Citing general reasons for being opposed to the 1932 Olympics like its militarism, imperialist dominance, and large-scale graft, the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles was also boycotted by the Labor Sports Union for the specific reasons of a call by Tom Mooney (imprisoned in California), and the U.S.’s jim-crow policies. That summer the Workers’ International Sport Meet was held in Chicago.

‘Olympics Versus Counter-Olympics’ by Si Gerson from International Press Correspondence. Vol. 12 No. 24. June 2, 1932.

Two campaigns are going on today among athletes in the United States: one is the campaign conducted by the American Olympics Committee, the other is the campaign led by the National Counter Olympic Committee. The honorary chairman of the American Olympics Committee is Herbert Hoover, starvation president of the United States; the honorary chairman of the National Counter Olympic Committee is the imprisoned worker, Tom Mooney. This alone should be sufficient to show to all class conscious workers what the character of the two campaigns are.

The Olympic Games in this year of crisis can be seen as a boss class Olympics by even the most sceptical. The Olympics Committee in makeup is composed of out-and-out reactionary elements: General Douglas McArthur, head of the War Policies Commission and Chief of Staff of the United States Army, is one of the leaders of the American Olympics Committee. (General McArthur, it may be said in passing, only recently completed a tour of inspection of the fortifications and the military forces of the Baltic states bordering the Soviet Union.) Colonels Ely and Roosevelt are among the army officers in the leadership of the Olympics Committee. Avery Brundage, rich Chicago building contractor and president of the Amateur Athletic Union, is another guiding spirit, as is the wealthy New York lawyer, Gustavus T. Kirby. In short, the organisers of the Olympics are drawn from the top ranks of the capitalist class.

The work of the Olympics Committee reflects faithfully the policies of the American capitalist class. First and foremost–and most significant–the Olympics Committee is carrying out a boycott of the Soviet Union. The Olympics Committee does not “recognize” the existence of one-sixth of the world’s surface which is in the hands of the working class. The tremendous growth of physical culture in the Soviet Union, one of the fruits of the revolution, remains “unnoticed” by the Olympics Committee.

The implacable hostility of the Olympics Committee towards the Soviet Union, which they “failed” to invite to the Olympic Games, can only be approached by their hatred of the Negro masses. Negro athletes are not given a chance to compete in the South with white sportsmen. A special meet is being held for Negro athletes in the South, held with the groveling aid of the Negro middle class reformists. In the North Negro athletes are discriminated against in somewhat more subtle fashion, Negro and white swimmers are not allowed to compete against each other in most pools. Even where Negro athletes excel so obviously that the general sport-loving public acclaims the Negro athlete as winner, the officialdom of the Olympics Committee and the Amateur Athletic Union try by every foul trick to cheat the Negro sportsman of his well-deserved victory. Even the capitalist press is forced to admit this.

Besides carrying out faithfully the general class task of attempting to distract the attention of the sport-loving workers from their own immediate task of struggle against imperialist war, the fight against wage cuts and for unemployment insurance besides all this yeomans service for the capitalist class, the Olympics Committee has its own special little interests that it knows how to take care of very well. Consider for a minute the money spent at the Winter Olympic Games, a figure that scandalized even the American capitalist sport press, accustomed as it is to graft, corruption and swindling. The Winter Games were held at the ultra-fashionable Lake Placid, a millionaire resort. Admission prices were steeper than the hills in the vicinity. For the two weeks that the games lasted the officials managed to spend $1,137,654,13! In order to provide thrills for some jaded millionaires and their mistresses they spent for the bobsled run and the clubhouse $248,009.77, enough to feed about 270 families for a year at $25 a week. Even Dan Parker, the cynical “Daily Mirror” columnist was forced to say:

“The games lasted two weeks. That’s spending $1,137,654.13 much faster than all the bread lines in New York could accomplish the same feat, which is an Olympic record I haven’t heard mentioned at all.”

Finally, as a sort of climax, the major portion of the Olympic Games are being held in Los Angeles, California, in the state in which Tom Mooney, labour’s martyr, has been imprisoned on one of the foulest frameups known to the history of the American labour movement. The State of California, which finds it impossible to give unemployment relief or to release Tom Mooney, finds it entirely possible to give a cool million dollars for the holding of the Olympic Games in California and the elaborate welcoming of the Olympic athletes there. While guards stand grimly on walls of San Quentin penitentiary, watching Tom Mooney within, the Los Angeles Olympic stadium will be gaily bedecked with the national colours of the various imperialist powers…

Against all this the American worker sportsmen have organised a Counter Olympic campaign. The entire campaign was initiated by the Labour Sports Union, the American section of the Red Sports International, and is in line with the decisions adopted by the 6th Plenum of the R.S.I. In October of last year Tom Mooney issued his famous call for a boycott of the Los Angeles Olympic Games as a protest against his continued imprisonment. The Labor Sports Union immediately wired him, endorsing his appeal for a boycott and, going further, suggested that he accept the honorary chairmanship of the National Counter Olympic Committee that was then being built. Mooney wired his acceptance of this and the entire movement was spurred on by his endorsement. A number of Tom Mooney Street Runs were organised. Runs were held in New York, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Chicago, Youngstown, Milwaukee, San Francisco, Paterson, and a number of smaller cities in the country. In all these runs the athletes ran through the major streets of the city with slogans on their backs “Free Tom Mooney”, “Free the Scottsboro Boys”, “Boycott the Olympics”, etc. In a number of cities united front conferences were held where the athletes from various bourgeois and independent organisations were brought into the movement. Competition has been organised in basketball, soccer, swimming and track and field. The entire campaign is to wind up in the International Workers Athletic Meet, at Loyola Field, Chicago, July 29, 30, 31 and August 1.

Athletes from the Soviet Union have been invited to attend this meet. The High Council of Physical Culture of the Soviet Union accepted the invitation and has promised to send 5 athletes. German and Canadian worker athletes are expected. If economic circumstances permit, athletes from some of the colonial countries may attend. All in all, the International Workers Athletic Meet will be a real meet of worker and farmer athletes. Negro and white, foreign-born and American-born. It will rally under the slogans of struggle against the Olympics and a fight for the freedom of Tom Mooney, the Scottsboro boys and all class war prisoners. It will be a step forward in the building of a real tradition of workers sports in the United States and of crystallizing the resentment against the boss-controlled sports movement that exists in the very ranks of those workers who are still in the boss-controlled sport organisations. Concluding on August 1st it will culminate in a splendid demonstration against imperialist war and for the defence of the Soviet Union.

Workers all over the world should lend their utmost support to the Counter Olympic campaign, to the struggle against the anti-labour, anti-Soviet, Jim Crow, jingo Olympics and to the struggle for the freedom of Tom Mooney, the Scottsboro Boys and all class war prisoners. The slogans “Boycott the Olympics!” “Forward to the International Workers Athletic Meet!”, “Free Tom Mooney!”, “Free the Scottsboro Boys!”–these slogans should find an echo everywhere among workers and poor farmers.

The Labor Sports Union, which initiated the entire campaign in the United States, will have its National Convention in Chicago on August 2, 3 and 4. This National Convention with the base of the movement broadened out as a result of the Counter Olympic Campaign, will officially open the drive for the World Spartakiade in Moscow, August 1933, at the conclusion of the Five Year Plan. Worker athletes who are now busily engaged in working for the success of the Counter Olympic Campaign are already looking forward to the World Spartakiade campaign and the sending of a mass delegation of Negro and white athletes to the World Spartakiade.

(Workers interested in the Counter Olympic Campaign may write to the National Counter Olympic Committee, 799 Broadway, New York City.)

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/inprecor/1932/v12n24-jun-02-1932-Inprecor-op.pdf