Activists who upended Boston’s well-funded, star-studded Olympic bid are exporting their expertise.
Leaders of No Boston 2024 and No Boston Olympics are showing opposition groups elsewhere how they helped turn public opinion against the city’s bid for the 2024 Summer Olympics, forcing organizers to withdraw.
Some were in contact with organizers in Toronto — which briefly considered hosting the 2024 Games before deciding not to apply — while a few traveled to Germany to speak to the Olympic opposition in Hamburg just weeks before that city rejected a bid of its own.
“Our primary motivation was always Boston and what is right for this city, but if there is an opportunity to share what happened here — which I believe was a very powerful thing — then we are not going to turn that down,” said Christopher Dempsey, a cofounder of the No Boston Olympics group that spoke in Hamburg.
Most say the debate opened their eyes to broader issues around the Olympics and other international sporting events that require cities to pay for massive building projects that often leave them saddled with debt and venues that are not usable afterward.
“[Boston is] proof that even a very small group of people with very little money can overcome one of the world’s biggest corporations,” said Artur Bruckmann, a graduate student at the University of Hamburg, referring to the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
Bruckmann credits Boston organizers with encouraging them to redouble their efforts on social media. That push — combined with other major forces, including Europe’s Syrian refugee crisis — led to a surprising turnaround: Hamburg residents narrowly rejected the 2024 Olympics bid by a vote of 51.6 percent to 48.4 percent, despite polls suggesting more than 60 percent support for the games prior to the vote.
With Hamburg out of contention, only Paris; Rome; Budapest, Hungary; and Los Angeles — the city that took Boston’s place as the US Olympic Committee’s pick — are vying for the 2024 Games. The IOC is expected to decide on a host city in 2017.
Toronto was a possibility for a short time, but opponents there say Boston activists shared tactics for educating the public and influencing politicians.
“We only had six weeks to respond to Toronto’s last-minute bid, so No Boston’s support helped us get up and running quickly,” NoTO2024 cofounder Dave Wilson said.
Janice Forsyth, a Canadian professor who reached out to Boston opponents to learn about how they revealed crucial details through public information requests, hopes lessons learned in Boston and elsewhere can be codified so other opposition groups can quickly mobilize.
“That level of information sharing is critical,” Forsyth said. “The same template could be used in Paris, or wherever, because the general pattern for bids is the same pretty much wherever you go.”
The Boston activists said they are simply paying forward the help they received early on in their efforts from Olympics opponents in Vancouver and London — two cities that recently hosted the Olympics — and Chicago, which lost its bid for next year’s Summer Games.
“We have become part of this network, with people mentoring each other and giving advice, and it gets bigger every year,” No Boston 2024 cofounder Robin Jacob said.
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