So I Guess the Casino Hearings Were a Complete Sham After All — By Hannah Miller
This is cross posted from an email I got from a friend, all about the casino situation in Philadelphia.
Happy Holidays.
Dec. 23, 2006
So I Guess the Casino Hearings Were a Complete Sham After All
By Hannah Miller
For the last 15 years, I’ve been an activist and a reporter in various capacities, and pretty much dedicated those 15 years to trying to stop rich people from screwing over poor people.
One of the things I have learned is that there are an incredible number of ways that rich, powerful people screw over poor people. They cheat us. They steal from us. They sue us. They take our homes. They pollute our air and water. They lie to us. They lay us off. They fire us from our jobs if we try to unionize. They scare us into thinking we have no power. They control us any way they can.
There are, in fact, an infinite number of ways by which rich people screw over poor people. But never, ever, once, in the last 15 years, have I seen anything as egregious as what happened this week.
The awarding of two slots licenses to Foxwoods and Sugarhouse over the most extreme community objection, the worst and most haphazard planning and design, criminal penalties levied against Foxwoods for illegal campaign contributions, and on and on, meant one thing and one thing only: that the rich and the powerful do not give a damn about the people who live on the Delaware River, and they never have, and they were lying to us along when they pretended to be listening.
Like many of the other people who worked on this, I spent hours in Gaming Board hearings, organizing protests, getting signatures, etc. Although all the casinos had powerful political interests connected to them, there were degrees. By far, the two most directly tied to State Sen. Fumo – who wrote the gaming law – were Foxwoods and Sugarhouse.
It was great that we had all those nice hearings.
It was great to see all the fantastic work done by NABR and the ILA and Anne Dicker and Vern and Mike and Matt and PennPraxis and Inga Saffron and the homeowners of Pennsport and the homeowners of Fishtown and the Trump architects who redesigned their entire casino to accomodate community input and that one amazing Pinnacle architects from somewhere in Europe who very obviously had no idea how dirty our politics are and thought this was actually a merit selection process.
It was great. Really fun.
We had yet another great big happy civic debate that was completely irrelevant, because our politicians just don’t care.
They were going to do it no matter what we said.
What the Gaming Board said on Wednesday is that they are going to built slots parlors on the river whether we like it or not. They are going to take our homes from us under eminent domain whether we like it or not. They are going to build a new onramp to 95 right at the corner of Reed and Delaware whether we like it or not.
It was rumored that Frankie Dicicco told one of the South Philly civic associations a long time ago that it was going to be Foxwoods and Sugarhouse, a done deal. I don’t know if Frankie actually said this, but I think for many many months a lot of us were afraid that the rumor was true (since he would know) – that it really was a done deal all along.
The people who live in these neighborhoods don’t have a lot. Most of us, if we own anything, we own our homes, and the connections to our neighborhood and our families.
Have you ever seen an old dying man reach out to grab a cracker and munch it?
That’s what happened on Wed.
And that cracker?
That was us.
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Usually when developers get the go ahead on a multi-million dollar project, they hold a gigantic press conference where they have a golden shovel and all the local politicians show up, and everyone gives a speech to announce how great this project is for the community, etc.
Usually they have a big happy ceremony on the site itself to show how great it is that they are coming. But these guys didn’t do any of that. They didn’t dare show their faces. They knew they would get booed. They know we all hate them.
It’s a minor point, I know. One fewer press conference in history.
But that’s how I know that something really really stinks to high heaven. Seriously. I never thought I would live to see the day that Ed Rendell passes up a ribbon cutting. But the world has really changed.
If any of us have learned anything from the casino battle, there has been one horrible, miserable, aching truth that overrides it all.
It is that the people who are supposed to be protecting our city have betrayed us, and do not care about the wishes, hopes, future, or needs of the people who live here.
The people of Philadelphia were completely alone in our fight against the casinos. Our elected officials did not care about us.
Our city council.
Our state delegation.
Our mayor! Our mayor!!!!
And not to mention…our once-Mayor Rendell!
None of these politicians stood up against the casinos.
These people, corrupt and wizened and greedy as they are at the top of whatever towers they live in, feel not the burden of responsibility – they feel not the desire to serve – they lack even the most basic human emotion that holds us here with our families and our friends – they have turned their back on their own home, and sold out their family, and betrayed their own people.
They are unfit to serve. They are unworthy of this city. They have betrayed us all.
And as far as I am concerned, they are no longer Philadelphians.
They should just pack up and go.
But people like that don’t leave easily.
We’re going to have to run them out of town.
Hannah Miller
http://www.nabrhood.org
http://www.phillyforchange.com