The Philly Casino Fight, and the World

(Crossposted at Young Philly Politics.)

I work on a lot of things now, and they are all interconnected in many ways, although it’s not always obvious. What holds all of the things I work on together is the principle that the public should have the power to make decisions for itself, without intermediary, and that structures and places that allow and facilitate the necessary discussion and decisionmaking should be free, and protected by law.

I want to write about the casino fight because, as with so many things, the public conversation has become a little amnesiac about what has really happened here.

The casino fight in Philadelphia, and to some extent Valley Forge, is so much more than a traditional NIMBY fight that the comparison (which I sometimes still hear) is downright laughable. For the people who have been involved in this fight over the last 4 years now, our world has been like descending into the depths of political hell and traveling through a seedy, dark underworld of corruption, arrogance, creepy casino operators who make their living impoverishing seniors and bankrupting families, backroom deals, complete lack of respect on the part of elected officials for their own constituents, disgusting short-sightedness on the part of old people who are willing to flush Philly down the toilet on their way to retirement, Gaming Board officials with ties to the mob, open lies, votes at midnight on a vacation weekend, the failure of our business and political leadership to come up with a sustainable economic vision for the city that doesn’t involve creating a morass of crime and social problems, the silencing of the public voice, casino operators pitting neighborhood against neighborhood to incite class and racial hatred in a city they don’t care about because God knows they don’t live here, a failure to talk about property taxes and what really needs to change in our state tax structure…you name it. It has been awful to watch, even when I wasn’t able to actively participate, because it was so anti-democratic, really.

And that’s not even counting the ballot measure.

Did you forget about this?

In the winter of 2007, a number of grassroots groups with no money came together, gathered something like 13,000 signatures to get a measure on the city primary ballot that said basically, no casinos in neighborhoods. It didn’t say no casinos at all, it just said you could only build them where they were 1500 feet from homes and schools. (Which would mean the casinos would essentially have to move to the Navy Yard or the airport.)

This was a really really big deal. The process to get a measure on the city ballot via signatures is very difficult to do in a grassroots fashion. For one, the period to gather the signatures comes before the period to get signatures for candidates – in other words, it’s even colder, and standing outside of a grocery store is even more excruciating.

Two, it’s really hard to get 13,000 people to do anything unless you have a lot of money. Which they didn’t have. REALLY hard. You have to have a lot of angry people for that to happen. In fact, it’s so hard to do this, and requires so many people to do this, that the only other time this has ever happened in recent Philadelphia history was the petition drive to Recall Rizzo – which garnered a similar number of signatures – more than 20 years ago.

So… they got it on the ballot…. City council, to its credit, gave approval… and then we’re all rolling along nicely in the primary when the PA Supreme Court takes it off the ballot because Foxwoods and Sugarhouse sued, and said our vote was illegal.

No reason given. Nothing else was struck from the ballot.
Just the ruling: Philadelphians do not have the right to vote on whether we have casinos in our neighborhoods.

After that, sheer fury ensued. Casino Free Philadelphia ran their own election day operation at 30-plus polling places on May 15 anyway. It was pretty amazing, especially taking into account that this was over and above a huge number of rebellious/progressive political types who were already running/working on 20-plus other challenger city council campaigns at the same time. Not to mention the mayoral volunteers. Lot of energy, that year.

The Supreme Court decision was awful. It is the real knot in all this, that decision. That decision effectively said to me, and to all of us, that the casino owners were afraid. They were afraid of letting us choose, because they know they would lose. For all their rhetoric about it ‘being just a few neighborhoods that are anti-casino,’ those in power were really just bluffing.

Because this is the deal. Almost half the neighborhoods in the city have been threatened by a casino now, and had to organize against it, and have seen their comments and sentiments and their very self-determination about their homes and businesses mowed over by a cabal of casino operators and the people who work really really hard to see they get what they want, while the desperately needed public policy concerns that would help their neighborhoods – education, gun control, affordable housing - languish and die in Harrisburg. The other half of the city may not have been personally threatened, but they have been waiting for a really long time for someone to help them out, and they know that a casino sure as hell isn’t designed to help them. It kills me to hear the governor and the mayor get up there and say things like, “finally, we can move forward, isn’t it wonderful,” as if casinos were health care reform.

Chinatown, Fishtown, Fairmount, Pennsport, Queen Village, Society Hill, Richmond, Old City, Tioga, Center City, Wash West, Nicetown, Germantown, 9th Street, Bella Vista…and now CFP is organizing in West Philly.

Why am I writing about this? I am writing about this because I am beginning to realize that this battle is as important as I thought. I’ve moved to DC for a while to work on democracy (through opening up the media), and one of the things that I have quickly learned in DC is that the United States still sets the standards for democracy globally. I had no idea about this, but this is what people in the State department say – that when we craft any policy that is about democracy, it gets copied in other countries. I was really surprised when I heard this.

But then I realized what a huge responsibility we have. If we are the gold standard, we really have to be the gold standard. That is tremendous power to change the lives and fortunes of people around the globe – based on what goes down in a little casino battle in Fishtown. I think Bill Clinton is even coming to the National Constitution Center next week to talk about this – I don’t think it’s open to the public – but I do wish they would invite the PA Supreme Court.

There is a lot more to say about this – for example, the counterargument that cities and states are really at the mercy of global capitalism and we shouldn’t get mad at them etc etc. There is so much to the picture that I can’t cover it all, and I haven’t gotten to half the stuff I intended to.

But in the end – I just feel like - enough talk, it's time we really got to vote.

Philadelphia should have the right to vote on whether we should have casinos in our neighborhoods.

That's a campaign I would very much be down for.

Hannah