We are not racists

In “Anti-Casino or Anti-Indian?” (Artvoice, v5n19) Mike Niman posed the question: “When do well-intentioned anti-casino activists unwittingly cross the line to racism?”

Here’s the answer: never. We are not racists. I have never uttered a racist word or expression. I cannot imagine a more hurtful accusation. Nobody who is a member either of Citizens Against Casino Gambling in Erie County (CACGEC), or of the Coalition Against Gambling in New York (CAGNY), as far as I am aware, has uttered a racist word or expression. To Niman, failure to support Indian sovereignty, no matter where claimed, is evidence of racism. In addition to me, Niman attacks Bruce Jackson and Upstate Citizens for Equality (UCE). I happen to know these people fairly well, and while we don’t always agree, I know them to be decent people and most assuredly not racist.

Niman attacks Jackson for observing, correctly, that the Buffalo Creek area was not Seneca aboriginal land. It is difficult to arrive at a racist interpretation of Jackson’s remarks, but Niman somehow manages it. Ironically, Jackson has used his BuffaloReport.com to defend Seneca sovereignty with regard to collection of state and local taxes on Indian land. He has been critical of bad behavior by Barry Snyder. Does Niman expect him to refrain from criticism of Indians?

Niman writes, “Hiding behind words like ‘equality,’ UCE fights against native land claims…” UCE is not hiding anything. While indeed an anti-sovereignty organization, UCE has based its position on the distinctly non-racist notion that we should all be playing by the same rules. It is not an anti-gambling organization, but UCE’s position has led it to oppose Indian gambling in a number of contexts, and so our interests have overlapped considerably, and we value that collaboration. While UCE has not affiliated with CAGNY as an organization, some of its members are CAGNY members as well.

In my case, Niman took offense at an email that I sent out to CAGNY. Here’s the background:

In Central New York, the Oneida Indian Nation had negotiated a compact with then-Governor Cuomo to open Turning Stone Casino on land that the Nation had purchased. The Nation asserted sovereignty over all lands that it owned in areas of its former aboriginal territory, including the casino parcel. Using funds from the casino, the Oneidas eventually acquired 18,000 acres scattered throughout two counties and refused to pay local taxes on any of it. This situation was addressed by City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation of New York et al., in which the US Supreme Court invalidated the Oneida claim of sovereignty over all these lands that it owned. Sherrill knocked over one prop of Turning Stone’s claim to legality.

The Turning Stone compact was never ratified by the New York State Legislature. In a case brought by UCE, Peterman v. Pataki, the New York State Court of Appeals held that such compacts are inherently a legislative function, so that a compact without such authorization was in violation of the State Constitution. That knocked over a second prop.

When UCE won its case, I posted a message to CAGNY, which began: “We have had some good news on the fight against casinos in New York: The compact authorizing Turning Stone Casino, never ratified by the State Legislature, has been found to be in violation of the New York State Constitution by the New York State Court of Appeals...”

In his article, Niman wrote of this message: “Rose was excited because the case could eventually lead to the closing of the Oneida Turning Stone Casino.” Privately, he wrote to me: “Interesting Joel how you revel in the possible closing of one foreign nation’s casino 150 miles from here but seem sooo silent on another foreign nation’s casinos just miles from Buffalo (Ft. Erie Slots) and Niagara Falls (Casino Niagara). Can I take this to mean you don’t harbor any ethnic hadred [sic] against Canadians?”

Now, I was gratified, not excited, and I certainly wasn’t reveling, but let me not quibble over Niman’s loaded terms. The point here is the geographic domain of our efforts. As chairperson of a statewide group opposing gambling, I must be every bit as much concerned with Turning Stone as I am with Buffalo Creek. That never occurred to Niman. He was looking for racism and he thought he had the smoking gun.

At the core of Niman’s criticisms of UCE, Jackson and me is the belief that Indian sovereignty is sacrosanct, and any rulings to the contrary from the American legal system are just “Euro-American arrogance.” The Indian nations can rely on services and infrastructure provided by the larger society, but if the larger society imposes its legal system on them, that is somehow racism. Such a construction is, in my opinion, condescending. One could even call it racist, if one were to use that term as loosely as Niman. I just view it as politically correct nonsense. Neither CACGEC nor CAGNY takes a position on the general question of sovereignty. We have individuals from both sides of that issue within CACGEC and CAGNY, and they treat one another with grace and civility.

Sovereignty is not a trivial issue. Islands of sovereignty in the middle of a modern nation pose serious practical problems. It is a good topic for rational discussion, one from which I could benefit, but Niman does not advance that effort with his diatribe.

Our direct targets have never been the Indian nations themselves. Rather, our quarrel is with our own governments, at the national, state and local levels, who have either participated or acquiesced in a cynical attempt to use the Indians to enable them to avoid compliance with the State’s Constitutional ban on casino gambling.

Certainly Indians are affected by what we are doing. They are central to this fight because their sovereignty, for good or ill, gives them some immunity to the laws and regulations that govern everybody else. Indian casinos are the only casinos in New York, so of course we are fighting the Indian casinos. But we are doing it by focusing on the unwise, unethical and often illegal behavior of our own public officials in making special deals with selected Indians to advance their own interests.

There are, as Niman points out, other forms of gambling in New York besides Indian casinos. He doesn’t mention all of them, but we have charity bingo, the lottery, pari-mutuel betting, off-track betting, video lottery terminals (VLTs) at the tracks, Internet gambling and casinos in Canada. A number of people, including Niman, have asked why we don’t oppose these other forms of gambling.

In some cases, we do in fact oppose them and people may not be aware of our opposition because it has not been our central focus. In particular:

The lottery began as a modest enterprise, in which you bought a ticket and filled in your favorite numbers. It has evolved into a monster, with absurd publicly funded advertising, 24-7 availability, an ever-faster betting pace and an ever-increasing number of victims.

VLTs at the racetracks are effectively low-end casinos designed to save the horse-racing industry.

Both CACGEC and CAGNY opposed the state’s participation in the Mega Millions Lottery and sought to have the VLTs shut down, through our support of Dalton v. Pataki. We lost that case, and no further appeal is possible. The political climate is clearly not ripe for a legislative solution. But we hope that the educational work we are doing is helping to lay the groundwork for an eventual review of these forms of gambling.

Internet gambling is illegal in the United States but permitted through the total lack of an effective enforcement mechanism. It has the potential to be even more harmful than casinos, because of its universal availability. It is a national and international problem and it is being addressed very actively by the National Coalition Against Gambling Expansion (NCAGE), with which both CACGEC and CAGNY are affiliated.

In other cases, we just don’t feel the problems posed rise to the level warranting opposition. Bingo generally involves low stakes and has low potential for addiction. Pari-mutuel and off-track betting are a dying industry. We have made a political decision not to oppose those forms of gambling that are significantly less harmful than casino gambling. Individual members may oppose these as well, but as organizations we feel we garner broader support by focusing on the most egregious forms of gambling.

Finally, there is gambling beyond our geographic area of concern. CACGEC is concerned with Erie County, CAGNY with New York State. Other areas—notably adjacent states and provinces—affect us, and we are certainly concerned about them. These states and provinces each have their own anti-gambling groups, and we must trust them to fight the good fight in their respective areas. We cooperate with them through NCAGE.

Once Niman thinks he has found racism, anything at all may be taken as further evidence. In our private correspondence, I mentioned that I had some friends among the Iroquois by way of suggesting what their views on casino gambling were. Niman’s reply: “This is the classic rhetoric of a racist.” At that point, I gave up trying to have a discussion with him.

Most Indian people do not want to see their future built on a foundation of gambling any more than the rest of us do. Traditionals do not believe in gambling. Of course, they don’t believe in voting either, so their views are not reflected in referenda. Among the Senecas, approximately half of the non-Traditionals oppose gambling as well, for all the same practical reasons that CACGEC and CAGNY do.

A number of the regimes of Indian nations with whom New York State has attempted to make gambling deals are not recognized by the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. These include the Mohawk, Oneida and Seneca regimes. The Haudenosaunee do recognize the Tonawanda Band of Senecas, a Traditional regime that opposes gambling. Niman takes us to task for favoring the imposition of American laws over sovereign Indian nations. But the very regimes whose actions he wishes to protect from our meddling are themselves the product of a legal structure imposed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The Traditionals have nothing but contempt for the gambling industry.

Without knowing anything about CACGEC’s or CAGNY’s history or mission, Niman has decided that our failure to have adhered to his peculiar notion of consistency is evidence of racism. Such casual usage cheapens the term, depriving it of meaning. When applied without justification, as Niman has done, allegations of racism tarnish the reputations of decent people.

Joel Rose, Chairman

CACGEC

Buffalo

the forest for the trees

Last week’s article on Zoar Valley (“Not So Fast,” Artvoice v5n28) unfairly criticized the June 23 Buffalo News article on the Department of Environmental Conservation’s release the day before of the Draft Unit Management Plan for Zoar Valley. The AV article, which was more a self-promotion piece by the article’s acknowledged instigator, Albert Brown, led its readers to believe that the environmental community in Western New York was so bedazzled by the DEC’s announcement that Zoar Valley’s gorge ecosystems and their ancient forests were headed for protected status that we abandoned the other half of the property—the diverse uplands with their forests, meadows, wetlands and wildlife. If AV’s reporter Peter Koch knew anything about environmentalists, he would have known this was hogwash from the beginning.

The only thing that could be said about the News article was that the subtitle was premature. But AV misconstrued the content. All those interviewed were reacting to the announcement about protection of Zoar’s gorges—cause for celebration after years of work. It’s okay to praise the DEC when they take positive steps and then work with them to get the desired result or against them if it’s still a fight. No one interviewed by the News was commenting on the entirety of the DEC’s draft plan. Koch missed an obvious point—the plan had only been released a few hours before and no one had read its 150-plus pages.

The AV article stated that at last week’s DEC public meeting on Zoar, “more and more citizens and environmentalists came around to the same conclusion as [Albert Brown’s group],” and that “as time passes, the chorus seems to be growing behind them.” While Koch may have experienced that meeting as some sort of revival tent gathering where the uninformed were enlightened at the church of Albert Brown, the room was full of people who have long been dedicated to protecting Zoar and who were there demanding as much.

Koch incorrectly asserts that I was quoted as supporting the plan in the News and then changed my mind (after seeing the light at aforementioned church service). He couldn’t be more off base. He also did a disservice to the Adirondack Mountain Club and Sierra Club when—in taking a page from the Republican Party playbook—he unfairly portrayed them as flip-floppers without interviewing any representatives from those groups or knowing about their decades of work on Zoar and their current efforts.

Koch described Albert Brown as big, bullish, loud and stubborn. What he didn’t know is that this behemoth ego has been harping about his twist on the News article since it came out—at meetings of other environmental groups, on the radio, wherever he can set up his soapbox. His mischaracterization of the article gave him a platform from which to criticize others and elevate himself to guru status in what I have observed is his quest—to one day say, “No, I saved Zoar Valley.”

The News and the reporter who wrote its article have long given print space to champion Zoar’s attributes. It is unfortunate AV didn’t take from their example and print an article about the multi-layered concerns at Zoar Valley. And if AV wants to report on the positions of local groups, it should ask them directly. A bulletin from the church of Albert Brown would never properly tell the story of years of dedicated research and work on Zoar by citizens, scientists, activists, lawyers, professors and students from the likes of Youngstown State University, the Nature Conservancy, NY Natural Heritage Program, Adirondack Mountain Club, WNY Old Growth Forest Survey Team, Citizens Campaign for the Environment, Buffalo State University, Sierra Club, Buffalo Audubon Society, Buffalo Ornithological Society, SUNY Fredonia and more.

Zoar Valley is unique and deserves the highest level of protection. We’ve all known that all along.

Julie Broyles

Zoar Valley Nature Society

Gowanda

Bad Taste of Buffalo

in my mouth

Buffalo’s music and fine arts scenes are quite developed with numerous venues from one end of the high-class spectrum to the other. However, movement arts in this city, dance in any paradigm, mime, martial arts performance, struggle to get crowds as well as financial patronage. I, personally, have paid this trend little mind and have hit stage and street, from the Albright-Knox, to Karpeles Manuscript Museum, to the sloped blacktop on Franklin for Music is Art, to the sidewalk near Thursday in the Square, where break dancers (b-boys), a drummer and myself regularly attract crowds of 75 or more and were once given a $10 tip by a great police officer, whose name I, regrettably, do not know.

Street performers add zest to a city. Municipalities with enviable economies and reputations such as Vancouver, San Francisco and Orlando all have busy and bustling street show scenarios that jostle the regularity of predictable city existence into something more fun and surprising than the everyday. Buffalo, currently billing itself as an arts destination to tourists, has no quality street performers, except the 12-8 Path Band, that I have seen. Buffalo certainly has a rut falling into propensity, and I change that. I have training in numerous backgrounds: ballet, modern dance, mime, acting, hip-hop and on and on. My name and articles about me have appeared in the Gusto and Artvoice. My day job is with the remarkable Mime Internationale doing their brilliant one-man show, principally at elementary schools, The Picasso People.

I decided to hit the massive crowds of the Taste of Buffalo on July 8 and 9. There are no appreciable nonevent crowds to be had in Buffalo, a la a New York City lunch hour, or any New York City hour for that matter, and thus the Buffalo performer must go where there are events featuring music, food and drink. I had a $50 gorgeous Venetian mask on, with white gloves and a small, unobtrusive tip jar in front of me for about two hours on Saturday at the Taste of Buffalo. I was entertaining young children, older folks and everyone in between with my contortionist ballet mime and regularly receiving unsolicited donations from them all.

I was doing quite well until a policeman approached me and told me I had to leave. The Taste of Buffalo itself had taken offense to my presence, despite the fact that I never verbally solicited anyone and did not make any noise; I was dancing to the music from one of the stages. Both dumbfounded and upset, I was bounced to outside of the festival, where I did as well in four hours as I had done in two.

I went back the next day, made more dollars than I had spent minutes performing and the same police officer threw me out again. I proceeded to make as much in four hours outside the festival as I had in 10 minutes inside.

I found this action by the Taste of Buffalo in poor taste, and particularly low-class and artless. Did they need their fingers in my jar for my presence to be okay? I certainly enhanced the entertainment of the festival for hundreds of people, but the power play from the Taste of Buffalo reduced the whole scene to dollars and cents. Poor show, fried festival.

Aaron Piepszny

Buffalo

lowering oil prices a

slippery slope

In his article, “Petrotreason” (Artvoice v5n28), Dr. Michael Niman advocates acceptance of a proposed arrangement whereby Venezuela would sell the US oil at a price of $50 per barrel (or $30 less per barrel than today’s price). In the view of Niman, this arrangement would “effectively bring the street price of gasoline back to around two dollars per gallon,” thereby “rescuing both American consumers and the American economy from disaster.” He then goes on to disparage the oilmen who run the Republican Party, because they “don’t like cheap oil prices.” In an omission that can only be characterized as startling, Niman makes no mention of the environmental disaster, already well underway, that would be accelerated by a sudden drop in oil prices.

Writing an article about oil policy without mentioning climate change is a bit like discussing the performance of the Bush administration without mentioning the Iraq war. It’s the elephant in the room that can’t be ignored. Anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of economics must surely realize that the most immediate effect of a sudden drop in gasoline prices would be increased consumption. And the last thing that Americans need to be doing is burning more fossil fuels. So let’s fill in the part of the picture that Niman ignores.

The US already dwarfs the world in its profligate use of energy resources. The US per capita consumption of oil of nearly three gallons per day is more than double the per capita oil consumption of the other industrialized countries that make up the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Outside of the OECD, the average per capita oil consumption is 0.2 gallons per day. US officials like to complain about the increasing energy needs of China, but, per capita, US consumption of oil surpasses that of China by a factor of more than 13.

It is all well and good to wish to rescue American consumers from economic disaster, but the continuation of “business as usual” in the form of cheap gasoline is no answer. The price of “business as usual” was discussed extensively in Jim Hansen’s article in the New York Review of Books of July 13, 2006, and in Elizabeth Kolbert’s book, Field Notes from a Catastrophe. Continued growth of global emissions without regard to the effect on the climate will result in a doubling of carbon emissions by 2054. This would result in an increase of about five degrees of global warming during this century, which would likely result in the extinction of more than 50 percent of the earth’s species, and could result in sea levels 80 feet higher than the levels of today. Hansen points out that an 80-foot rise in sea levels would mean that the US would lose most East Coast cities, including Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington and Miami. In Asia, the results would be far worse, with hundreds of millions of people displaced by the rising seas.

Niman’s hope for economic salvation through the acquisition of cheap Venezuelan oil is as unrealistic as many other ideas recently floated by those unwilling to confront the sober realities of America’s oil dependence. The promise of cheap and plentiful Venezuelan oil is an illusion, like the hope of replacing significant oil consumption with plentiful ethanol extracted from corn and pollution-free hydrogen fuel cells. All of these ideas allow Americans to continue to harbor the illusion that an easy solution to their oil dependency problem is right around the corner and they will be able to continue their current lifestyles, characterized by endless borrowing and wasteful consumption of scarce energy resources, indefinitely. But there is no magical solution. Kolbert’s book discusses the studies of Robert Socolow, a professor of engineering at Princeton, who has attempted to quantify the measures needed to avoid global catastrophe. According to Socolow, in order to avoid exceeding CO2 concentrations of 500 parts per million by mid-century (which would be the result of “business as usual”), immediate action would have to be taken to reduce emissions growth to zero. What would be required for such stabilization? In Socolow’s view, there would have to be a combination of difficult measures, including such items as halving the number of miles driven by every car in the world, while doubling the fuel efficiency of each vehicle, doubling the capacity of all of the world’s nuclear power plants and achieving dramatic increases in the amounts of energy generated by solar cells and wind turbines.

The real “petrotreason” is the failure of US governmental officials to come to grips with the fact that immediate action is needed to discourage, in a meaningful way, American energy use. Certainly, some sort of carbon tax, and a substantial gasoline tax, will have to be part of the American effort. We all like cheap oil prices. But to avoid destroying the earth for the generations to come, we’ll need much higher oil prices, so that we reduce our oil use to a significant degree. The increase, resulting from the imposition of taxes, will not go to Middle Eastern oil magnates, but to governments, to be used to lower other taxes and to build an infrastructure for the future America, where citizens will live in cities, rather than sprawling exurbs, and ride trains and buses, instead of driving SUVs. It’s time to turn our attention away from the acquisition of oil and get serious about oil conservation. Otherwise, as Mr. Hansen points out, future generations of citizens of the world may someday look back at this generation of Americans as fondly as today’s citizens remember the Nazis of the World War II era. Do we really want to be responsible for the catastrophic consequences of environmental “business as usual”? I know I don’t.

Michael J. Willett

East Aurora

DO THE RIGHT THING

Civilization originated in Mesopotamia near the Persian Gulf, where the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers flow round a flood plain of exceptional fertility. For Jews, Christians and Muslims, it’s the traditional birthplace of man and woman.

In about 3500 BC, the Sumerians built the world’s first cities on the plain. Their civilization rose as they produced agricultural surpluses for consumption and trade. By 3000 BC, Sumerian cities were fast expanding into city-states that took control of surrounding villages. By 500 BC, competition for land and water brought wars that destroyed the plain.

Traces of Sumerian blood remain in present-day Iraqis. In 1206, Hulegu Khan, a commander in Ghengis Khan’s army, destroyed Baghdad and slaughtered the inhabitants. Baghdad, on the banks of the Tigris River, had led the world in science, mathematics, medicine and architecture. The Mongol Empire lasted until 1368. Baghdad was rebuilt. How wars will end is unpredictable. But our president plunged headlong into wars against two former allies, Afghanistan and Iraq. They were supposed to fold quickly but did not. Still fighting goes on.

Since 9/11, we’re like helpless children huddling in a cave, blinded by fear and darkness. A “Wartime President” delivers edicts that we dare not question. Senator Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who heads up the Judiciary Committee, wants Bush to account for his action on illegal wire taps. The Supreme Court is looking into the treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay. Senator Carl Levin, D-Mich., spoke July 2 on “Face the Nation” about the mess Bush created by making up his own laws. At the same time, too many politicians who grow rich, with better health care coverage, neglect the needs of the people who elected them.

In the rush to annoint him after 9/11, Bush engineered a flawed PATRIOT Act and left us with the damage wrought by Hurricane Katrina; a poorly protected Homeland; and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that punishes the world.

Israel is an independent state. The Palestinians must acknowledge that, and then muster world support for a peaceful resolution to outstanding problems. Do what Martin Luther King, Jr. did. The Civil Rights Movement that he led began when a tired black woman named Rosa Parks refused to surrender her seat in a bus to a white man. Long before that, a lawyer in India named Mohandas Ghandi launched a peaceful revolution against the English who occupied his country. He called it civil disobedience, and millions answered his call, risking imprisonment and even death. Worldwide support forced England to surrender “the jewel in the crown.” Likewise, Israel may have to renew the partnership between Arab and Jew that turned Palestine into a Garden of Eden in the 21 years of relative calm between the end of World War I and the start of World War II.

Working together, they dug wells for fresh water, built inland towns and roads, gardens and fruit orchards, and magnificent cities overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Early Jewish settlers whom I met while serving in Palestine said, “We could not have done all that, nor could we have survived without the help of our Arab neighbors.”

Now the same crazy pattern of events that’s destroying what was known as the Holy Land has destroyed Iraq in the name of “freedom.” The answer to the spurious charge of “cut and run” is “do the right thing.”

Pay for the damage we’ve inflicted on the country of Iraq and the crimes against its people and our own. Then get out.

T.S. Underwood

Tonawanda