Philadelphia Chinatown casino project – interview with anti-casino activist Debbie Wei
Foxwoods Development Company, developer of the Foxwoods Casino in Ledyard, Connecticut, plans to build a casino in The Gallery at Market East, a Center City Philadelphia shopping mall located less than a block from Chinatown. The proposal angered many Chinatown residents, activists, and entrepreneurs, who claim that a casino would have dire social and economic consequences for the community. Asian immigrants, particularly ethnic Chinese immigrants, are particularly susceptible to gambling addition; 21% of respondents in a poll of San Francisco Chinatown residents said that they were pathological gamblers, and an additional 16% said that they were problem gamblers.
Aside from the direct and indirect consequences of gambling addiction, community activists argue that a casino would also have a negative impact on restaurants and other businesses in the area. Furthermore, they see the placement of the casino in Chinatown as part of a history of large government projects “dumped” on the community.
Deborah Wei, principal of the Folk Arts and Cultural Treasures (FACTS) Charter School, spoke with us about this problematic history of government investment in Chinatown. Wei is a member of Chinatown activist group Asian Americans United (AAU), which, along with the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation and Casino Free Philadelphia, is one of the main organizations mobilizing to stop the casino.
FACTS, opened by AAU in 2005, is the only public school in Chinatown. Wei tells us that the city government has ignored the needs of the Chinatown community and has instead focused its investment on large projects just outside of its borders (mp3). She argues that these projects have “eroded” the community by displacing families; besides taking land that could have been put to use by community members, she says that the projects have fueled gentrification and priced low-income families out of the area.
She then tells us about the social and economic consequences of opening up a casino near Chinatown. She argues that casinos are directly targeting Asian immigrants because of their propensity to become pathological gamblers (mp3); she also says that the Gallery location would also target other groups of working class people of color (mp3).
While the city government says that the casino would be an economic boon to the community, Wei says that Chinatown restaurateurs are skeptical. Surprisingly, they are less concerned with the state of their businesses and more concerned with the demise of their community (mp3).
AAU has done direct organizing among non-English-speakers in Chinatown; Wei says that these sectors of the community have little access to information and thus are easily exploited. AAU also hopes to file a lawsuit to stop the casino, but because Foxwoods has not laid out its plans, there is little that activists can do at this point (mp3).
Finally, Wei argues for a national movement against placing casinos in Asian communities (mp3).
Transcripts of the audio files are available after the jump.
Debbie Wei: The erosion of Chinatown was pretty much exclusively the purview of government-funded projects, at the same time that there was no government-funded investment in the community. So you had the Vine Street Expressway to the north, you had the commuter rail tunnel to the east, the Gallery to the south, and the convention center to the west. All of these received significant infusions of federal money. In recent years, I think probably in the late 80s or early 90s, they tried to put a federal prison in Chinatown, in 2000 they tried to put a baseball stadium in Chinatown. The city basically said to the community, “Well, you’re not going to do anything with this land, so we’re just going to take it. And Chinatown, in the meantime, had no rec center, health center, public school, library, post office… you name it, it wasn’t there. And for the most part, it still isn’t there. So when we talk about placement of a casino project at the Gallery, the community sees it within this historical context of having constantly have stuff dumped on the community. The notion is, if you need to put it somewhere and nobody else wants it, put it in Chinatown.
Debbie Wei: You know, gambling addiction in the Asian community is not something that people don’t know exists. It probably is the number one health problem for Asians in America. It’s easy for them to become pathologically addicted to gambling. What the roots of that are is hard to say. Certainly, loneliness, inability to speak English, and marginalization play some role in that, but there’s got to be something else going on, because this is a problem in Asia, as well. The casinos are well aware of it, particularly Foxwoods, which is trying to open up in the Gallery. They have an Asian web page, they have an entire division for Asian marketing, they run 100 buses a day from Boston and New York Chinatown, and indeed, gambling revenues from Asians at Foxwoods run between 35 and 40% of their revenue, in a state that’s 3% Asian.
Debbie Wei: When we looked at the casino industry and we looked at the city’s reasons for moving the casino to the Gallery, it was apparent that their intention was to exploit working class and low-income people and the elderly. Their rationale for moving it to the Gallery was, “oh, look, we have a ready-made client base in the Gallery,” they started using code words like “we need to clean up who’s in this area,” and “look, it’s such easy access to all the major transit lines.” So that made it very clear that it wasn’t that they didn’t know. The city clearly knows that this location is going to target local people; it’s not about bringing in tourist revenue. The people who shop at the Gallery are largely low-income people of color. The people who take public transit to get places are largely working class, low-income people.
Debbie Wei: The restaurant industry is really hurting, and that has not escaped Chinatown. And so, revenues are drying up, people are worried that their businesses are going to close. And here comes the city saying, “You know, this is the best thing that has ever happened to you. If you let us open this casino, you’re going to have all this revenue from people coming into the restaurants. If you’re in danger of losing your business and you’re desperate for revenue, that sounds kind of attractive. What’s really striking to us is that as we went around and interviewed business owners in the community, 80% of them were opposed to the casino. But the reason had nothing to do with the economics of it; it wasn’t like they felt it would hurt their business, which is actually what we think. They don’t buy that. What they say is, “we don’t know if it would help or hurt our businesses. What we do know is that it would hurt the community, and whatever profits we make in this wouldn’t be worth the destruction of the community.”
Debbie Wei: Foxwoods has not submitted any plans, and so there’s nothing to respond to. They were supposed to have submitted plans by Christmas, and there’s nothing to look at. There’s nothing to talk about. We don’t know what they’re planning, we don’t know how big it is, we don’t know… they have to do traffic studies, they have to submit a design, they have to say what they expect their clientele to be, numbers-wise, on a daily basis. Without any of that information, we’re kind of in somewhat of a holding pattern.
Debbie Wei: I’d really like to see a national movement build opposing casinos in the Asian community. There are buses that target San Francisco Chinatown. In Biloxi, Mississippi, they’ve built so many casinos, and it was post-Katrina, and it was the only industry being developed. And so you had people losing hope, and what are they going to do? They’re going to go gamble. I talked to one Vietnamese woman, and they’re opening up a casino a block away from the major Vietnamese community in Biloxi. I think that the industry itself is extremely corrupt. I think the targeting of Asian communities, and particularly of senior citizens within those communities, is something that we need to start getting more organized and looking at. It’s not something that I would have looked at were it not for this attack on our community.
