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Coverage from the Lynden, Washington Event
From the Lynden Tribue
From The Bulletin - a Philadelphia Daily Newspaper
Freedom Players Official Press Release:
Feb. 16, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
LYNDEN RESIDENTS BEGIN NATIONAL MOVEMENT
AGAINST CASINOS, SLOT MACHINES
'First in the Nation' Action Called Success
LYNDEN, WA - Calling themselves "The Freedom Players," about 70 Lynden residents joined with activists around the country Saturday and entered the Nooksack Northwood Casino, sat down at the slot machines, put in their money - and didn't push the 'play' button.
The residents were there to draw attention to the predatory and fraudulent nature of the machines that are increasingly becoming the preferred method of state and local governments to raise revenues despite serious questions that the machines are cheating players and causing high rates of addiction.
After about 90 minutes, the casino management had had enough. The local sheriff was summoned and the Freedom Players were escorted peacefully off the premises.
"Casinos run ads advertising the fun people will have," said Dennis Bailey, spokesman for The Freedom Players. "But apparently fun is only when customers are losing money. We played slot machines, chatted with our friends, knitted, shared a Saturday morning coffee and played at our own pace. But it wasn't fast enough for the casino owners who depend on frantic, continuous play to make their money."
Bailey and other organizers of the event, including Daniel Hunter, a casino opponent and activist from Philadelphia, hailed today's citizen action as a success.
"Today is the beginning of a national movement to stop predatory gambling, an issue that has come to dominate both our federal government and state capitols across the country," said Hunter. "The purest form of predatory gambling is machine gambling. There are now close to 800,000 slot machines and video poker games in operation in this country - that's one machine for every 395 Americans - and many more are on the way in Massachusetts, Kentucky, Maine, Pennsylvania and elsewhere."
Bailey said it's ironic that Congress recently held hearings because it was concerned with millionaire baseball players possibly cheating with steroids, saying that fans demand transparency. Yet there has been no intense scrutiny of the serious questions that have been raised about whether these gambling machines are cheating people out of hundreds of millions of dollars, nor of the outrageously high rate of addiction these machines are causing. "There's nothing transparent about the casino industry," Bailey said.
No state better exemplifies this national problem than Washington State, and no casino better illustrates this issue than the Nooksack Northwood Casino. Situated amid neighborhoods, dairy farms and cow pastures, the Nooksack Northwood Casino continues to draw strong opposition from local residents who have surrounded the site with signs protesting the casino's presence.
"The Northwood Casino exists without any public process, environmental assessment, or determination of whether gambling is even legal on the site," said Lynden activist Craig Mayberry. "This casino is one of the most egregious examples of what the government and gambling industry is doing to communities across this nation, and therefore we found it fitting to launch this campaign in Lynden."
During Saturday's action, many of The Freedom Players asked the casino staff pointed questions about the computerized video gambling machines - what the odds of winning were, whether there were actual reels in the machine or a computerized simulation, and what are the algorithms that determine the outcome. The casino staff either declined to answer or said they did not know.
"The goal of a slot machine is no secret - how to get people to play longer, faster and more intensively," said Les Bernal, a leader in an emerging national movement against predatory gambling and one of the organizers of Saturday's event. "Every feature of the machine - the mathematical structure, visual graphics, sound dynamics, seating and screen ergonomics - is geared, in the language of the casino trade, to get gamblers to 'play to extinction,' which means until all their money is gone."
Through their action Saturday, The Freedom Players hope to begin a national debate over the explosive expansion of these machines. They believe their action could become a model for similar demonstrations at casinos across the country.
In addition, The Freedom Players are calling for:
- Immediate Congressional review of the design, technology and marketing of machine gambling to determine how these machines are cheating their constituents out of hundreds of millions of dollars, along with causing high rates of addiction;
- Immediate Congressional reform of the Indian Gaming Rights Act which has far exceeded the intent of the original legislation when it was passed 20 years ago;
- An end to government reliance on these machines to raise tax dollars to pay for public services and transfer jobs to a privileged few.
More information, including photographs and video of the event, will be available shortly at www.freedomplayers.com
CONTACT: Dennis Bailey, 207-749-4963
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