As I was reading the comments in a post in a BBC blog titled Mark Mardell's America, I came across a comment that explains so well why the 2016 Olympic bid would not have been beneficial to Chicagoans. As someone who lives in the city, I can tell you that there was no grassroots support for the Games. Any type of support amounted to several advertisement posters put up by the city in the downtown/Loop area. If there were support, it was not very vocal, especially compared to the No Games protests.

Those who know the history of the Daleys and Chicago would know that the 2016 Olympics was Richard Daley's baby, not something that citizens of Chicago wanted. Daley certainly didn't fool many residents to think that they would not have to foot the bill.
 

Comment by Gavrielle LaPost:

18. At 8:04pm on 02 Oct 2009, squirrellist wrote:
I don't know why Chicago bid, to be honest, unless they thought they could leap on the back of the Obama charisma bandwagon as Mark tentatively suggests; after all, the USA has had its fair share over the last few decades, surely?

Mayor Daley came up with the idea long before Obama became remotely famous. He's been working on it as part of his "legacy" for ages. The whole Olympic bid fit nicely with his desire to use eminent domain to gentrify large areas on the South Side of Chicago where the locals have successfully resisted developers' plans for more than 20 years. All building in Chicago is controlled at the neighborhood level by aldermen and the city council. If he'd gotten is way he could have run roughshod over all of them and taken what he and his friends have wanted for as long as they've been in power. As in, complete control of the land in some of the wealthiest historically African American neighborhoods anywhere in America.

Now granted, these areas are, in many cases, blighted. I know, I've lived there. But that's because the city refuses to service many of these areas beyond residential garbage pickups and making certain the traffic lights and sewers are working. Many sidewalks are cracked, the streets are pocked with potholes and poor patch jobs, city owned buildings are dilapidated or burned out hulks, huge tracts of land have been illegally used as dumping sites, the police come to your assistance if they feel like it (I speak from personal experience here), local fire houses are the first to get cut, and the people are treated as if this were all their fault. It's not. The area thrived before the current Mayor Daley's daddy deliberately ran a train (the red line) and matching 8 lane highway right down the middle of the South Side (using eminent domain) and destroyed every historically black neighborhood in its path. This is where the term "red lining" comes from, by the way. Prosperous black neighborhoods were systematically red lined and ghettoized to the "wrong" side of the tracks.

What remains of the South Side has some of the best and most beautiful old housing stock in the city. Most of which has been rendered inaccessible to corrupt developers, who are Mayor Daley's biggest supporters. The Olympics must have seemed like a perfect opportunity to silence all critics as they seized these properties, many of which are heirloomed so that they cannot be sold outside the family.

To truly understand what happened in Chicago, you have to really know something about the city's history. It wasn't just the infrastructure, or the World Cup that cost Mayor Daley the Games, it was also the people themselves writing privately to the IOC and telling them not to come to Chicago. Chicagoans have nothing against the Olympics, but it was time someone told Mayor Daley NO.

That said, I'm happy London has finally gotten a chance to host the Games again. You're right. The US has had many opportunities to do this over the last 60 years. We could use a break.

Gavrielle also linked to an article in which the writer found one person in the Washington Park area who wanted the Olympics: a man who bought a building there just to rent out rooms at exorbitant rates. Other than him, only a small amount, mainly those who would not be terribly affected by the Games, wanted the Olympics to be in Chicago.

Congratulations Rio de Janeiro!