A Big American Welcome!

Back in June last year, after heading to downtown Los Angeles to join a major protest when ICE and the National Guard were stationed in the city, and the U.S. Marines waiting to be deployed, I wrote about the day here.  Soon after, though, I also began writing on the site and on social media about something related to all this that occurred to me, but wasn’t being talked about much elsewhere -- how I thought the 2028 Olympics being held in Los Angeles would be impacted, as well as the World Cup that would be played in a variety of U.S. cities, including Los Angles, a year from then. 

How could they not be, I wrote, how possibly could tourists around the world watching the military in Los Angeles not wonder if it’s safe to come to Los Angeles, or anywhere in the United States to see the Olympics and World Cup.  Especially since we already knew that tourism was down.  Most especially states that relied on tourism from Canada had been explaining how they’d been pummeled by a huge drop-off.

This continued to be a subject I’d write about now and then on social media, and the news slowly began to discuss it, as well, when we saw the military in Portland and then expanded even more in Chicago.  News footage of citizens in the streets protesting, blowing whistles, getting teargassed and pepper-sprayed, apartment buildings being attacked by ICE, rounding up American citizens who had done nothing wrong and were later released.  And not just American citizens, of courses, but the whole point was to expel immigrants, aliens, foreigners from the country.  And by the time we got to January, and the World Cup was only months away, the realization started to hit more notably.

And then ICE and Border Patrol came to Minneapolis.

And you looked at what almost seemed like a war zone.  Almost non-stop brutalization by DHS, breaking car windows, dragging drivers out, chasing people in the streets, filling the air with chemical spray.  You really think tourists around the world are going to want to come to the U.S. in just a few months for the World Cup when seeing all this on television, I asked?  And there was a bit more coverage on the question, though not a significant amount.

Then, Renee Good was murdered by an ICE agent.  And maybe a week later, it became clear that there was (not surprisingly) at least one group of people who were very aware of the problem and concerned, as I saw an article in the Los Angeles Times about how organizers here, for both the World Cup and 2028 Olympics were profoundly concerned about how this all would affect visitors from around the world coming to the city.  So much so that they were addressing the huge financial pounding L.A. risked taking with a massive amount of money on the line for both world events.

And then Alex Pretti was murdered Border Patrol agents.  And the story took over the news.  It carpeted TV coverage here, and I must assume the attention throughout the world was prominent.  And what I began to wonder and write about online is a bigger problem – not about if tourists would come here…but what would happen to the tourists who did come here??!  If legal American citizens are being detained by DHS because they weren’t white or because they didn’t sound “American,” and didn’t have their “papers” to prove they were U.S. citizens – what would happen to visitors from around the world who were from Africa or Asia or India or black from anywhere, or spoke with accents that didn’t sound “American”…which was basically all the rest of the world – none of whom could prove to ICE or Border Patrol agents that they were American citizens…because they weren’t American citizens??!!! 

And I don’t mean that as a hypothetical.  I have no idea what would happen.  The “good” news is that most cities where the World Cup is being played don’t have DHS agents roaming the streets.  (Amazingly, luckily, Minneapolis and Chicago were supposed to host games, but they couldn’t reach financial agreements with the FIFA organization, so they dropped out.)  But there will be games in Los Angeles.  And ICE agents are in a great many U.S. cities, even if not at the levels were see in deployments.  Further, tourists don’t know how these deployments work – they just see “military in U.S. cities”.  Arresting, teargassing, brutalizing, killing people.  And they see that the whole point of it all is, specifically, a hatred of foreigners and to remove them from the United States.

At which point, the story changed.  It was no longer if tourists would come to Los Angles and the United States.  Two days ago in the newspaper I read a front page story about Germany seriously raising the question of whether to send their national team to the U.S. and boycott the World Cup.  England and France are discussing this, as well.  (Keep in mind, these are three of our closest, most important allies!!)  An official from the United Nations, who was from Pakistan, was quoted on how he would be concerned coming to visit the U.S.   Yesterday, I saw another such comment.

And even now, I'm not convinced most people yet have tourism and boycott on their radar for the World Cup and 2028 Olympics here.  But the issue is very real, whatever happens.

I don’t think countries will boycott the World Cup.  But I don’t have any confidence in thinking that.  We’re also too far away to know if any countries will boycott the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles – but we’re not too far away to seriously wonder the answer.  Will things tone down by then?  Will they worsen?  And even if conditions are stable – Trump will still be president.  Will that alone keep some countries away?  Not likely – but “not likely” is such an ephemeral phrase.

The only thing I do feel comfortable being fairly sure about is that tourism for the World Cup and Los Angeles Olympics will be impacted and down.  How big a hit the city will take especially, as well as the country, that remains to be seen.

The only positive from this is that I think it means I’ll have a better chance getting good Olympic tickets…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhR8GZ_WWMM