Boston Mayor Marty Walsh has signed a decree, at the behest of the U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC), prohibiting Boston city employees from speaking against the Boston bid for the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad, commonly known as the 2024 Summer Olympics:
If you’re a Boston city employee, there’s now an official decree: Don’t badmouth the Olympics.
Documents obtained by the (Boston) Globe through a public records request to City Hall show Mayor Martin J. Walsh has signed a formal agreement with the United States Olympic Committee that bans city employees from criticizing Boston’s bid for the 2024 Summer Games.
The “joinder agreement” forbids the city of Boston and its employees from making any written or oral statements that “reflect unfavorably upon, denigrate or disparage, or are detrimental to the reputation” of the International Olympic Committee, the USOC, or the Olympic Games.
Instead, the USOC and the Walsh administration must “work cooperatively together to manage, complete, and promote” the city’s bid to the International Olympic Committee. Boston city employees “shall each promote” the city’s bid “in a positive manner,” the agreement adds.
Make no mistake about it, this is a blatant violation of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution that is part of an ongoing War on the First Amendment by Republicans, corporate Democrats, right-wing judges, political elites, and now the U.S. Olympic Committee. For Marty Walsh, who was supported by Elizabeth Warren in his 2013 Boston mayoral campaign, to do the USOC’s bidding and effectively censor the voices of public employees for political reasons is a disgusting backstab to those who voted him into office.
This is the kind of authoritarian politics I expect from Republicans like Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, not from Democrats like Marty Walsh.
The Progressive Midwesterner 