VANCOUVER -- It wasn't easy unfurling the nine-metre banner in the rain, but somehow they managed it and reporters arriving for an anti-Olympics press conference yesterday couldn't miss the message.

"Riot 2010," declared the poster in giant, hand-painted letters and figures.

Inside the building on Main Street, a series of speakers criticized the Olympic Games for failing to alleviate poverty in the Downtown Eastside and for staging the event on land still subject to aboriginal claims in British Columbia.

"No Olympics on stolen land," is how a wall poster stated the latter point.

"I have words for these corporate bums. Get off Indian land," said one of the speakers, Seislom, who also goes by the name Glen Williams.

Laura Track, a lawyer with the Pivot Legal Society, said the organizing committee for the Olympic Games has failed to follow through on many promises made during the bid.

She said, for example, that although it was said no one would be made homeless by the Games, some 1,400 single occupancy rooms have been lost to development in the Downtown Eastside since the Games were awarded to Vancouver and Whistler.

Garth Mullins, speaking for the Olympic Resistance Network, said protesters plan to be heard during the Games.

"In February of 2010 we're going to be holding a convergence ... to try and tell the other half of the story," he said.

Artists, students, poverty advocates, women's rights groups, aboriginal organizations and anybody else with a complaint against the Games will be invited to attend, he said.

Mr. Mullins promised "different kinds of resistance and protest." Whether or not that will turn into the "Riot 2010" promised on the poster has yet to be seen.

The press conference, organized by an array of groups opposed to the Games, was called to coincide with a visit to Vancouver of hundreds of representatives of international and national media outlets.

It appeared however, that few if any of the international media attended the press conference, although a few local reporters and a National Film Board documentary photographer were there.