"Tom Tresser has completed a remarkable book, meticulously documenting every step of No Games Chicago's successful campaign to stop the Olympic juggernaut from taking over the city. The book will serve as a key guide for future anti-Olympic organizations, providing practical strategies for effective resistance."
Helen Jefferson Lenskyj, Professor Emerita, University of Toronto, author of Inside the Olympic Industry (2000), Olympic Industry Resistance (2008), The Olympic Games (2020)
"Citizens and taxpayers can fight back against these costly, wasteful Olympic bids when they get organized and marshal the facts. No Games Chicago gave us a template -- figuratively and literally -- for our success at doing so in Boston."
Chris Dempsey, Co-Founder, No Boston Olympics
"Tom Tresser, public citizen to his core, has gone to extraordinary lengths to document his role in leading a coalition of activists to oppose Chicagos Olympic Games bid. Tirelessly, he has crafted a riveting story of the uphill battle to bring daylight and transparency to public policy, asking vital questions about an enormous event with dubious benefits for Chicagoans. The narrative is part David vs Goliath, part Saul Alinksy, and part Tressers own dog-with-a-bone persistence. Placing the events in context and with detail, Tresser reasserts throughout a public interest over private and public-private interests, a central political battle in our neoliberal age."
D. Bradford Hunt, Professor and Chair, Department of History, Loyola University Chicago, co-author of Planning Chicago
"No Games Chicago
is the gripping story of the only organized group to fight the idiotic idea of a Chicago Olympic bid. It is the essential record of this important episode in Chicago history. That effort also seeded more than one reform effort in the city. Essential history well told."Ed Bachrach, co-author of The New Chicago Way: Lessons from Other Big Cities
"What is dissent? The types of answers to such a question are debatable and can range from the highly academic to imaginative abstractions. But what is neither debatable, academic or abstract are the irreparable harms to the lives and spaces of the most vulnerable communities and neighborhoods in Chicago that were diverted (or at least delayed for the next fight) by the efforts of those engaged in No Games Chicago that are on full display within this book. So from just reading a few pages, the question that we should ask ourselves is not what is dissent? but what can come from it?
Prof. Rasul Mowatt, Department Head and Professor, Department of Parks, Recreation & Tourism Management, North Carolina State University
"In sports, grassroots activists are often up against powerful sports associations and their political allies. These struggles determine the future of cities, communities, and sports itself. The good news is: sometimes, the grassroots win. No Games Chicago tells one of these stories." - Gabriel Kuhn, Playing as if the World Mattered: An Illustrated History of Activism in Sports
