Stop Predatory Gambling

The government program that considers Asian-Americans expendable

by Les

Philadelphia community leader Helen Gym writes a must-read column on her Young Philly politics blog. Read it below and consider how the government program of predatory gambling squares with America’s core democratic principles:

Remember how Chinatown made that big ole fuss over a neighborhood casino?

Here’s more proof why: Sugarhouse’s Asian Marketing Exec:

Side note: It’s particularly nice to know the qualifications are in keeping with Sugarhouse’s “standards”:

• Regularly required to walk, stand, see, talk and hear.
• Required to use telephone and computer.
• Exposure to smoke

The casino industry’s well-known targeting of Asian communities provided the primary impetus behind Chinatown’s fierce anti-casino battle and continued opposition to predatory gambling in our city. After a exchange involving predatory gambling and the Asian community, former Foxwoods Chair Michael Thomas told me, “You call it a gambling addiction, I call it a client base.”

But don’t take my word for it. Asian communities across the country have decried the casino industry’s practices. Consider:

• Sacramento, CA: In the wake of a tragic fatal bus crash involving dozens of Southeast Asian seniors, members of the Southeast Asian community expressed concern and outrage that casino bus operators prey upon Asian seniors who are often lonely and isolated in the U.S. “They are actually going into low income neighborhoods and picking people out,” said a Democratic Assemblyman investigating the crash.

• SEARAC, Washington DC: Southeast Asian Resource Action Center listed one of its 2008 California Priorities as “support legislation to make illegal the targeted solicitation and transportation of elders to the casino for the sole purpose of gambling as it can be interpreted as elder abuse.” The Center charges that casinos target “lonely and isolated” seniors for their marketing and advertising and transportation efforts.

• New Orleans, LA: In 2004, New Orleans metro area casinos received complaints about their Vietnamese language billboards targeting one of the nation’s largest Vietnamese communities.

• New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts: Both New York and Boston Chinatowns had raised concerns about the Connecticut casinos – Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun – which, at the height of their profit-making a few years ago, boasted of running as many as 100 buses a day between the two Chinatowns. Those lines helped assure that as many as 30% of Foxwoods clientele were Asian – in a state with less than 5% Asian population.

• San Diego, CA: “It’s no secret in the casino business Asians’ love for gambling and so we all have our own ways for going after that market.” Richard Slack, Pechanga Resort & Casino VIP host (2005)

So in addition to the servers who have to sling out the crummy food at Sugarhouse’s low-grade restaurant and the security team looking out for abandoned kids or Sugarhouse’s pistol-whipped clientele (here and here), add the Asian Marketing Exec – Sugarhouse’s contribution to economic decline via predatory gambling.