It's All Fun And Olympic Games Until Somebody Gets Hurt

Anti-Olympic protests in Vancouver turned violent today and are still going on in downtown.

Police officers donning riot gear have constructed a barrier on Jarvis Street in downtown Vancouver in an attempt to quell an anti-Olympic protest that erupted into violence on Saturday morning.

Authorities say more than 200 protesters, many of them dressed in black and wearing masks, took to the streets at Granville and Georgia Streets before 10 a.m. and began causing damage to private property.

Cars were spray painted and street corner newspaper boxes were tossed into the windows of the Hudson's Bay and TD Bank buildings.

Simon Fraser University student Nekita Garcias said she and a friend watched as the protest turn ugly.

"We were right there when the violence started," Garcias said. "There were a lot of parents with kids around, they rushed them away."

The crowd was larger before the violence started, Garcias said, but many participants broke away once the property damage began.

"Some people just walked away once it got violent, they didn't want any part of it." 

I'd say this sort of thing didn't happen in America, but then again Atlanta 96 wasn't exactly peaceful now, was it?  Still, there are a lot of calls in Vancouver to bring attention to the economic, homelessness, and ethnic issues in British Columbia especially with First Nations citizens.  The money should have been spent on improving those issues, not hosting an Olympics.

Funny, we have the same problems here.

Only far worse.