[written by Valerie Keller]

I'm a 4+ years resident of Pennsport in South Philly, and before that Bella Vista for over 10 years, so I have a great fondness for South Philadelphia and all the culture and neighborhoods and mix of people around here. Where I live now is about three and a half blocks from the proposed site for Foxwoods Casino. Need I say more?

I went to the site reclamation training on Saturday August 9th, run by Casino-Free Philadelphia, to learn more about how to stage a non-violent protest. The training started at Old Swedes' Church, where Daniel Hunter and George Lakey did a terrific job of running the session. They explained the process of staging a protest, gave some history of creative protests around other issues in the past, as well as some of the history of the anti-casino movement's efforts so far. We talked about what might happen if we end up having to do a direct action at the Foxwoods site, and then we did a practice protest in the church.

The outline was for the concerned citizens to have a big picnic on the construction site, to show up with blankets and picnic baskets and whatever games or toys one might bring to a picnic, and set up on the land that was promised to Foxwoods without our consent. I volunteered to play the part of one of the police officers, figuring it wouldn't be a popular role so I'd step up, not realizing that we were going to have to pretend to arrest the demonstrators if they didn't disperse, so I started to feel like it was the most exciting part to play. I have to admit to a certain feeling of importance and pride to be a pretend authority figure. It was interesting to play that part, I actually found myself frustrated when the protesters didn't do as we instructed, and I was wishing I didn't have to arrest anyone, especially a nice-looking lady in a sun hat who said she wasn't looking for trouble.

Once we ended the practice protest, and discussed what we'd learned from it, we went outside and walked to the actual proposed site for Foxwoods Casino at Columbus and Reed Streets, across from the UArts Movie Theater. There we performed another practice demonstration, this time with policemen and liaisons watching and videotaping, and more press than had been present at the church.

What I didn't realize till the whole thing was over was that it wasn't just a training session, it was in itself direct action - this very public and well-publicized 'practice' was meant to show the casino builders and the members of city and state government who are behind the waterfront casino sites that we the citizens of Philadelphia who don't agree are not going away, we will continue to protest and object to their plans. And participants were trained in how to go about this in the meantime. Kind of two birds with one stone.

I was videotaped and photographed by police and press along with 25 or so other Philly folks, and according to Sunday's Philadelphia Inquirer article, there was a chance we could have been arrested yesterday, for practicing a protest! I'm not buying it, I think the reporter was trying to make it sound like we were out there to cause trouble or vandalize the site or something (this has been confirmed by Casino-Free Phila, I was told by one of the organizers that there was no actual danger of being arrested on Saturday). And though the Philadelphia Inquirer article uses words like "interfere with" "stymie" and "disrupt" for the tactics we were learning, to me it felt more like what we were practicing was creating a visual message to the city of what we think that land should be used for - public recreation.

We talked about picnic blankets and whether or not to offer the construction workers popsicles, not chaining ourselves to fences and shouting angry slogans - not that there's anything wrong with that, that's just not what we were doing in this instance.

PlanPhilly said in their article that there were 40 of us. I think the Inquie is closer to the truth on that point... though according to several seasoned protesters present at the training, many successful protest movements happen from meetings of a half dozen people, so the 25-30 of us that were there constituted a great turnout - and by the way, there were a handful of participants who live in other parts of the city or even in outlying areas, but they recognize the potential negative results for the entire region if these casinos are built, so that was heartening to me to get support from people who don't live in the direct vicinity of the casino sites. Also, the photo that PlanPhilly put at the top of their story is not from yesterday at all, the protesters in the photo are carrrying a big banner, and if you look closely, they're wearing long pants and jackets - it's not even the right season. We weren't carrying banners, we were carrying inflatable beach balls.

Maybe whoever wrote the article for PlanPhilly was trying make us look more like a force to be reckoned with, and that could be a good thing, but I thought it would be better to show elders in straw hats, and young people blowing bubbles, cuz that's more what our crowd looked like. To me that's part of the point: it's not just angry people ready to get arrested, it's normal everyday people who just want a say in this major issue affecting their city.

But I guess the most important message is that we're ready to take action.

Valerie Keller
Pennsport in South Philly