Join us at our Center City town hall on casinos

We've declared our independence from casinos, and now the revolution begins.

Our first action is our upcoming Center City Town Hall meeting — and we want you to be there. This is the first of about four or five town halls in various parts of Philadelphia, and they are designed to help embolden at least one elected representative, senator, mayor or council person (and maybe more) to declare publicly that slot parlors do not belong in our city.

What: Casinos & Citizenry, A Center City Town Hall Meeting

When: Wednesday, February 18, 2009, 6:45 to 8:30 PM

Where: 714 Market Street, Second Floor, Philadelphia

As an added bonus, we'd like to offer you a special gift: one of our awesome "We the People" t-shirts, which are the talk of the town.

Here's how it works: if you RSVP for the town hall meeting, at the meeting we'll give you two t-shirts for the price of one ($20). That's right, a two-fer! Sign up, and you can get a t-shirt for yourself and another for a friend. These are black, high-quality t-shirts specially designed so that during your travels nice people will stop, smile and say, "Hey, I like your t-shirt."

Generating attendance for the town hall will be a key to our success. Here's how you can help:

• Flyering: Print out town hall flyers (PDF) and distribute them to friends, neighbors and co-workers. If you would like to help us cover particular geographic areas of the city, please contact brendan [at] casinofreephila [dot] org so he can let you know where you should flyer.
• Phone Banking: Please participate in our phone banking sessions (and, yes, we order pizza!). You can sign up for our Sunday, Feb. 15 or Monday, Feb. 16 events on this website, both at 6:30 PM.
• Video: Please distribute our town hall video far and wide. It contains clips from our Declaration of Independence from Casinos launch event. Email it to friends and neighbors and post it on your social networks like Facebook and MySpace.

The key to our success is strengthening our voice — that's what the town halls are all about. A very small amendment to Act 71 (the Gaming Act) can eliminate the two casino licenses in our city, and the time is right for people to start talking about this. The economy has the casinos pinned down, there are issues and lawsuits still pending and perhaps more to come, and Rendell is making everyone angry with is crazy idea about video poker. At our town hall, we'll provide a comprehensive update and we'll explain how to get involved so we can make real change. That's what it's all about.

Of course, at the Center City town hall we'll bring the actual Declaration of Independence from Casinos, and you can provide your John Hancock if you'd like. See you on the 18th!