Our friends and neighbors at Casino-Free Philadelphia, as part of a struggle they've shared with groups like NABR and other community organizations fighting casinos in the city, have just won a huge victory -- they've gotten Foxwoods to consider moving from the Philadelphia waterfront.

They visited Governor Rendell today and yesterday, as he prepared to meet with Mayor Nutter, Senator Fumo, and Representative Evans and the executives of Foxwoods. Casino-Free does it right, every time -- they continue to demonstrate that public pressure and accountability from ordinary neighbors can break down even the most established power blocks.

In their email that they sent out to supporters, Casino-Free Philadelphia reminded us that it isn't just the riverfront neighborhoods -- but every neighborhood that deserves the right to be free of gambling parlors and the problems they introduce. CFP has asked us to sign on to principles that the Governor, and the casino operators, must consider in any resiting plan:

1) The resiting process must be fair, transparent and inclusive. The process used by the PGCB was unfair, secret and exclusionary. Any effort to resite the casinos must be the opposite.

2) Casinos cannot be built in or near any neighborhood. Act 71's and the PGCB's lack of social standards in its decision-making resulted in untenable sites. Around-the-clock 5,000 slot parlors with multiple liquor licenses, attracting tens of thousands of cars each day are uses that are incompatible with neighborhoods.

3) Any resiting process must consider the "no casino" alternative. No one needs two casinos in Philadelphia. A cost-benefit analysis should be performed. Prior assumptions deserve to be revisited.

4) Casino companies are not to receive bailouts. They did not merely participate in a system riddled with mistakes but they actively tried to undermine the system. (Governor Rendell suggested today that no state money would be used.)

CFP will get this letter to Rendell, Nutter, Evans, and Fumo.

We have to celebrate this as a huge step forward -- and think hard about how we can use the media attention, the deep thinking on accountable use of our neighborhoods' and communities' land, and the organizing infrastructure to engage with housing issues and other land use issues in Philly.

We also need to step up and support groups like CFP and other neighborhood champions. Bread and Roses is honoring them this October with their Community Empowerment Award. But I'm not going to wait to donate more to one of the most effective groups I've ever seen in Philly.

There's a few articles popping up online about this victory -- read them, celebrate for a minute, and then -- on to Sugarhouse and no casinos in any neighborhoods!

Al Dia: http://www.pontealdia.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=917&Itemid=1

KYW: http://www.kyw1060.com/Rendell-Says-Foxwoods-May-Bend-on-Waterfront-Site/2829622

Editorial in the Inky: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/opinion/20080821_Editorial__Riverfront_Casinos.html