I got a phone call from a polling organization last week.
They wanted to know my opinion about The Casino. It’s rare that a pollster
finds me undecided about issues or candidates. But I wasn’t ready to declare my
position on this project. Not yet.
It’s not because I’m starving to have a little slice of Las
Vegas just down the road. My take on casino gambling is this: someone’s got to
pay for all that electricity. When I empty my wallet for entertainment, it’s
going to be for something more enjoyable than jerking a lever on a slot
machine, or watching a little ball spin round the wheel. I’ll go hoppin’ to the
tunes of John Hiatt down on the Mystic Theater dance floor, perhaps, or save my
ticket bucks for the coming downtown cinema.
And it’s not because I favor asphalt over hayfields, or neon
lights over starlight, or commercial wastelands over wetlands. And it’s not
that I like Las Vegas casino developers, who are hitched up with the Pomo and
Miwok for this project. Nor is it a fondness for the high-powered lobbyists
they’ve hired, two of whom, I believe, have had roles in Peter Pfendler’s
obstruction of Lafferty Park.
It’s about the Indians. Call it white man’s guilt if you
will, but I can’t forget what Native American folksinger Buffy St. Marie called
“the genocide basic to this county’s birth.” Property rights advocates complain
about unconstitutional “taking” when government zoning and regulation
constrains their development ambitions. But with the Indians, the taking was
brutally literal. As people whose culture was interwoven with the natural
world, removing them from their ancestral lands was taking away their life,
leaving them vulnerable to a plague of physical and sociological diseases. We,
of the conquering culture, *owe* these people a lot (no pun intended.)
Now, in a reversal of historic roles, it seems likely the
Indians will get their way, despite the protests of local government. What
irony! A leader of the casino opposition, quoted in the newspaper, complained
about the alleged duplicity of Tribal Chairman Greg Sarris, concluding, “How
can we trust now their claims and pledges?” Sound familiar?
What can we do? Somehow force the Indians to continue
enjoyment of their noble poverty? Send them “somewhere else” to build their
casino? (Although, seriously, would it be possible to build it at the
appropriately named and located Treasure Island, the former naval base midpoint
along the San Francisco Bay Bridge? It’s not Sonoma County, but awfully close,
and what a great location!)
But if the Indians *are* to get *their* way, how could that
be good for everyone else? Well… let’s talk with them and find out! Take
seriously their offers to enter into binding agreements for initial and ongoing
mitigation measures, including cash payments to support police and fire
services. And why stop there? Why couldn’t the development be made a model of
sustainability? Solar/wind powered green building technology, visually
beautiful, with complete water and waste recycling, served primarily by mass
transit. Yet is it fair to ask of the Indians that which we’re not doing
ourselves? No. It would be poignant if the Miwok and Pomo could demonstrate how
to again create a thriving culture in harmony with nature. But we’d need to
follow—to adopt and implement aggressive sustainability provisions in our
County and City General plans.
Those who look upon a Vegas-style casino as an environmental
blot need to look at their own frontyard. The Las Vegas casino is a microcosm
of what we did and are *still doing* to the earth and it’s native people.
Whether it’s mining aquifer gravel or groundwater at home, or promoting Third
World development policies that destroy aboriginal lands, we are putting our
planet on the line. When and how will we stop this mad gamble is a question we
seem afraid even to ask, let alone struggle to answer.
I want the Indians to succeed in a manner that doesn’t
obliterate their ancestral values, or reinforce the continuing decline of ours.
Let’s get together and figure out a better way.