(Important points from the casino boycott petition originator. We need a Green New Deal that puts America to work doing deep energy retrofits of our entire housing stock, and building new, sustainable transportation and energy infrastructure that will take us into the future. Ignoring the reasons for the collapse of our growth economy, and accelerated vulnerability on dozens of fronts, is a recipe for disaster.   – promoted by eli_beckerman)

I want to respond to a few comments made by folks in the labor movement who do not agree with the position on casinos that has been disseminated in a recent petition that I have helped bring to people’s attention.  I will say at the outset that I am not the sole author of the petition and that the wording and choices were a collaborate effort.

” Anyone in the Commonwealth who wants to gamble already is. It’s not like this is something new that will be happening in Mass., it is just going to create good jobs. There is not a green job out there for every working class family who’s home is in foreclosure and we shouldn’t insinuate that, nor will casinos put everyone back to work, but it will certainly create thousands of good jobs.

respectfully,

Robert S Wilson

IBEW Local 7 ”

Casinos will create jobs by destroying other jobs, by forming a class of dependent problem gamblers, by stealing lottery revenue, by and sucking money out of local businesses and new constructive investments.  Its a very bizarre roundabout way for politicians to increase regressive taxation without taking the fall for it.

Contrast this with the point of “green jobs”.  Besides providing needed work they are meant to shift the economy into a sustainable direction.  Casinos are at best a distraction or detour from this necessary shift or at worst are quickening our trajectory toward economic and ecological ruin.  They carry their own systemic and chronic problems, create few jobs in the long haul, won’t solve our budget issues, etc.  

Any project of a great enough size could provide thousands of good paying jobs in the short term, but that means anything.  Prisons, incinerators (biomass?), oil refineries, and you can see where this is going.

I do not expect to overturn in one fall swoop 120 years of business unionism and the completely justified anger, frustration, and fear that the 35% plus unemployed in the construction trades are feeling.   My uncles from Jersey in the building trades unions are looking to Canada and beyond to find some kind of work for a few months.  I have close friends and many people I have met in my organizing who have had no work for 2 + years.   If I were in their shoes I would probably support casinos just out of sheer despair over the current situation.

But casinos are an easy answer, one that powerful interests and fearful politicians are ready to support in lieu of making tougher and bolder decisions.  Do we really want to fool ourselves by taking in casinos and their hidden costs, while ignoring the real choices we will have to make to solve our jobs crisis and face the ecological challenges ahead?

While there is no magic bullet, green jobs offer the best route toward a fair, democratic, and sustainable economy.  But they must be fought for.  This is a time for new ideas, new alliances, new strategies.  Labor needs to look seriously at new frameworks like the solidarity economy, re-localization, and co-operatives, while re-visiting its attempts to break from the two party hegemony (Labor Party Advocates, Working Families, the Greens).  

Anything less than this means will we not only have casinos polluting the social fabric but an obliterated public sector, full scale privatization, and the breaking of the pockets of solidarity and democracy in our economy.