervilliers workers’ vegetable garden!

We don’t want the Olympics anywhere!

Tokyo, July 16, 2021