LAPD’s Daryl Gates created the first SWAT team. His ad hoc group of cops trained with Marines at Camp Pendleton, with a focus on guerrilla warfare. Gates likened what he experienced during the Watts Uprising to the tactics the Vietcong used in Vietnam.

It’s true. The ‘84 Olympics ushered in a hundreds of millions more dollars in police budget, which was used to surveil and jail Black & brown youth, the unhoused, immigrants, and sex workers. It also armed the police with more military equipment, including a freaking tank.

You can thank the LAPD for creating militarized policing. They used the shootout with the Black Panther’s and the Watts Uprising to justify its existence. Later on they’d use the 1984 Olympics and War on Drugs to further entrench the police as soldier, in equipment and mentality.

General meeting link in bio. no cops, no politicians, no researchers, no press*. The latter three groups can DM us to schedule a meeting. The former can scram! *journalism and academic workers attending as organizers welcome

🐦 The LA Reporter, Issue 10: New York's Zohran is Big in LA thelareporter.la/p/the-la-rep... This week, LA's anti-Olympics movement abandoned by one-time close ally, Mamdani inspires local politicos, Working Families Party in LA, and the City Controller advertises leaving the Dems.

I've also written about how the Olympics are definitely not the end game for LA boosters. There are already megaevents booked well into the 2030s. This is not going to be magically over for the city in 2028

“Efforts to ‘make the best’ of the Olympics — like the Fair Games campaign’s call for an ‘Olympic Wage’ — will be used to demand more megaevents,” NOlympics LA says in its statement. More details in @reporterliz.bsky.social's latest which covers how various groups are shifting between coalitions

This morning’s Fair Games rally was a poignant reminder that it's workers who will make LA's megaevents happen. And with 60 local labor and housing groups represented, it was pretty clear that this broad coalition could also make sure those megaevents do *not* happen

What an astonishingly bad look for any union to be aligning itself with Airbnb right now as this massive coalition of workers is literally calling for Airbnb to be banned from the city

Three years out, some coalitions that originally opposed the games are now pushing for reforms. NOlympics LA organizers double down on their position: "Pretending that a 'no harm' version of the Olympics is possible is not only extremely naive. It’s dangerous for what happens to us after 2028"

Olympic reform efforts are setting us up for a double disaster. The writing is on the wall: people don’t want the Olympics in their city. But for the people of Los Angeles, LA28 brings the possibility of something even more alarming. What if the Olympics never left?

NOlympics LA started as a DSA-LA working group. This year, they decided to make their bed with Unite Here’s reformist platform. Our position is that the Olympics cannot be reformed. Efforts to do so elsewhere have consistently failed. There is no “good” way to host the Olympics.

Wrote about it last year!

I know it's not surprising anymore, but it's still shocking to see US police beating people in the streets for...celebrating a world series win.

In case anyone thought these mega-event organizers would stand up to Trump, please disabuse yourself of the thought. They’ll do whatever it takes to placate the madman.

Yet more money draining from the city into the police.

“The only thing it accomplishes is giving pretextual excuses for LAPD’s bloodlust during public assemblies.” THAT PART!

We keep getting chances to prove that we know what we're doing. And we keep failing. And in seven months this city is going to be filled with tens of thousands of soccer fans. Good luck!

"There's a lot of things that can go wrong." — LA City Council President @mhdcd8.bsky.social and one of the geniuses who rubberstamped this horrendous deal

I wrote about LA's remarkable opportunity to once again use the World Series as trial run for upcoming megaevents. Unfortunately our leaders are incapable of envisioning a city that cheers together: there was very little planning for public celebration and a whole lot of leeway for police aggression

IT IS AN HONOR TO LIVE & FIGHT IN LA🖤🫡 ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE! FUCK ICE!

🚨🚨🚨LOS ANGELES- This is a call for ALL HANDS ON DECK! Organize your neighborhood, patrol your block, & defend your neighbors! Feds are targeting LA more aggressively than ever. THREAD with updates from @latenantsunion.bsky.social on feds escalating + changing tactics & how we fight back:

this is a reminder that we dont have to settle for newsom in 2028

“This is the cost when your city leadership foolishly prioritizes mega events and tourism over the lives of the people who live here.”

Presse zur Aktion.... www.abendzeitung-muenchen.de/muenchen/oly...

"I can't wait to hear how organizers plan to "deliver a major event in accordance with the highest global human rights standards" when the federal government is kidnapping people off LA's streets."

what a slap in the face to anyone living in LA you can’t afford to attend the games in your own city, but hey we set up some TVs so you watch them

Mega-events are just parties for the rich! They’re not meant for the people who live in the city that hosts them. THOSE people are meant to be out of sight.

Torched readers know I have been begging for a vision statement from the city for the past 1.5 years. But with less than three years to go, I was hoping for some goals beyond those outlined in the games agreement. This vision really struggles to articulate any tangible benefits for the city

we’re anti-Olympics over here, but also it doesn’t feel like the city is even taking it halfway seriously

We signed this letter to CD1. 41.18 can and will be used to criminalize ANYONE existing in public that the State doesn’t want existing in public. And sweeps are only going to get worse and more frequent unless our so-called “progressive” officials step up and fulfill their campaign promises.

General meeting link in bio. no cops, no politicians, no researchers, no press*. The later three groups can DM us to schedule a meeting. The former can scram! *journalism and academic workers attending as organizers welcome

Also published by @lapublicpress.bsky.social ! lapublicpress.org/2025/10/ingl...

NEW: The LA Clippers claimed to fight climate change, but their tree-planting partner vanished while their superstar pocketed millions for doing nothing. Trees or no trees, it feels like smoke and mirrors for a city still losing its air and its children. capitalbnews.org/clippers-int...

The Clippers promised progress, Inglewood’s Black community paid the price. A federal investigation exposed a shady deal, but it has bigger ramifications for one of LA’s disappearing Black enclaves. lapublicpress.org/2025/10/ingl...

Google is now “official cloud provider” of LA28. Does the no-build games include data centers

As you see propaganda from the mayor’s office about the Convention Center remodel, remember this:

We need something to believe in, and that something is… upgrading the Convention Center? What planet does this person live on? Also Karen, how about, idk, just spitballing, HOUSING PEOPLE??

Fact check: TRUE ✅

Wohnungen keine Spiele❗ Los Angeles hat ähnliche Probleme wie München ....

General meeting link in bio. no cops, no politicians, no researchers, no press*. The later three groups can DM us to schedule a meeting. The former can scram! *journalism and academic workers attending as organizers welcome

ICE is ALWAYS at the Super Bowl, the Olympics, the RNC/DNC. It's part of the National Special Security Event (NSSE) designation. It's not just Trump's agenda. LA Mayor Karen Bass ASKED for the NSSE designation for the Olympics LAST JANUARY. If you’re wondering why all the feds are still around.

Oh look, more LA x IOF crossover! Shout out USC for facilitating!

As Joey said, mega-events like the Super Bowl & the Olympics are often used as excuses to introduce new tech that ends up sticking around. Another example: Casey Wasserman wants to use facial recognition instead of paper or mobile tickets; you bet that tech is going to be used to track & arrest ppl.

The LAPD justified this purchase, along with other digital surveillance technologies, by citing the Olympics and other major events coming to Los Angeles. The events are an excuse to grow the depts surveillance tech that they're using right now, including for protests. @nolympicsla.bsky.social

It gave LAPD warrantless access to your personal data that includes your location, daily habits, and other intimate details that companies collect about you online. Data brokers sell it to surveillance companies like Fog, who in turn give it to cops. @eff.org write-up: www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...

In 2022, LAPD bought a year subscription to Fog Data with grant money from Homeland Security to gather intelligence on people. The service gives police access to billions of cellphone data points, like your location, from ad IDs. It's what apps and the web collect to serve you targeted ads online.

Reminder that the World Cup & the Olympics are tryouts for Los Angeles to continue to host mega-events. If those events don’t go well…… 😈

Translation for us normal people: This is going to be a debt-exacerbating disaster that won’t be finished before the Olympics, kicking off a cascade of last-minute crises.

It's really time to start asking these people: okay, great, so which world-class conventions and trade shows are you hoping to get, what is their current attendance, and how are you planning on luring them to LA? And, more importantly, how many hotel room nights have they promised to book?