By SAJE Staff
Last month, concerned community members from all around L.A. gathered at All Power Books for “WTF is an NSSE?,” a NOlympics LA teach-in on the 2028 Olympics’ “National Special Security Event” designation. “NSSE” is a security designation given to high-profile events in the U.S., such as the Super Bowl, World Cup, the Democratic and Republican National Conventions, and (of course) the Olympics. Basically, it gets applied to any large-scale gathering that authorities deem a “potential target for terrorism or other criminal activity.” Under an NSSE, authority over security is transferred from local law enforcement to the federal government. And if the 2028 games proceed as planned, they will mark the largest and most logistically rigorous NSSE in history.
The designation was created at least partially in response to the bombing of Atlanta’s 1996 Olympic Games. One attendee was killed by the blast, another experienced a heart attack and later died, and more than one-hundred others were injured. A few years later, in December 2000, President Clinton signed the Presidential Threat Protection Act of 2000 into law. The act endowed the U.S. Secret Service with the capacity to plan, coordinate, and implement cross-departmental security operations at special events of national significance.
On its face, it’s not hard to see why bringing in national-level threat and intelligence analysis would be useful in securing a mega-event hosting huge crowds. The 2028 Games are estimated to bring 15 million visitors to the Southern California region, including dignitaries from around the world. While regional law enforcement agencies may have a strong working knowledge of local communities, businesses, and infrastructure, they lack the intelligence capacity needed to monitor and curb sophisticated threats to the public. But given the events of this summer, it’s naive to think that the White House and the Department of Homeland Security will utilize this security designation solely in the name of “keeping the peace.”
(Curiously, LA 28 organizers keep referring to these games as “the largest peacetime gathering in history.” Is this “peacetime” in the room with us now?)
Security perimeters, enforced by DHS and the Secret Service, will extend into neighborhoods bordering designated Olympic venues-–bringing regular road closures, vehicle searches, intensified surveillance, and even TSA-style body screenings to daily life in downtown, South LA, and Long Beach. According to the National Lawyers Guild, the NSSE designation will allow “federal and local authorities to impose excessive security measures that limit the ability of people to assemble and express grievance”—measures which will be further amplified through the use of intrusive technologies developed by private defense contractors like Palantir and Archer Aviation.
To paraphrase an attendee at the August teach-in, it’s imperative we organize ourselves at a scale commensurate with the footprint of the Games themselves (which currently extends as far north as the Sepulveda Basin, as far east as Pomona, and as far south as San Onofre State Beach). Given that the NSSE will have acute implications for communities immediately around the venue zones, while simultaneously disrupting daily life for all of us in the summer of 2028, it’s time to build coalition and coordination in order to fortify our collective safety across the region.
This Monday, September 29, NOlympics LA will host a New Member Orientation virtually on Zoom at 7pm for anyone interested in learning more about the coalition and joining us in our work. Register here.
