ABSTRACT
Second, there is the opportunity for non-state actors and social movements to protest about a perceived social injustice by ‘seizing the platform’ offered by sports mega-events watched by hundreds of millions of people and reported on by most of the world’s media (Price 2008). The next Summer Olympics after Tokyo 1964, staged in Mexico City in 1968, saw the best example of this in the form of the famous ‘salute’ by John Carlos and Tommie Smith in support of the Olympic Project for Human Rights (Hartmann 2003; Henderson 2010). More recently evictions of low-income communities from housing to make way for mega-event-related projects and other infringements of human rights have also become part of the Olympic and FIFA Men’s Football World Cup narrative (COHRE 2007).
