Boycott the casino
Date: 11/14/2014
Massachusetts has been a leader in the past. The Bay State was a close second after Vermont to outlaw slavery in 1779, the first state with marriage equality as of 2004 but alas, not the first state to say “no” to casinos. We are now the 40th state to be rolled over by big money.
We have only one hope now which is to boycott the casino when it opens. Keep frequenting the local restaurants and theaters, visit the dentist, buy housewares and shoes for your kids. Never put your credit card into a slot machine, never take “casino credit” which is a lien on your house, never accept the free drinks from 8 a.m. to 2 a.m. Never gamble your future away. That’s where the divorces and domestic violence starts in. Never think of embezzling. You won’t need it if you don’t gamble.
MGM had about 4,000 paid TV ads while the repeal movement had none. They had paid people with signs, the support of the state government and the Springfield newspaper which never printed my letters. Altogether they did a fine job of misleading the public. That doesn’t mean we have to look like Las Vegas, Atlantic City or Detroit which have three of the highest unemployment rates in the country due to casinos. Our taxpayers don’t have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to bail out casinos as is being done in Connecticut, New Jersey, Delaware, Rhode Island and elsewhere when area residents are impoverished. We don’t have to watch our local businesses close as they always have when a casino opens. We can avoid all this if we don’t go in. Boycott the casino. Let that big glitzy thing just sit there.
Malita BrownWilbraham
