No Games Chicago Book Store

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No Games Chicago Book Store

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  • Home
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  • Order/Contact/Subscribe
  • Appearances
  • Blog
  • Fight
  • Strategic Playbook
  • Tip the Author!
  • Chapter 3
  • Chapter 4
  • Chapter 5
  • Chapter 6
  • Chapter 7
  • Chapter 8
  • Chapter 9
  • Chapter 10
  • Chapter 11
  • Chapter 12
  • Chapter 13
  • Chapter 14
  • Chapter 15
  • Chapter 16
  • Chapter 17
  • Chapter 18
  • Chapter 19
  • Chapter 20
  • Chapter 21
  • Chapter 22
  • Chapter 23
  • Chapter 24
  • Chapter 25
  • Chapter 26
  • Chapter 27
  • Chapter 28
  • Chapter 29
  • Chapter 30
  • Chapter 31
  • Chapter 32
  • Chapter 33
  • Chapter 34
  • Chapter 35
  • Chapter 36
  • Voices of Protest
  • NGC Erased
  • No Games Timeline
  • Video Documentaries
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Press About the No Games Chicago Book

Contact Tom at tom at tresser dot com for interviews, consulting, teaching, and training opportunities. Tom's website is www.tresser.com.

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Chicago Reader Best Nonfiction Books of 2024

Chicago Reader's Best Nonfiction Books for 2024

Tis the season when my TBR list is as out of control as ever, but the number of books I can feasibly finish before the end of December is finite. So, I decided to prioritize a small stack of nonfiction books written by or about Illinoisans and published in 2024. For local history buffs and nonfiction fans of many stripes, I offer up a smorgasbord of end-of-year reads: two accounts of Chicago activists, a medical true-crime story, a pharmaceutical hoax, a breast cancer memoir, and the biography of a fierce woman journalist. Read the full article.

Nonprofit quarterly article on fighting megaprojects

No Games Chicago forum from Janaury, 2009.

The Nonprofit Quarterly from November 26, 2025

What can be done to stop billionaires from subsidizing their sports teams with public dollars? Our successful campaign to stop a multi-billion-dollar subsidy effort to bring the Olympic Games to Chicago offers lessons that have broad application elsewhere. Read the full article.

Chicago's Dean of Progressive Strategists Reviews the Book

Don Rose from November 25, 2025

  Taking a breather from the horrors of the new proposed cabinet, I want to tell you about a useful new book that relates an interesting piece of Chicago history while it offers a kind of step-by-step manual on how to organize for social change. It’s all about how a small band of dedicated citizens helped defeat a massively funded and powerfully organized civic and governmental effort to bring the 2016 Olympics to the city. 

Yeah, the summer Olympics are considered largely as a worldwide sports and social spectacle and viewed by most cities and nations as a kind of prize. They result in glorious shows, as we saw recently in Paris despite a few glitches; even more spectacular were the summer games in China of 2008. 

   The next one—2028—will be held in Los Angeles once again, after 1932 and 1984, both times proving to be profitable for what is now the real Second City. And therein lies the contentious issue. Virtually every other city that has hosted the Olympics has lost money—often billions of dollars.

  Worse it leaves a lot of empty, otherwise useless structures newly built for the games and athletes support services. It can displace hundreds of people and degrade the environment. Yet hosting one generally remains desirable for government and is usually very popular with the public—but there are often pockets of dissent as we found out here in 2009 after then-Mayor Richard M. Daley launched a bid and program for the 2016 Olympics. He assembled every prominent civic leader and governmental entity for the drive, which lobbied all the appropriate national and international entities for the bid. Several other countries also sought the games, but Brazil was the main contender because South America had never been rewarded with one.

    A few small entities here objected on various grounds including the fact that Chicago had such a checkered racial history. That ‘s when Tom Tresser, a long-time community and arts organizer known for his critiques of Tax Increment Financing or TIFs--along with a few associates launched the opposition group—a rag-tag batch of dedicated dissenters, whose work he details in the book at hand. Read the full review.

"Outside the Loop" - 8/10/24

Click to watch or listen...

"live From the Heartland" - 8/16/24

Host Michael James asks about the No Games Campaign, subsidizing, sports stadiums, TIFs, and how Tom went from a theater producer to a civic champion.

"Chicago Writes" Podcast

Host Bill Turck interviewed Tom for the Chicago Writers Association "Chicago Writes" podcast from 9/1/24.

  • Home
  • Press
  • Order/Contact/Subscribe
  • Appearances
  • Blog
  • Fight
  • Strategic Playbook
  • Tip the Author!
  • Chapter 3
  • Chapter 4
  • Chapter 5
  • Chapter 6
  • Chapter 7
  • Chapter 8
  • Chapter 9
  • Chapter 10
  • Chapter 11
  • Chapter 12
  • Chapter 13
  • Chapter 14
  • Chapter 15
  • Chapter 16
  • Chapter 17
  • Chapter 18
  • Chapter 19
  • Chapter 20
  • Chapter 21
  • Chapter 22
  • Chapter 23
  • Chapter 24
  • Chapter 25
  • Chapter 26
  • Chapter 27
  • Chapter 28
  • Chapter 29
  • Chapter 30
  • Chapter 31
  • Chapter 32
  • Chapter 33
  • Chapter 34
  • Chapter 35
  • Chapter 36
  • Voices of Protest
  • NGC Erased
  • No Games Timeline
  • Video Documentaries
  • Corrections

No Games Chicago Book Store

Chicago, IL

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