"Everyone was excited because the Olympics were coming. Now everyone is worried"

Working at one of the stadiums selected as an LA28 venue, Lupe had viewed the next four years with hopeful anticipation. Her coworkers were looking forward to the games and the benefits that came from staffing such an important global event. "Everyone was excited because the Olympics were coming," she told me. "We were excited for money, better hours, we were going to get bigger pay raises." But on Election Day, everything changed. "Now everyone is worried," she says. "Nervous and worried."

As a renter, Lupe — who asked that I not share her full name or her exact job — is well aware of the existing risks of hosting megaevents, including threats of displacement. She knows that not everyone in the neighborhood is excited about the games. But the re-election of Donald Trump and the grave threat his administration poses to immigrant communities replaced what little positive expectations she had with feelings of anxiety and fear — both at work and at home. "With ICE, police coming around, a lot of our community here is undocumented or people that are unhoused," she says. "We don't know how it might go."

Lupe was one of about 100 local residents who gathered last night at Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, the South LA-based community organization. In a former industrial building with a large banner reading FIX OUR HOMES, attendees unwrapped tamales at long tables while their kids played in an adjacent conference room. (Shout out to free childcare during meetings!) Speaking in Spanish and English, they processed their feelings about the election results by sharing a single word — as one eloquently put it: "fucked" — before digging into the main discussion. And that topic, scheduled long before we knew the predicament we would be in, just happened to be a discussion led by NOlympics LA, a coalition of about 40 organizations including SAJE, about the 2028 games.

Despite the meeting happening mere blocks from some of the venues, there had been very little transparency and outreach in the community, so there was a lot of confusion and misinformation about what exactly was happening in 2028. Attendees worried openly about traffic and gentrification, but they also asked questions that gave me plenty more to think about — like, are LA's aging sewer lines prepared for the poop of millions more tourists? A valid concern! A particularly resonant moment came from a community member who pointed out that fixes to streets had been long ignored in the neighborhood: "Now that the Olympics are coming, they're finally fixing them. Are we not worth it?"

That sentiment was familiar to Oscar Zarate, SAJE's advocacy and organizing director for building, equity, and transit, who has been leading campaigns to make sure improvements like bus lanes stay around after the Olympics and Paralympics are over. "We’re already heading up a steep hill," he says. "It just got steeper." But he's also working to make sure LA's most marginalized residents won't be criminalized by the increased security and surveillance measures, like the new weapons-detection systems already being demonstrated at Metro stations. Especially on issues like policing, it's not hard to envision LA's leaders capitulating to at least some of the new administration's desires, says Zarate. "Trump can provide cover for very conservative and unimaginative decisions from different agencies."

Which is, historically, how authoritarian governments have tended to leverage the games. "What we've seen in history is fascist leaders will take advantage of events like the Olympics," says Gigi Droesch, an organizer with NOlympics LA who was at last night's event. "It's going to be his policies. His ICE. His Secret Service. And it's going to be our elected officials who are not going to want to look soft on crime."

Angelenos have been left particularly vulnerable to Trump's advances. When Trump took office in 2017 he immediately passed an executive order named "Enhancing Public Safety in the Interior of the United States" which threatened to revoke federal funding from cities and states that did not cooperate with authorities attempting to deport undocumented immigrants. Many Democratic leaders took swift actions to protect their constituents. At the time we had a mayor who liked to dance around the issues (and also liked to literally dance) and although he sometimes called LA a "city of sanctuary," Eric Garcetti didn't end up passing an official sanctuary city ordinance. "We've never declared ourself a sanctuary city," he told NPR in 2017. Garcetti reveals one possible reason why right there in the same interview: "I look forward to working with the White House in areas like infrastructure, where President Trump says he wants to spend a trillion dollars. Great — we'd love to start right here in Los Angeles. He's been very supportive of our Olympic bid."

LA currently needs a lot of federal infrastructure dollars, and not just for the games. Despite a pledge to stand together, our current mayor will also have to navigate her own ways of "working with the White House." Last month, Karen Bass said she specifically chose her new police chief, Jim McDonnell because LA was hosting megaevents: "After visiting France and seeing the games, the magnitude of what LA needs to prepare for is crystal clear to me, and I trust that Jim McDonnell will make sure that we are prepared and vigilant for anything that comes our way." But as LA County sheriff, McDonnell worked closely with federal officials to hand over incarcerated immigrants for deportation. There was so much local outrage from immigrant rights groups that McDonnell was defeated in his 2018 re-election by a lieutenant named Alex Villanueva who ran on a platform to "physically remove ICE from the county jails." (Villanueva turned out to be a vindictive charlatan who was dubbed "the Trump of LA."). After a major rally outside City Hall this morning where protesters held signs reading "McDonnell is anti-immigrant," McDonnell said during his hearing he would not cooperate with ICE. He was confirmed 11-2.

Maybe McDonnell will be true to his word. But one could argue that none of what he says really matters. The 2028 games were designated a National Special Security Event in June, the earliest this type of designation has ever been made. The Secret Service is currently presiding over an unprecedented cooperation between law enforcement officials, from local to national levels. When LA's city council voted to approve the designation in 2021, councilmembers expressed concern about protecting LA's undocumented residents. Councilmembers expressed many of those same concerns today. But it's too late. The federal agencies are already in charge. 🔥