Taxation by Exploitation
Read this unforgettable speech delivered by Arelia Taveras at the Stop Predatory Gambling Conference in September 2008. Arelia has been incarcerated at the Taconic Correctional Facility in Bedford Hills, NY since 2009. (A PDF version can be downloaded here.)
Good afternoon, my name is Arelia Taveras. I am a former attorney from New York City whose parents immigrated to the United States almost 40 years ago in search of the “American Dream.”
What does that term encompass? “The American Dream?” To some it means Katie Holmes marrying Tom Cruise. To others it’s becoming a gazillionaire in one lifetime like New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. To other it means coming to the United States and becoming a citizen of a country that doesn’t persecute them from their beliefs. To others, like myself and my family, it means coming to America in search of a better life and fulfillment of your basic everyday needs.
For me, becoming an attorney and completing my studies far surpassed any dreams of success my family had for me in this country. But today I’d like to share with you my story as someone who was living the American Dream and how it all turned terribly upside down.
My parents came to New York in 1970. I was born a year later. My father was about 18 and worked at Nathan’s Franks of Long Island to support our family. My mother worked at a sewing factory in Manhattan, sewing hems on dresses.
My mother believed that if you received an education in the United States, you could achieve anything and she was right.
I went to school in New York, graduated Jamaica High School in Queens, graduated from college, and then went onto law school at Yeshiva University’s Cardozo School of Law in Manhattan. I worked several jobs to support myself through law school. I worked at the Sage Diner in Queens, then, went on to work as a temp at Credit Suisse First Boston after school. I even interned at the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office regularly.
During all of this, I became politically active, working on several political campaigns while completing my final year in law school.
When I graduated law school, things moved fast. I became an associate at a small firm in Queens while I waited for the results of the NYS Bar Exam. During that time, the World Trade Center attacks occurred. Then shortly thereafter, the crash of Flight 587 occurred, where 265 people of Dominican descent were killed. I lost an uncle in that crash.
As an attorney, I advocated for many of the Dominican families who lost love ones in the crash and helped them receive significant settlements.
I had become an ambitious, hardworking, determined woman. But there was something else happening inside me, along with ambition…. I was become de-sensitized to the things around me.
The intense stress of my law practice became overwhelming. I looked for an escape. Something to take my mind away from the fact that practicing law was starting to wear me down. Responding to the continual advertising of the Atlantic City casinos, I began taking occasional gambling sprees.
At first, they were mere quarterly diversions. I would go once every 4 months, then it was every 2 months, then every month, every week, then every day. The pattern for every compulsive gambler commences that way. It’s that law of the addiction.
I had a “host” at Resorts Casino in Atlantic City. The “host” is someone who would regularly call me, tell me about specials…I would call him to schedule a hotel room and limousine for myself. There I went to get away from it all.
At first, they sent a limousine once in a while, then once every quarter, then every month, every week, finally everyday. I would call my host, he would check my “play” – my play is the amount of money I gambled – and then he would provide me a limousine, a free hotel room and free food based on my play.
I was never denied a stay, because my play became frequent, and habitually consistent.
But my gambling started to become obsessive. In January of 2006, I began gambling for hours at a time, then days at a time.
I was not eating or sleeping for countless days. I was falling asleep at the tables, to the point that I couldn’t get up from them and was too exhausted to get myself to the bathroom or my bedroom.
I began to disappear for days at a time.
My family became worried. I was no longer in their view. I was in the view of the casino. Every moment I was there. They saw me lose my money, my practice and almost my life and never did a thing about it.
They were not simply bystanders; they participated in it and continually tried to take advantage of it through predatory business practices.
When I could not take it anymore, I mentioned to a host that maybe I had a problem because I never left when I was ahead. She told her boss, at Resorts, and he proceeded to acknowledge that the casino knew that I had a problem and that if I wished to continue gambling there, “I would have to sign a waiver of liability absolving them of all liability for my gambling mishaps.” Wasn’t that a considerate man? Asking me to sign something protecting them from me. But, who would protect me from them?
When I left Resorts and went to Bally’s, I gambled with the same intensity and sickness, to the point where my parents came to pick me and forcibly take me home because I was ill with this disease called “compulsive gambling.” But since I was a good customer there, losing about 50k a month, they weren’t going to let me go without a fight, so they proceeded to create a police-manned separation between my family and myself. They were going to arrest my dad if he tried to take me home.
In the middle of all of this, there were the obvious signs of my compulsions, the constant hourly withdrawals at the cashier, which had to be approved by management and my excessive hours of play, all under the watchful eyes of those orbs in the ceiling, known as “eyes” in the casinos.
I take personal responsibility for all that I have done and all that I have hurt, but, where do we begin to hold the providers of these self-destructive casinos responsible for their part in this?
And more importantly, how can our government fund public services from the massive gambling losses of people like me?
It’s taxation by exploitation.
There are tens of thousands of Americans with stories just like mine. People who are being exploited. People whose aspirations to live the American Dream have been turned upside down.
If you believe in the principle of wish for neighbor what you wish for yourself, then you need to join the movement to stop predatory gambling.
It’s time we added the tenet of “no taxation by exploitation” to the lexicon of American democracy right beneath “no taxation without representation.”
Please get involved and stay involved. Thank you.