Anti-Olympic volunteers offer to discover "behind the scenes" of the Paris Games by bike

The meeting is set for 20:00 p.m. in front of the University of Paris 13 in Bobigny for this "toxic tour" organized by four members of the Saccage 2024 collective.

This August evening, around fifty curious people braved the furnace to swallow 20 km of asphalt on their bikes.

First stage: the future Media Village, in the Georges-Valbon park in Dugny, which will become an eco-district of 1.400 housing units after the Games (July 26-August 11, 2024).

“Anywhere you see buildings, it was the park,” says one of the guides, pointing to the construction site which is almost at an end.

Phone in hand, Eva, immortalizes every corner.

"This tour allows me to see, to experience, to situate the Olympic sites in the geographical and social landscape", explains the 20-year-old student. "Seeing the amputated park is shocking, it creates a dystopia. The machine is moving forward and the Olympics will happen no matter what," said Eva in a disappointed tone (refusing to give her name like all the participants) , before getting on his bike.

Next stop: the Olympic Aquatic Center in Saint-Denis.

"It's a private company that will be in charge of the swimming pool (after the Olympics). It will set the prices. The schoolchildren will have to rent the lines", shouts Arthur, distilling his information in a road shambles, under the attentive ear of a police escort who has been following the procession since its departure.

"The organizers (of the Olympics, editor's note) say that this swimming pool will allow young people from Seine-Saint-Denis to learn to swim, but if that was really an objective, small swimming pools would then flourish all over the cities" , believes Arthur, member of the Saccage 2024 collective, which defines itself as "resistance to the ecological and social destruction caused by the Paris-2024 Olympics".

From the legacy of the Games, three basins are promised to Seine-Saint-Denis (Sevran, Pierrefitte-sur-Seine and Bagnolet).

"Cameras, concrete, aberration"

When talking about the Olympics, the first word that comes to mind for Pierre, a physics-chemistry teacher in a high school in Saint-Denis, is "money": "public money that will benefit the sector private," he said.

However, he is not "against the event". "We have an educational project around the physical movement of athletes with the participation of a fencer," says the teacher.

The "toxic tour" organized each month, in turn, by different collectives wants to "show behind the scenes of the Olympics". "It's always more striking to see the impacted places in real life than to talk about them", assures Nora, volunteer at Saccage 2024. "At each Olympic Games, we promise jobs, constructions in favor of the inhabitants and at each times, it was destruction and the hyper-security of cities", assures the activist.

Long inaudible, the speeches of the protesters are beginning to find an audience.

"People are realizing that even if the Olympics will be near their homes, they won't be able to go there because the places are very expensive", according to Nora for whom "the social pension movement has been a boost with the hashtag #PasDeRetraitPasDeJO".

“The closer the deadline gets, the more the cleaning intensifies: less space in social hotels, the Crous (regional centers for university and school works) requisitioned, the eviction of a squat in Aubervilliers”, lists the volunteer.

In Seine-Saint-Denis, "the destruction of parks and gardens, absurd real estate projects, gentrification, evictions are being prepared", denounces Saccage 2024, which is associated with the groups Extinction Rebellion and Last Renovation.

The three-hour excursion ends in the Pleyel district of Saint-Denis, near a school group of nearly 700 students.

Entrance and exit ramps are right next to it. A motorway interchange, about to be completed, will provide access to the A1 and the A86. It must facilitate access to the Olympic village located between Saint-Ouen, Saint-Denis and Ile-Saint-Denis.

One of his opponents, Hamid Ouidir, parent of students at FCPE 93, who came to meet the cyclists, assures us that "the interchange will asphyxiate the children".

Sarah, 28, manager of a bicycle workshop, will leave convinced: for her, JO rhymes with "surveillance camera, concrete and aberration".