Casinos are coming to Philadelphia, and many local residents are not happy about it.
Last Thursday, a group of Philadelphia residents, including many from the neighborhoods where the proposed casinos would be located, gathered in front of the State Building at the intersection of Broad and Spring Garden streets to protest bringing casinos to Philadelphia.
The rally, which attracted over 100 people, was organized by Reverend Jesse Brown of the Multi-Community Alliance. It took place one day before the cutoff for public comments to the Pennsylvania Gaming Board.
Brown held the protest to create a new organization, Casino Free Philadelphia, which would combine many of the smaller neighborhood groups into one large coalition.
Brown visited members of many of these organizations in hopes that they would sign on to Casino Free Philadelphia.
"We try to impress on them the need to be against casinos in Philadelphia altogether," he said.
The Pennsylvania legislature approved Act 71 in 2004, a bill that would bring two casinos -- containing only slot machines -- to the city and create fourteen total in the state.
Their reasoning is that the tax revenue from the casinos would go towards lowering property taxes in the state.
Five companies have applied for the two Philadelphia licenses, and are awaiting the decision of the Pennsylvania Gaming Board.
But the speakers at the rally said that the potential negative effects greatly outweighed the benefits.
"Columbus Boulevard is a nightmare now," said Reen Goodwin, chairwoman of Riverfront Communities United, a group opposing the casino in South Philadelphia. "Nothing Foxwoods can say will convince us that dumping an additional nine million visitors on our colonial streets will cause anything but gridlock."
Matt Ruben, the casino committee chair of the Northern Liberties Neighbors Association and a member of NABR, harshly criticized the state legislature for approving Act 71.
"From the legalization of gambling in the middle of the night, over a holiday weekend, with no public input, to the present casino licensing process, our government has acted with utter contempt for its citizens," Ruben said.
During the rally, the organizers performed a skit with a huge slot machine as a prop and people pretending to be state senators and casino owners which drew much applause from the crowd.
Anne Dicker, co-founder of the progressive democratic organization Philly for Change, who unsuccessfully ran for the Pennsylvania house of representatives in May urged the crowd to stand up against the current elected officials.
"Let's demand a repeal of Act 71," she said. "Let's get good legislation that's supported by the people of Pennsylvania."
Russ Diamond, who founded PA Clean Sweep last year in response to the state legislature's self-voted pay raise made comparisons between the pay raise and casinos bills.
According to Diamond, the legislators said that the pay raise was a done deal last year and are now saying the same thing about the proposed casinos.
But citizen outcry forced a repeal of the pay raise a few months later, and Diamond said that could happen again for the casinos.
"It's not a done deal," he said.
