The Counter Olympics Network will assemble in Mile End Park (near Mile End tube station) at 12 noon, and march to Victoria Park for a family friendly rally which will include speeches, entertainment, “alternative games”, and children’s events.

More than 30 organisations officially support the event, which symbolically “reclaims” the Games, a party to which everyone is invited. It will present a truer and more optimistic vision of Britain than the officially promoted one of a militarised and austerity ridden country that is content to be hijacked by millionaire politicians and their corporate friends.

Issues of concern include:

• the corporate takeover of the Games (with sponsors that profit from sweatshops, poison local people, pollute the planet, and so much more);
• the eviction of local people from their homes and businesses to make way for the Olympic sites, and prioritising the interests of global corporations at the expense of small businesses;
• the privatisation of public space;
• the introduction of repressive policing and surveillance in conjunction with the Games, and the use of the Games to promote acceptance of the militarisation of society (in particular – siting missile launchers on domestic roofs in East London, employing 42,000 private security staff on top of the vast police and military presence, increasing stop and search powers which target and alienate local young people, placing warships on the Thames and at Weymouth, and introducing preventive detention and ASBOs to intimidate peaceful anti-Olympics protesters);
• the threat to both the lives and livelihoods of Londoners caused by the VIP Lanes for dignitaries on London roads;
• the encouragement of nationalism, in contradiction to the supposed spirit of the Olympics;
• the sanctioning of gender apartheid in Olympic teams;
• the “body fascism” mentality in elite sport;
• the hypocrisy of a Paralympics sponsor, ATOS, which is also responsible for wrongly removing welfare payments from tens of thousands of people with disabilities;
• the multi-billion-pound expenditure, much of it on temporary facilities, and most of it unnecessary at a time of supposed austerity.