The 2024 Olympics have come and gone. For an entire month, The Real News’ Dave Zirin was on the ground in Paris covering the stories corporate media wouldn’t—from the struggle of Paris activists against homeless sweeps to the stories of the Palestinian delegation. In a special recap episode of Edge of Sports, Dave Zirin and Jules Boykoff look back on the highlights of the real stories of the Olympics.

Studio Production: Jules Boykoff
Post-Production: Adam Coley

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Dave Zirin:

Hey, this is Dave Zirin from Edge of Sports TV, only on The Real News Network. I hope you’ve enjoyed the videos that have been produced out of Olympic Paris. And if you’ve enjoyed these videos, then you might be wondering at times, “Well, who the heck is holding the camera this whole time?” And I can’t wait to answer this question because the guy holding the camera, the cinematographer if you will of the whole operation, is also the person who thought through and produced every segment with me. And he just happens to be probably the foremost expert on the politics of the Olympics on Earth. That’s who I had holding my camera, which if you take a step back from it, pretty damn cool. And he’s on right now.

This is our sum up. We’re going to talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly of what we saw in Paris. If you don’t know his name, you should Jules Boykoff. How you doing, Jules?

Jules Boykoff:

Hey. I’m doing great, David. It’s so fun to see you on the screen. Miss you here in Paris.

Dave Zirin:

Yeah, Jules still in Paris. I’m back in Takoma Park, Maryland, which they do say is like the Paris of suburban DC, so not bad. Actually, you know what? They say paris is like the Takoma Park of Europe. I don’t know if you’ve-

Jules Boykoff:

There you go.

Dave Zirin:

… heard that. So Jules, I wanted to start off just by you and I going back and forth about the good that we saw in Paris. Anything that we saw. It could be on the field. It could be off the field. It could be in the streets. And I’m curious because we’re going to go good, the bad, and the ugly. And I’m curious for you, when you think the good of the Olympic Paris experience, what comes to mind?

Jules Boykoff:

Well, for me, the good was twofold. One, it’s the athletes. I mean, it’s the athletes in the Olympics that make the Olympics worth anything, and some of them really shined in huge ways. I think everybody knows Simone Biles was amazing. Léon Marchand was bigger than Jesus here in Paris. But there were some athletes who maybe didn’t make the headlines who I think also deserve props.

Dave, we were in the stadium that night when we watched Layla Almasri, the Palestinian runner in the 800 meter, set a national record for Palestine. That was special. And later that night, we watched a runner from India cross the finish line well after all the other competitors. And yet, the crowd was going wild as if she’d almost won the race. And that was really cool too. And for me, that is really more the Olympic spirit than you often see in those hyper-competitive arenas.

But in terms of off the field, I think there were a lot of wins. First of all, there were lots of activist struggle in the streets. We were there for pretty much all of it. This is a total David versus Goliath situation, and it wasn’t just that they were there. They organized in really smart ways. They crossed boundaries in regards to strategies and tactics and came together for the Olympic moment, and they performed a lot of really important duties during the game, such as giving informational tours to journalists who are visiting from afar to let them know the situation, Saccage 2024 was doing that, or taking journalists out on tour and doing outreach like Médecins du Monde and the Revers de la médaille did.

The Revers de la médaille was a really important group that we came to know quite well. And their leaders, people like Paul Alauzy, Antoine de Clerck, were instrumental in creating these moments for people like us to really learn what it’s like to be an unhoused migrant youth in the city during the Olympics. And it got harder for them. It got harder. From every single Olympic migrant that we talked to from the Olympics, they said life got harder under the Olympics.

So those are my goods, people standing up for justice when it’s not even easy to do. But I want to know what you think, Dave. What are your goods for this one?

Dave Zirin:

Well, I mean, I’ll take your lead and go good on the field and good off the field because we know that what happens on the field can ricochet in dramatic and electric effect off the field. And to see Imane Khelif, the boxer from Algeria, succeed and even win gold despite a torrent of abuse from some of the most powerful right-wing and fascist mouthpieces on earth was amazing.

For folks who are unfamiliar with the story, people like Elon Musk, Donald Trump, J.K. Rowling, a true rogues’ gallery of people decided on their own with their own expertise that Imane Khelif was trans or Imane Khelif was a man. I mean, they misgendered her constantly. And all it really was, at the end of the day, was bigotry, pure and simple, and racism, pure and simple. And it was also a hell of an explanation for everybody about the ways that transphobia really affects all women and the way it affects cisgender women as well like Imane Khelif, who don’t conform to white Eurocentric standards of what women should be. And to see her succeed in the face of that, I mean, I can’t imagine what it took.

And one other aspect of this that I think didn’t get talked about nearly enough is that she was also able to accomplish everything that she accomplished as an Algerian boxer and to do this as someone from Algeria in Paris has a symbolic import that I think the global media did not grasp. Because Algeria, of course, was a colony of France. They had to wage a bloody, brutal national liberation struggle against some bloody, brutal oppressors to gain their freedom. There is a monument in Paris for the 140, and that’s by the way a low number, 140 Algerians who are drowned right in the Seine. Drowned in the Seine frankly just a few years before you and I were born. This is not ancient history. And they were drowned in the Seine for no reason other than bigotry, cruelty, and to put down a national liberation movement. And of course, Paris is home to a lot of Algerian immigrants, migrants, Algerian French citizens. And so to see that in the context of all the other abuse that Imane was facing, I mean, that’s something that honestly gives me chills.

As far as off the field, I mean, I got to say it can feel very embattled here in the United States to stand up for Palestinian liberation in the face of a genocide. And to be in Paris and to see the graffiti on the walls, you did an amazing collection of photographs of just people writing, “Free Gaza, free Palestine,” in all sorts of ways across the city, that was beautiful too. It’s going to sound corny as hell, but I kept thinking of the Simon and Garfunkel song Sound of Silence, where they say, I believe, the signs of the prophets are written on the subway walls, tenement halls.

Okay, maybe they’re not going to speak about Palestine, or they’ll do their best to not speak about Palestine, but guess what? Palestine has the hearts of the people of Paris. What you and I of course saw not only in the opening ceremonies, where they got a huge cheer in the bar that we were in when the Palestinian delegation went down the Seine, but you and I also heard it in the closing ceremonies when the Palestinian delegation was announced and the crowd went absolutely wild. I mean, for a people who sometimes seem to be so absent of global solidarity in the face of just horrific situation, to see that was just very heartwarming.

And I’ll just throw onto that our experience meeting Fadi Deeb, the only person in the Palestinian Olympic delegation from Gaza, the only Palestinian who’s going to be in the Paralympic games. To meet him and be witness to his heart and his resolve, I mean, that was worth the trip all in itself.

Jules Boykoff:

Hundred percent agree. It was just such a treat to meet Fadi. Never forget that moment. And when we went in that Turkish restaurant with him, and the men who owned the restaurant just were so excited to see Fadi. They served us on the nicest plates that night. We got the best treatment because of Fadi. And I think he’s just this incredibly charismatic, strong, beautiful human. And I just share that with you, Dave. It was an unforgettable night.

One thing I just want to add, the night before the Olympics officially opened, activists put together a big counter opening ceremony event. Had well over a thousand people there, and this really beautiful thing happened because there was also a Palestinian protest right next to it. And the two events merged together, and you saw the people who were there for the counter Olympics going and supporting the Palestinians, who are yelling across the street at some people that were heckling them. And then you saw the Palestinians coming and supporting the people that were speaking on the dais that night. And I thought, “Wow, this is really interesting moment of these movements coming together to support each other in the context of the Olympic games.”

Dave Zirin:

Mm. And one quick joke that I heard that I loved. You mentioned the Palestinian runner, Almasri.

Jules Boykoff:

Mm-hmm.

Dave Zirin:

Her first name was what? I’m blanking. What was her first?

Jules Boykoff:

Layla.

Dave Zirin:

Layla. I knew it was Layla. But Layla Almasri is that some right-wing hack posted that Almasri in Arabic means Egyptian as a way to say, “Ha, ha. There’s no such thing as a real Palestinian people. Even her last name is Egyptian.” And someone responded, “Well, you’re going to be pretty upset when I tell you about Michael Jordan.”

Jules Boykoff:

Wow. Oh my God.

Dave Zirin:

That was just a great, great one. I just loved it.

Jules Boykoff:

I love… Say her name over and over again. I realized when I mentioned the Indian runner in the 1500, I didn’t even say her name, and I really should. It’s Ankita Dhyani. And it was beautiful to see Ankita push on through to the finish line, and it was beautiful to see all the people around us cheering for her as if she were winning the gold medal. So yeah, I learned a long time ago from some smart people say people’s names, and I just want to make sure I did that too.

Dave Zirin:

Glad you did. Absolutely. So let’s go to the bad right now. There was plenty of bad. What strikes you in your brain stem right away when I say the bad of the Paris Olympics?

Jules Boykoff:

Well, maybe we can go back and forth on this one. So I’ll just do one for starters, and it was so interesting. Macron, Emmanuel Macron, the president of France, was so bad and he was so trying to take advantage of the Olympics as a trampoline for his own political career and his own ego. And walking up to all the athletes after their matches and cupping their heads against their will in his hands, just being a little grabby fella, it didn’t go over well here.

And Dave, after you left, I went to one of the fan zones. It was at Place de la Bataille-de-Stalingrad, where, as a side note, that’s where a lot of unhoused people were living, and they were cleared out to make space for this fan zone. I was there for the United States playing against France and for the gold medal match in men’s basketball. And as you probably know, when Embiid, Joel Embiid, came on the screen, he got a fair amount of booing. He could’ve played for France, chose to play for the United States. It was more playful, but I’ll tell you what. When they put Emmanuel Macron’s tanned visage on the screen, it evinced thunderous boos and jeers from the crowd. I just found that so interesting.

So you know full well politicians try to use things like the Olympics to boost their political careers. And with Macron, it absolutely flopped. He was pulling at around 25% people saying that he could solve the problems of society in France around early July. It only went up to 27% by early August when the games were in full flow. So big L for Macron in these Olympics.

What about you? What’s a bad for you?

Dave Zirin:

Yeah, it’s hard because the bad and the ugly cross back and forth, back and forth. So I’ll just say for me, one of the bad things for sure was the treatment of some of the athletes who deserve better. And I’m really thinking of, first of all, Jordan Chiles, the bronze medalist who they’re trying to strip her bronze medal away as we’re having this conversation, even though she and her Romanian counterpart have talked about sharing the bronze medal. I’m sorry, I don’t have the Romanian counterpart’s name at the tip of my tongue. Maybe you could look that up or something, because you’re right. You got to say people’s names.

I mean, it was just so IOC, International Olympic Committee, to be like, “Oh, you came up with a collective, athlete-driven solution. Yeah, we’re not having that.” I mean, that to me was just wow. This is Thomas Bach in an absolute nutshell. And while this isn’t bad, it’s good although I’m scared who’s in the wings, I couldn’t be more thrilled that Thomas Bach is going to step down as head of the International Olympic Committee because I think his reign is really, I think, going to be defined, when we look back, as one of an Olympic games built on a foundation of injustice.

Jules Boykoff:

Yeah, no question about that. I was actually a little surprised that he decided not to run for another term and have them bend the rules for the International Olympic Committee because under his reign, the organization has clearly become much more autocratic and authoritarian. So.

One of the bads I want to point to is the repression that activists face, over-the-top repression. Now, everybody knows with the Olympics, the security forces used it as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to amplify all their weapon stocks, get special laws on the books, and also just basically do whatever they want in the streets as a free pass. And thankfully, there were no terrorist attacks during our time here in Paris or during the entire Paris games. But the security forces in charge, they turned their attention to activists. And this all too often happens with the Olympics. When terrorism doesn’t happen, and thank God it doesn’t, they turn their attention to activists.

And we interviewed one young man, Noah Farjon, who was part of the group Saccage 2024 who was bringing a couple journalists to a toxic tour, they called them. They were just informational tours. We went on one, Dave. It’s just some information. There’s not even a loud megaphone. It’s just somebody talking about, in this case, Natsuko Sasaki, one of the members talking about “Here. Here’s what happening in Saint-Denis. This is how the gentrification has happened. Here’s the environmental effects.” Total informational tour. Nothing spiky, nothing nonviolent. And when Noah was bringing these two journalists to the place where we all met up, he was scooped up by police and detained, him and the journalists, for 10 hours.

It doesn’t end there. He actually… They tried to do another toxic tour that focused on police repression and ironically, the police swooped in yet again and issued 135 Euro citations to every single person there who did not have an official journalism card. And so Noah, once again, was scooped up. They called him a leader of this illegal protest. I don’t think this is a protest. This is just a gathering and informational tour. And they brought him in, this time only for seven hours of questioning. And when they questioned him, he told me that they focused on his politics, which was just fascinating to me and really harrowing as well.

I mean, you think about what would’ve happened if the Rassemblement National, the right-wing party that almost got power from these recent French elections, if they got power, you know they would’ve taken full advantage of that situation. He might be still sitting in jail somewhere given the language that they used to talk about protesters around the Olympics. And so I just want to say it is bad what happened here in regards to the ramping up of the security structure and the use of it against people just simply exercising their democratic rights.

Dave Zirin:

Yeah, I’m going to build on that because this was one of my bad things, too, and I really hope that people in Los Angeles are going to listen to what I have to say. They talk about terrorism. There are thousands upon thousands of heavily-armed troops and police officers from over 30 countries, from the United States to Western Europe to the Middle East. Now, the part that’s bad in all of this in my brain is not just the cracking down on activists, but also the fact that they were miles and miles from the security zone. I mean, we saw it. They weren’t just protecting Olympic facilities and foreign dignitaries and wealthy tourists. They were in working-class neighborhoods, middle-class neighborhoods.

Performative force, performative violence or the prospect of violence, the specter of violence. And you imagine that in Los Angeles. And the part that really chills me is the memory of seeing that all these police officers and soldiers and elite special forces, people from all these different countries, were all wearing an Olympic patch on their shoulders almost as if to say, “Yeah, do not think for a second you’ve got the democratic rights that may exist in France. This is IOC autocrat land, and we’re going to make sure that these Olympics come off without a hitch at the barrel of a gun.”

And a very interesting thing happened. I don’t know if you saw this. After the men’s gold medal basketball victory, the US men beating an incredibly plucky French team that I was rooting for heart and soul, I got to tell you, is that Ayesha Curry, Steph Curry’s wife was brought to tears by one of the armed officer people about the way she was treated and pushed along in horrible fashion. And there’s footage of one of Steph Curry’s teammates yelling about it like, “What’s going on here?” And she was with her kid and all this stuff.

And there was a small part of me that was like, “Wow, this is terrible,” but also like that line from Bruce Willis in Die Hard like, “Welcome to the party, pal.” It’s like, “Let people…” Because that was so hidden in the coverage that this specter of violence and armed force existed everywhere, all around. And that, to me… I mean, combing the mainstream sports pages. And I got to be clear when I say mainstream sports pages, that was the only sliver of oxygen that I saw that said, “Wow, you just really were not free to come and go as you please in Olympic Paris.”

Jules Boykoff:

Yeah, that’s a really interesting point. And partway through our experience here, we realized that every single video that we were shooting for The Real News Network, every single one was interrupted at one point by a police siren. And we said in one of the pieces we wrote that it was like the soundtrack for the Olympic games. And that kept-

Dave Zirin:

That was your line. Credit where it’s due.

Jules Boykoff:

Is it?

Dave Zirin:

Say your name.

Jules Boykoff:

I didn’t even remember that.

Dave Zirin:

Say your name.

Jules Boykoff:

All right, all right. But, I mean, that’s incredible. We weren’t shooting 10-hour-long videos. We’re shooting five-minute, 10 minute here. Every single time, it was interrupted by a siren. I just thought that that was absolutely incredible.

Dave Zirin:

And don’t forget getting interrupted at one point by a guy with a submachine gun.

Jules Boykoff:

They were everywhere. And hey, look. We were joking one night. We were going over to do an interview, and we were coming back through and we had a big gaggle of people with their machine guns. They weren’t always pointing at the ground either, which was a little unnerving. And we were a little bit worked up and we were like, “Yeah, we’re in our 50s, white cis guys from the United States, and yet we’re worked up.”

And every time we saw somebody that had been pulled over by the police, every single time it was a young man of color. And it wasn’t just once. It wasn’t just twice. It was dozens of times that we saw this. And so that’s living in the Olympic city as a young person of color, and that was just harrowing and really obvious too.

Dave Zirin:

Other than the fact that I’m 38, I agree with everything you just said. Okay, so let’s go ugly, Jules, before people turn off their TVs right now. What, to you, was the ugliest part of the Paris Olympics?

Jules Boykoff:

Well, one ugly part that I just want to talk about because I think we really uncovered something important in our reporting here was around the water with the Seine. Now, first of all, you and I are both on the same page. Totally, let’s clean up the Seine. It hasn’t been swimmable for more than a hundred years. If you can make that for people in this city available, great. Wonderful. I think we both support that. Let’s do it. If the Olympics help make it a little bit faster, great.

But the fact of the matter is the Surfrider Foundation, this organization here in Paris that was doing a lot of testing of the water month by month as it got closer to the Olympics, their testing revealed that the water just wasn’t safe. They were testing for E. coli and Enterococci, so two bacteria, and they were finding that the tests were failing time and again. The tests finally passed in July 2024, the very same month that the Olympics began, but we found something really interesting when we started pressing a little bit further the spokesperson from the Surfrider Foundation, and that was this: that they’re only testing for two bacteria. They’re not testing for pesticides flowing through the river. They’re not testing for toxic effluents from metals. They’re not testing for pharmaceutical refuse. They’re just testing for these two bacteria. That blew my mind.

So when you hear about these swimmers getting sick and they’re saying, “Well, the water was fine. It didn’t have too much E. coli in it,” well what about if you take a little bit of E. coli and you mix it with a full stream of some random pharmaceutical refuse that comes flying through and they gobble that down? Obviously, it’s impossible to know, but it just blew my mind that this really wasn’t reported on aside from what we did in our reporting for The Nation. And it really was disconcerting, too, especially when you think about Paris organizers said this was going to be the greenest games ever. They were always, of course, looking out for the athletes. But I think they jeopardized athlete health by making them swim in that river to support the Olympic spectacle. I thought that was quite ugly.

Dave Zirin:

Yeah, my ugly… I’m with you on that. My ugliest part, and I know you’re going to agree with me, is just being in a city with 12,500 ghosts, 12,500 people forcibly removed, really for the purposes of the Olympic games, even though sometimes they would obfuscate that with language. And then learning from one of the NGO workers who works with unhoused people and works with people who live in precarious housing that they were splitting up families, prioritizing mothers and children, leaving fathers behind, and about how she said this to me, and I looked it up and it’s true, the European Union has passed dictates against breaking up families when you have forcible sheltering of people, which is its own issue. But the EU said, “Well, look. If we’re going to do this, we’re not going to break up families.” And then here’s the IOC, Thomas Bach, Macron being like, “Well, actually by hook or by crook, we’re going to get people off the streets. We’re going to get people out of precarious housing.”

And it’s such an assault because 300,000 people in Paris live in temporary or precarious housing because of the prices of housing. It’s an incredible number with between six and 12,000 people living on the streets at one time. And that, of course, doesn’t include people living in squats, or what they call in Paris collectifs, and so many of them African migrants.

There’s an ugliness. It was like living amongst a human rights violation for the purposes of our collective entertainment. And when you allowed yourself to put on blinders, it was very possible to feel the narcotic of the athletes, the excitement, the competition, the beauty of sport. But then you take a step back from it and the sheer ugliness of what they did to the most vulnerable of the populations there was something to behold.

But meeting people like Paul Alauzy, who does that work, meeting as you did more than I did some of the unhoused people and migrants themselves and hearing their struggles, although I did get to hear some of them for sure at some of the rallies and press conferences and the like, I mean, you saw resilience. You saw strength. But you also had to take a step back and look at the reality that these folks are basically standing in front of bulldozers when the Olympics come to town. So that was my ugliness.

Jules Boykoff:

Yeah. Just adding one thing to that. In that ugliness, there was incredible beauty in the people that were fighting back for the rights of the people. And one thing I witnessed that I’ll never forget is a doctor named Bertrand Chatelaine.

And he was there and it was getting late and our shift was supposed to end with doing outreach, but all these young African migrants came out, mostly from Ivory Coast, and there were literally 40 people there who wanted to see the doctor. And he’s an 88-year-old man, and he just patiently went through, boom, boom, helping each one of these young men getting medications that they needed, figuring out what it was that was their malady. And we stayed till nearly midnight. We were supposed to end our shift at 10:00.

This guy is 88 years old and I thought, “Wow, this is actually the embodiment of the values that are in the Olympic Charter much more than a lot of the things that we’ve heard out of the mouth of Thomas Bach and his fellows in the International Olympic Committee. This is actually the spirit of the Olympics, and yet it’s shuffled into the darkness.” And it was just a privilege to be able to see that just even for a few hours. Five hours one night with him is something I’ll never forget.

Dave Zirin:

Yeah, and to put a button on that, the story about athletes in the Olympic Village taking advantage of the fact that there’s free healthcare in the village to do all sorts of checkups and treatments that they otherwise cannot afford back in their home country, it makes you think that a lot of these athletes have far more in common with the migrants than they do with people like Thomas Bach and Emmanuel Macron and Tom Cruise.

All right, let’s spin this forward real quick, and then we’ll wrap it up, Jules. You and I have both been involved in for quite a few years in Los Angeles 2028. That’s where the next Olympics are going to be, of course, the next summer Olympics. So to you, Jules Boykoff, based upon what you saw and learned in Paris, what advice do you have for not just activists, but citizens in Los Angeles as 2028 approaches?

Jules Boykoff:

Well, this is a question that you and I asked a lot of the people that we were interviewing here, from activists to doctors to outreach workers to everyday people on the streets that we were talking with. And across the board, every one of them who is involved in advocacy or activism said to the Los Angeles City, “Folks, organize early and often and dig in your heels. And get ready to work with people who you might not normally work with, but it’s going to be crucial during that Olympic moment.” That’s something that you and I have seen in city after city, but it’s definitely something that every single person we talked to gave as advice to folks in LA.

And there’s a lot of spirit and zest in Los Angeles. You and I have both spent a lot of time down there. There’s NOlympics LA, the anti-Olympics group that’s done great organizing down there. They’re working with a lot of different groups, the LA Tenants Union, lots of other amazing groups that are down there. LA CAN, Los Angeles Community Action Network. You name it. Stop LAPD Spying. They have the infrastructure there to push back, and they have a lot of people in Hollywood that are not going to be Tom Cruise jumping off the top of a stadium at the closing ceremony, but are actually going to be asking big questions about Los Angeles. There’s been numerous celebrities, and I hope that they can get more celebrities on board to be outspoken about the downsides that you and I have been talking about tonight. So I think that would be my advice for Los Angeles.

Last point. I was really interested to see an elected official in LA, the LA controller, a guy named Kenneth Mejia, who posted on Twitter this really interesting graphic comparing Paris to Los Angeles. Because all too often, Paris and Los Angeles were placed in the same bucket. They were going for the Olympics at the same time. There were supposed to be these two democracies after a wave of anti-democratic hosts. But wow, the differences between Paris and Los Angeles are huge.

I know you have a lot to say about that, but Kenneth Mejia was pointing out the transportation system in LA is a nothing burger compared to here, where the metro system was amazing. The number of unhoused people living in the streets in Los Angeles is off the charts compared to what you saw here, even though it’s a significant issue here as well. And he laid it out. So I think following Kenneth Mejia’s lead, early and often, that’s the only way to deal with what’s coming to Los Angeles four years hence.

What about you though? What would you say to those activists?

Dave Zirin:

Start talking to the unions now about being part of the resistance, because that’s one of the things I do pull from the Paris experience, is good for the workers of France, the union workers in France, in that they were able to leverage the Olympics to get higher pay, benefits, beat back the reform of their pensions. People might remember the mass protests in 2023. They raised the slogan, no raise, no Olympics. I mean, all of that is beautiful and inspiring, and I’m definitely glad they’re going to have more coin in their pocket, but it also felt to me in Paris that it also meant separating the unions from the people who then the Olympics fell on their backs. Talking about the unhoused populations, the people in the outer suburbs, the people affected by the security state, et cetera.

I’d really like to see and hope to see in Los Angeles, where union density is far higher than your typical American city even if it’s not Paris, I would love to see them truly joined in 2028 and through the Olympics not just for their rights as workers, but for the rights of the people who are most vulnerable to the Olympic monolith.

Jules Boykoff:

Mm-hmm. I love that. Great point.

Dave Zirin:

Well, that’s all the time we have here. Jules, let me just say that doing this with you, the work, both planning these clips for The Real News Network and writing for The Nation was a true honor on my part. I appreciate you. I love the work you put in. Brilliant, sharp, cohesive, thoughtful, measured, and oh so important. So thank you so much, Jules, for being part of our Paris 2024 project. If you’re down, I look forward to doing it again in LA.

Jules Boykoff:

Hell yeah. We had a great time. We worked hard. And I feel the same way about you, Dave. It was just a real highlight of my life to do this. It was so fun. We worked hard. Met some amazing people. We learned a lot. And yeah, I hope people slow down and check out some of the videos and some of the writing that we did because we really did our very best work here. So thanks, Dave.

Dave Zirin:

Amen. Right back at you.

And I also want to give a shout-out right now to Maximilian Alvarez over at The Real News Network, Cam Granadino at The Real News Network, Dave Hebden at The Real News Network, and the whole team at TRNN who were able to produce these videos quickly, incredibly professionally. Terrific B-roll. That means footage while people were talking when we did interviews. Just top-notch work from The Real News Network. Just shout out to all of y’all.

And for all of you out there who followed up with us, who’ve been watching the clips, who’ve been reading the articles, much respect to you. You are appreciated. We are going to build a movement out of this, because from knowledge comes power. For everybody out there listening, please stay frosty. We are out of here. Peace.

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