Chicago, Illinois: Across the country and the world, public officials reacted to the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) announcement that Rio de Janeiro was selected as the host city for the 2016 Olympics with shock and surprise. Chicago Mayor Richard Daley was so confident about his city’s chances for a successful bid, that he did not arrive on time for the first round of voting when Chicago was eliminated before any of its competitors from Madrid, Tokyo and the eventual winner. “I was shocked. I was disappointed. I couldn't believe it,” Daley told the Associated Press.

Mayor Daley and scores of other politicians had their disappointment and surprise amplified by a dutiful mainstream media, which often conflated their sentiments with those of the general population. “Chicago Shocked by IOC’s Quick Rejection,” read a headline from the Washington Post; “throngs in Daley Plaza gasped in disappointment,” the lead article from the New York Times proclaimed; “Disbelief in Chicago as it is eliminated early,” described a photo from the Los Angeles Times; “Chicago's Big Letdown,” read an on-screen headline for CNN's Situation Room; “Ready for an Olympic Party, Chicago Loses Its Date,” a headline bemoaned from the New York Times; “Chicago Wrestles With Olympic Loss,” served as the Wall Street Journal’s lead article headline; and lastly, “shock and deep sadness,” were the words CNN’s Wolf Blitzer chose to describe the day, which has become the U.S. media’s most common refrain on today’s big announcement.

Throughout the day’s litany of news coverage on the IOC’s decision, little attention has been given to what is arguably the majority sentiment in Chicago. When citizen opposition, polls and community organizing is taken into consideration, today’s decision is not appropriately characterized by “deep sadness.” Community leaders and organizers, as well as citizens, registered far different reactions than what was expressed by politicians and prominently echoed by U.S.-based mainstream media outlets.

Citizens Express Distrust and Disagreement with Failed Bid

Buried under the headlines and toward the end of many articles covering Rio’s successful bid today, one could find citizen sentiments that were more in line with many polls registering significant public opposition and a lack of support for Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympics. Other polls in the lead-up to the unsuccessful bid documented high disapproval ratings of the Mayor.

Most of the citizens opposed to the city’s ill-fated bid expressed disagreement with the priorities of such a campaign.“We have more important issues here like the economic crisis,” said Jennifer Omotola of Oak Park, to the Washington Post. “My hope is that we’ll get back to paying attention to the problems that are facing the city on an ongoing basis,” remarked Andrew Huff to the Wall Street Journal, editor and publisher of Gaper's Block, an Internet site that publishes news on Chicago.

Many others registered distrust, “I just think that the history of corruption sets the stage for a brutal series of events like misuse of funds and insider dealings,” said Brian Hayes, 53, of Chicago, to ABC News.

Distrust has been clearly on the rise in relation to the city’s handling of its bid, especially in the wake of an offer made by the Mayor to IOC officials in Switzerland for a host-city contract that would have resulted in an open-ended guarantee by Chicago taxpayers for any cost overruns. In a public backlash, polls reflected skyrocketing opposition, with up to 84% opposing the city’s bid and expressing a lack of trust in the proper use of public funds for the games.

Community Organizations and Leaders Celebrate IOC Decision, Explain Opposition

While the citizens and public at-large in Chicago expressed significant opposition and distrust in the lead-up to today’s announcement and in its aftermath, community organizations and leaders alike celebrated.

“We dodged a real bullet today,” Tom Tresser exclaimed from Copenhagen via Skype to Chicago’s Independent Media Center (IMC). Tresser is a long-time Chicago activist and an organizer with one of the lead opposition groups to Chicago’s bid, the coalition No Games Chicago. Community groups such as Northside Action for Justice, Pan-African Roots, the Independent Voters of Illinois, the League of Women Voters and the Pilsen Alliance were part of the coalition, which organized an array of protests leading up to the decision.

Tresser was supported by community fundraisers that enabled him to fly to Cophenhagen armed with an updated 159-page “book of evidence” that he originally distributed to IOC voters earlier in the summer in Lausanne, Switzerland. The tome outlined in detail the argument of No Games Chicago, which was that the city lacked the finances, competence in public officials, the infrastructure and the public will to adequately host the games.

“This was a real wake up call to the mayor and his team who has been pushing this thing for years spending millions of dollars that should have gone to the neediest, not the greediest. This is a time to be giving more to people who are losing their homes, and instead it went to people who are planning a party that fortunately will never happen,” Tresser said.

The final toll in terms of the city’s costs for promoting its bid for the Olympics was in upwards of $50 million dollars, including $3.1 million doled out to the powerful and controversial Hill and Knowlton public relations firm, hired three years ago by the city of Chicago to promote its bid.

When asked how he felt about the media’s coverage of today’s IOC announcement, Tresser said, "the media are just cheerleaders for anything the power structure wants. The media cheerleaded us into two wars and the media cheerleaded us into this whole mess as well. The media has passed on the PR spin of whatever the President and Mayor have had to say. Today's decision is going to be spare us years of reading about scandals and backroom deals, some of which has already happened. We have been spared all of that, which is good news. But unfortunately, problems in our city, including the fact that only 54% of our high school students in the city ever graduate, continue to persist.”

Tresser urged citizen and activists alike to take a survey the group was distributing to assess future direction and actions.

Other community activists echoed similar sentiments about the city’s bid, while bringing up additional concerns, such as police brutality, displacement resulting from gentrification and increased homelessness. J.R. Fleming, an organizer with the Olympics Human Rights Project of Chicago, told the Chicago IMC that there were, “many issues that needed to be addressed before the Olympics. Homelessness, our transportation and educational structures are horrible. The demolition of public housing here in Chicago and nationally, there are 300,000 people a month are losing their jobs.” But especially for residents of the south side, who were expected to be disproportionately affected by the games coming to the city, Fleming said that, “We knew that the Olympics would have raised police violence, which we learned from the example of Atlanta. When a city is awarded something like the Olympics, it goes into a police state. And once that happens, and the police have a mandate, they are given impunity and it raises their level of aggression.”

While community activists had their own concerns about Chicago’s bid, independent journalists brought up additional charges, such as a challenge to the widespread assumption that a successful bid would have meant certain economic progress.

Dave Zirin, an independent journalist who covers sports, was interviewed this morning by Democracy Now!, a news program broadcasted nationally by community television and radio stations. He argued that the economic benefits purportedly brought by hosting Olympic is not based on facts and pointed to previous hosts and their experiences.

Instead of bringing economic benefits to cities, Zirin pointed out that it often leaves cities in debt. Cost overruns are not only historic to the city of Chicago, famous for its many construction “projects,” but also to cities that have previously hosted the Olympics: “China spent as high, according to the LA Times, as $42 billion to get their Olympics there … Athens, Greece, they went 1,000 percent over budget in Athens. The city of Montreal, [which hosted the] 1976 Olympics, finished paying off their debt in 2006,” Zirin told viewers. Later in the day, Zirin wrote that the IOC decision was a victory for Chicago.

Environmentalists Hope for an Obama Return to Copenhagen, while local Chicago Activists Hope for Renewed Priorities in Chicago

While President Obama, his wife and celebrity accompaniments went to Copenhagen this past week, environmental groups clamored for him to return for a different occasion, as it brandished a sign which read “Right City, Wrong Date” during a meeting he had with the Prime Minister of Denmark. The activists were referring to an important climate change conference due to take place in Copenhagen this December.

As reported by the U.K.-based daily, the Guardian, the wrinkle for the climate change talks is that India and China have promised to move forward toward lessening pollution levels only if the U.S. first takes steps to do so as well. Given past U.S. policy postures, such as the Bush administration’s rejection of the Kyoto accords on climate change, the India and China stances seem well-grounded. Back in Washington a climate change bill was introduced by Senator John Kerry this past Wednesday, but has been given only a moderate chance at passage, with many amendments and possible gutting of the bill in store for the near future.

Meanwhile in Chicago, while celebrating the IOC’s decision today, activists such as Fleming are hoping for renewed priorities as well. “We're excited that we were not chosen and that our Mayor, President and government can focus on the task at hand, which is really on our children who are our future. The Mayor wanted to leave a legacy and now they have an opportunity to leave a real legacy. Now, the city and government can focus on providing basic human rights and take care of our city's problems, such as the housing and homeless problems,” Fleming told the Chicago IMC.

But will the Mayor do so? “Whether or not they use the opportunity to address these issues, at least they won't be able to use the Olympics as an excuse for not doing so,” explained Fleming, who added, “whatever happens in the future, the people won today, thanks to the organizing efforts of scores of community organizations. Man, this tastes good, this tastes so good.”

Will Obama return to Copenhagen and will Congress take climate change seriously? Will Mayor Daley re-prioritize his initiatives and take the public interest into greater consideration in future years? The future remains uncertain, but one thing is sure about today’s IOC announcement: while Mayor Daley and President Obama’s night may consist of surprise and disappointment, scores of citizens and community leaders of Chicago alike will be celebrating and/or breathing a collective sigh of relief.

Andrew Kennis is a PhD fellow, an investigative journalist, an adjunct professor and a researcher in International and Political Communication. Andrew is a long-time contributor to Independent Media Centers from locations ranging across three continents, including Chiapas, Israel, Venezuela, Guatemala, Quebec, Palestine and Mexico City.