"I'm going to cry a little bit talking about it, but the fact that we're going to show up to support our allies in Tokyo, that we can show up on the day of that protest with like something close to 20 [people from LA], I think we'll have 16 or 17 people there. Maybe more, it keeps going up. But we're going to show up there. That's very exciting."

"This is the first time I'll meet most of the people, so I'm really excited about meeting somebody who shares some of the same goals and visions and outrage. Because it's really isolating, at least in Japan, to be against the Olympics. People even call me 'gaikokujin,' — it's a really horrible word. It's a 'non-national' if I translate directly. The word was used during the war to crtiiczie somebody who is not committing to the natioanl project of war - and when I was called that I was shocked. Like, are you really using that term right now? For what? For not supporting the Olympics?"

"Being there, meeting, and making really human connections help us, I think in a way, give us hopes, give us a little more dedication to the work we are doing […] It’s just making it all a human process. And if I know that I got to know you, through video but if I got to see you face to face, when LA has to fight again […] I feel like I would be more willing to meet you and participate in your resistance."

"We have to share the one-year-after report from the Pyeongchang Olympic Games. There hasn't been a chance to share it because of the language barriers — we'd have to translate it to Japanese and that takes a long time. So we thought this [in person summmit] would be the perfect opportunity to share our ideas about and assessment of the Pyeongchang Olympic Games."

"That is one of the key aspects of the anti-Olympics Games alliance, that we are listening to the people who are marginalized. That's the key. So if we listen to those marginalized people through this alliance, I think that could be one of the successful outcomes. Because as you know, the Olympic Games wants to exclude homeless people, they want to exclude poor people, they want to exclude disabled people. So our goal should be noticing those marginalized groups through our meetings. So I'm looking forward to listening to the homeless movement in LA."

"I was thinking about what are ways that we can ramp up the transnational solidarity. And I was feeling a little bit more urgency around this question of like, yeah we've all been talking to each other for like two years now, what can we do? We've sort of hit our limit a little bit in terms of what we can get done over fractured Skype conversations. What would it look like to be together?"

"Let's break this Olympic myth. Let's break this branding, expose what it actually does. And minimize, if we can, the harm done."

"I think coming out of there with at least some sort of set of shared understandings — at least for some of the groups to be like, here are some ideas or here are some things we can work on together outside of just helping each other tell each other's stories, which is a big part of it as well. But what more action-oriented stuff? Like how can we target the IOC? How can we make them weak?"

"What is it that we need to build or what is it that we can build together that will resist the Olympics, that will actually provide something that — a machine of sorts that will resist the Olympics in a meaningful and powerful way, not just in individual cities but as a whole? In some ways, what is the response to the fact that, you know, the IOC and Olympic boosters — they're organizing on a transnational level so it's like, it is sort of incumbent on us to do the same if we actually want to stop them. I don't think we can have that infrastructure and that machine unless we have sort of like a strong and shared political analysis."

"[Looking at past Olympics] I saw this disconnection, this discontinuation of the Olympics resistance movement. But with the internet and everything I'm starting to see more networks and people really sharing the knowledge, and now, I see that physically the international community is coming together. So I hope that this will really be a moment when activists and scholars internationally can connect — instead of the separate disconnected resistance, making a continuation so that it has more power and it has more voice."

“Hopefully the media — in America at least where we have more influence — will start rethinking Tokyo 2020 and start looking at some of the holes that we're trying to help expose. [There's also] all the documentation, all the stories from Tokyo, from Paris, from Korea that we're going to capture and try to bring back. So that way even if the press doesn't really cover us the way we want or cover us at all — you know, that's part of what we want to achieve too but that's a little bit less within our control — then it is our documentation, our telling of the story, what we want to do with that knowledge, that we can control in a lot of ways."

"I feel like at a broad level it was successful. I feel like I got a good sense of the basics and some of that just came out of the clarity and the consensus around not wanting reform. The process of writing the joint statement pulled out a lot of really interesting things."

"The whole week was really encouraging. It passed so fast. I was tired throughout the week, I was doing a lot of things, but it’s not the kind of tiredness that I felt in some of my past activism experience, where we did so much and it felt like not much changed. I feel like there’s a shift at least in the activists, sort of the mood of possibility, like the expectation of possibility, because we made something different possible. And thanks to all the international delegates who came to join us, we really got a lot of media attention. So that was amazing."

"It has fueled my imagination. Meeting people was great, because I could feel the enthusiasm."

"It was great. Because I met so many people from many countries and I learned about so many different perspectives. I liked the point that people want to abolish the Olympics. I was kind of impressed by that. "

"To be fair I don't know how much time would have been enough time — we probably could have talked for ten days straight and it wouldn't have been enough. But, there was less conversation-based interactions that I think ideally I would have wanted or anticipated going in."

"I think the moment was really great because the anti-Olympic Games [movement] is getting bigger, I can feel that. I think we witnessed the moment together and it was really great. I could feel the enthusiasm from people from LA and Rio and other people, and it was great. And the process of sharing our experience, I think that's kind of an accomplishment already. And it was interesting that LA people, Hangorin no Kai, and others are all kind of related to the anti-gentrification movement. So it was great to share that perspective, that different perspective, which is showing that actually the essence of the Olympic Games, nowadays, in the contemporary cities, is now about development and gentrification."

"Skype is obviously great. But I tap out after like an hour, two hours max. It's just like, you can't. Yeah it's like I have to pee, I get fidgety. It's different. Whereas it was like, oh yeah I could sit and talk to Frédéric in this park for two hours. You know it's easy, and I was like, oh that was just two hours and, yeah, the kind of quality and depth of the conversations you can have is really different."

"Meeting and talking to people who have been the most directly impacted. So like, unhoused folks and folks who have been evicted, and folks who would maybe not be as easy to get in touch with over Skype or email, but to actually be able to have those direct conversations and hear about those experiences from the source, was really critical and felt really special and different. It's like, oh I would not have had this conversation over email. And also in talking about sensitive stuff, things that maybe would not have come up in an email."

"I think overall the stuff that felt the most meaningful to me and where I felt like I was having these, 'oh I could fucking die happy right now' moments, were a lot more of the smaller, more intimate and conversational events. So, the night picnic in Yoyogi Park was really incredible. The Homes not Games event was really incredible. The last evening in Mitaki Park was really incredible."

"There was a moment at the Homes not Games event where Aniko, who speaks Japanese, Korean and English fluently and she was doing a lot of the Japanese-Korean translating. She was the translator in our small group and she came up to me and young Leonardo and was like, what part of LA do you guys live in? And we were like, oh we both actually live in Boyle Heights. And we were starting to explain where it was, and she was like, oh Boyle Heights, you guys kicked out the galleries. And it was just too cool, like, whoa you're in Japan and you know about the work that we've done. That has traveled around the world. That was very cool."

"On Saturday we visited the food sharing events with homeless people. And it was good, I think. Misako-san and Hangorin no Kai already work a lot with homeless people and they tried to share the experiences of the people who got evicted, and they invited them to the dinner. So I think it was great. And it was kind of a great chance to understand what's going on. It was a great chance to talk with marginalized people. And the great thing about Hangorin no Kai is they never objectify the people who are marginalized. They try to become a friend, so I think that kind of attitude is really important. I really admire that."

"There are so many things I liked about the gathering but the most important thing was the bond we formed. We became much closer. And even among Japanese activists, we knew each other before, but we got to meet you international delegates who I had only known names or not even names. And I think that makes a big difference. Like, when you organize a big project that’s how we get to know each other. And we trust each other in a way because it’s a quite difficult political battle, and if you don’t trust each other, it’s hard to work and work through that part of it."

"The two fieldtrips were well prepared. And all the other teach-ins — they really, really did a good job of showing the international community what’s actually happening. Listening to the podcast by Dave [Zirin] and Jules [Boykoff], they talk a lot about what’s going on with Fukushima and the development site in Tokyo, and they could say, I saw this with my own eyes. And that’s big, right? Instead of saying, 'well I heard this is happening,' it's 'well I saw it.' [If] people can talk first person to tell people, it’s more convincing."

"We had tens of thousands people gather for anti-nuclear rallies and demos but mainstream media has ignored it. But because we chose the right time in a way, one year before the Olympics so the media attention was on the Olympics and international eyes were on Tokyo, I think we were exposed to a much wider audience than I even expected. The Tokyo newspaper, Tokyo Shimbun — it’s local but has quite a good reach throughout Japan because it's one of the rare, more political leaning newspapers. And they did have a regular front page, celebration-type Olympic coverage, but in the back it’s social. And it had big pictures of the press conference and demo, and it really gave a good summary of what happened, what the issues are. It was as big as the front page coverage so it was pretty good."

"I had mainly been thinking about the role of the film crew as like, oh the importance of documenting this and sharing it, and again, the point I brought up earlier about making sure this trip isn't just preserved in amber, that it has a life outside of those ten days. But having the film crew, having on their agenda those specific interviews, and meaning that that sort of forced time for individual conversations that we didn't, in a lot of cases, didn't really have otherwise."

"It was so crucial and important to have you guys in Fukushima and seeing that firsthand. So, [one] category of things that we learned was experiential realities — things that are not objective facts but that we had to see for ourselves and feel. Like feeling, okay what does it feel like in July in Tokyo? What does it actually feel like to be outside? Things that we had heard about or got ideas about, but having that sort of experiential learning, now we all know. We know how fucking miserable and dangerous it feels to run around here."

"The biggest thing that I learned — and it was really interesting — was, well it's many people’s analysis but it was just a comment from Jules: that how the anti-Olympics struggle has become, and maybe it has always been and we finally realized, that it is a class struggle. And I learned that especially from people from LA, so many of them come from the socialist movement. And it does make sense because, like Jules’ analysis shows, the Olympics take money and resources away from the poor and the ordinary people, and bring it to the rich. It's the ultimate capitalist machine, which Jules has talked about many times before. But if I look at who is struggling against the Olympics, who is most affected, throughout the past areas it's clear - it's a class divide."

"Just having more space for structured conversations. And having more events in that style. And having more explicitly social events - I thought they did a really great job of balancing that out too, and it's not to totalize and say there were no conversations but I think my goal would be to have the balance lean very heavily towards having these more internal dialogues. Long reflective planning sessions and then maybe have one sort of presentational style thing. Maybe open to the public in a targeted [way]. That was one of the things that made me really happy about the Homes Not Games event. There were folks in that room and [those] conversations who were not necessarily organizers but were people who had been displaced and unhoused people, and folks who were talking about their experiences. So, that's something that I feel like would be important with those types of events. We wouldn't necessarily advertise. And that's how I think the Homes not Games event came together. It's my understanding it wasn't advertized to the public, but they had proactively invited people who they would knew would be interested in it."

"I would have planned the interpretation and language situation more carefully. I would have communicated to each participant what it takes to interpret, and how helpful it is to have script in advance."

"Another thing maybe I'd do is maybe give a break every two days or three days. I know people can’t stay that long, I understand it. Or we would have divided our tasks more evenly."

"We had too many Jules Boykoff events. So it was kind of a waste of time. Because you can just read the book. It was great but it was kind of a waste of time. The sharing tactics session was great, and we needed a little longer I think. And sharing about the gentrification issue was also great, and we wanted to share more, but probably if I were to hold this kind of event, we would do it a little longer."

"What I don’t want to happen is to be like, oh my god that was an amazing trip and experience and kind of like, keep it in amber. It needs to have a life beyond the trip. I feel like if we don’t keep things in motion quite enough, in that sense, it's where things get fungible. Like how fast do things actually have to move? How fast can they move? What does it look like to keep that momentum across all these different cities and across this transnational work? It’s very new for me. So, figuring out what that pace looks like, because, and I recognize my tendency is to be like, oh if things aren’t all happening immediately and right away, then they’re dead and we’d never bring them back, which is not true. My hope is that communication and work with those groups will become more frequent and consistent post-trip, but I don’t imagine it’s going to be like the same fever pitch that we have here in LA."

"The possibility of coordinated actions is really exciting. For me too, just creating an ongoing space for sharing strategies and other opportunities to work together, whether it's targeting the IOC, or anything else, is also incredible. Just to have an international network of people who are organizing in similar ways and share similar politics, there are so many possibilities there. I think figuring out, more this question of what we do from a media standpoint, in terms of how do we leverage this transnational network to kind of insert our narrative into mainstream media. How do we use it to create our own media? How do we connect the work that we're doing here? That's probably the other big frontier for me. I've been wanting to do another Disasterpiece Theater for a while, in collaboration with the Korean folks. Because the Disasterpiece Theater around Rio, I thought that was really powerful: creating those very tangible connections between the organizing we're doing here, and the struggles here and the struggles elsewhere."

"The fact that we're talking about this IOC event, that that's even a possibility that we could coordinate a series of actions. We'll see how it goes but I don't think we would be realistically having that conversation a year ago."

"We need more kind of support. South Korean society still believes in the Olympic Games, and that's really difficult to break up. We need more of an international movement to confront people's mindsets about the Olympics."

"I think one of the things we can start right away is developing this international online space, where people can get into the system from their part of their world, sharing more information and learning from it."

"Balancing the fight here and the transnational fight. Because there are dangers to leaning too — and this is something that we talk a lot about in the Tenants Union, too — there are dangers about leaning too far into one at the expense of the other, where like, if you're just totally focused on just local conditions and you lose sight of that big picture then you're sort of fighting a losing battle. You know you're missing out on opportunities to gain power. But, if you're so focused, and this is what I think Walt called 'activist tourism' or like 'organizing tourism' or something. And this is something we have to balance in the Tenants Union because there's a lot of folks who travel, who do a lot of building these connections nationally and transnationally. But it's hard - if that reaches a certain stage where you're exclusively organizing outside where you live, then you're not actually, you're just like a traveling - it's only valuable if you have insights and work that you're committed to where you're based."