2024 Paris Olympics Highlights and Lowlights: From Hijab Bans to Social Cleansing to Boxing Gold

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With the 2024 Summer Olympics just concluded in Paris, we look at the highlights and lowlights of the past few weeks, both on and off the field. Journalist Shireen Ahmed discusses the victories for women in sport, including Dutch runner Sifan Hassan’s gold medal in the women’s marathon, which she accepted at the closing ceremony wearing a hijab while France’s ban on its women athletes competing in hijabs was in effect. “It was a very beautiful and quiet message to women all around the world, and particularly those in France,” says Ahmed, senior contributor to CBC Sports and a lecturer in the journalism program at Toronto Metropolitan University. The Nation’s Dave Zirin notes that while the Olympic Games had many powerful moments, they happened against a backdrop of mass social cleansing in Paris, with thousands of migrants and unhoused people “unceremoniously loaded on buses” and dumped outside the city. “We have to start organizing now to make sure that the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles are not a carnival of injustice,” he warns.

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