The idea is simple, and legal: while the Olympic Committee has launched a campaign to hire 45,000 volunteers for the Paris 2024 Games, collectives opposed to holding the competition want to disrupt the organization with fake volunteer applications.

Signing up as a volunteer for the 2024 Olympics, why and how, a thread

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Open until May 3, the campaign is denounced by activists, who stress the excessive availability required of these thousands of volunteers who are not housed and barely paid. They will have to be "mobilized for at least 10 days" during the summer of 2024, during which they can be employed up to 10 hours a day and 48 hours a week, according to the charter published by the Olympic Committee.

Alice*, 33, is one of these "false volunteers", whose number is complex to estimate. Coming from the "world of sport", and organizer of several sporting events, she counts on the strength of her candidacy to be recruited. If she succeeds, she hesitates between "withdrawing at the last moment", going on a "work-to-rule" or taking advantage of the presence of cameras around the world to try a media action. Because if it is well specified that volunteers will have "no permanent legal subordination relationship", essential in France to establish an employment contract, the extent of the tasks that will be assigned to them makes it tick.

"I find it shameful that with a budget of 8.8 billion euros, the Olympics use volunteers by asking them for such involvement," she says to explain her action. It's close to covert work, and I want to help disrupt these Games, which are problematic at all levels, whether in social, economic, security or environmental terms."

"The Games are accelerators of looting"

His revolt is shared by the collective Saccage 2024, created in November 2020 and bringing together inhabitants of Seine-Saint-Denis to denounce the degradation caused by the competition on the territory.

"For us," says Clément*, a member of the collective that regularly organizes public meetings and demonstrations, "the Games are accelerators of looting. Under the guise of collective jubilation, they make it possible to pass security laws, such as the one adopted on Wednesday, to destroy green spaces and to accelerate gentrification processes that will not benefit the inhabitants of Seine-Saint-Denis." And this while this department, which must host a large part of the facilities and events of the Games, is the poorest in metropolitan France.

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The activist also protests against the working conditions of the workers employed on these pharaonic sites, some of whom are undocumented. The call for false volunteers is, according to him, less a form of sabotage than a means of making a dissenting voice heard, while the authorities, like the Olympic Committee, highlight the benefits to be derived from the holding of the Olympics in Paris and Seine-Saint-Denis.

"We want to denounce the fact that the Olympics are a private brand, a for-profit organization with sponsors, which employ heaps of public money and volunteers," he said. This is outrageous, and it is taking place under the guise of Olympic values, but in reality hypocritical, individualistic and competitive. We are boasted of a 'great human adventure', when nothing is going well."

Disputed construction sites

The various Olympic projects underway in Seine-Saint-Denis are, for some, the subject of local resistance. Federated since 2017 in a "vigilance committee", residents of the city of Saint-Denis, which will host the athletes' village and several sports events, have for example organized "toxic tours" leading to the various Olympic sites, to denounce their ecological impact.

Cécile Gintrac, one of their spokespersons, particularly points to the repercussions that the Games will have on her city, where two districts are currently emerging to host the sports competition.

"The Games will transform Saint-Denis, and aggravate an already degraded situation in environmental terms, denounces this professor of geography. Neighborhoods under construction, which must survive the Olympics to accommodate new residents, lack green spaces and are stuck between major roads. We can highlight the use of ecological materials, despite all the money invested, the legacy of the Olympics may be harmful for the population."

Administrative inquiries

Arthur, a member of Saccage 2024, does not think otherwise: for him, in addition to having "anti-ecological" consequences, the argument in favor of the Olympics on job creation and the dynamization of territories does not hold.

"The jobs created during the Olympics are precarious and short-lived," he says, "and the massive employment of volunteers adds a layer of it. We suspect that there will not be 45,000 fake volunteers for the Olympics, but this campaign encourages people to act at their own level, while sending a message to the organizers."

When contacted, the organizing committee of the Olympic Games seems, for its part, to have become aware of the threat represented by false bids. Thus, say the organizers, if the "mobilization processes must ensure the sincerity of the commitment of the candidates" and their "adherence to the project and values of Paris-2024", accredited volunteers will be subject to a "prior administrative investigation" to avoid any risk of sabotage. They also plan to recruit a team of replacement volunteers, to be mobilized in case of too many withdrawals.

*First names have been changed.

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