The Goons on the Ice

A nice woman from Middleboro, with whom I had become acquainted in the anti-casino movement, met me yesterday in Bridgewater. The funny thing was though, she wouldn’t get out of her car until I showed up, parked and got out of my own car. The reason? In a far corner of the parking lot was one of those huge white limos the pro-casino movement would always show up with in Middleboro - and there were some people standing around it, several of whom wearing orange T-shirts. For those who haven’t been involved in the casino issue - these are more than symbols of the pro-casino lobby.

My friend was literally afraid for her personal safety. And she wasn’t even in Middleboro.

How can we conscience, how can we tolerate, that on our own South Shore, a person with the courage to speak up for her beliefs, and with the desire to protect the quality of life for herself and her family is, because of certain elements, afraid to step out of her mini-van in her own town - not to mention mine?

Despite what you may have heard in the press, on pro-casino web sites, or a from a certain Middleboro selectman, my friend’s reaction is a direct product of the fear and intimidation tactics demonstrated since the beginning by Middleboro Board of Selectmen and the pro-casino lobby. Instead of debating you on the issues, they’ll invent personal attacks to divert your attention, and that of the public and the press.

Recently our web site began an on-line forum to allow us to communicate with each other and answer questions that people new to the issue might have. In the past, I’d had an extremely positive experience with on-line forums after suffering a personal loss. The camaraderie, humor and open sharing of information and experiences became a powerful influence during a difficult chapter in my life. Though it was almost a decade ago that I joined my first on-line forum, I’m still in contact with a valued friend that I made long ago in that same forum. And so, I was truly looking forward to having this new forum available for our group, with whom I’d been working so hard all summer.

Except that, as usual, this forum was immediately hijacked by pro-casino forces. They flamed, taunted, incited and baited us. They added little new, and continually insisted, with bizarre perseverance, that we had only one reason for not wanting a casino – that we simply didn’t want it. When in fact, there are myriad reasons we don’t want a casino which are presented on the web site casinofacts.org.

Making it worse, those of us who have posted on the forum have had some of our words taken out of context, then cut and pasted into any shape or form the other side feels would be the most damaging. Subjects intended as humor, and taken as such by others, were twisted by a few into creepy new fictions to suit their current defamation campaign. A place where we should have felt safe and able to speak freely was used against us. We also allowed pro-casino members to post on this forum, even when they were disrespectful, in order not to appear unbalanced – and since we knew they would pounce on any opportunity to do so.

The pro-casino side is perfectly capable of creating their own forum, and we invited them to do so, but it best suited their purposes to commandeer ours. From the beginning, they’ve tried to paint the anti-casino movement as something we’re not, and used fear and intimidation as tools to prevent us from speaking out.

At a recent selectman's meeting Selectman Bond called for a censure of CasinoFacts and apparently took issue, with something I once wrote about 'getting the surrounding communities p-------'. I don’t really remember it, but since I rarely use profanity in public communication, it seems like that particular quote may have been extracted from what I believe to be part of a private correspondence to another member in separate, invitation-only forum.

But since we’re on the subject of the surrounding communities, they should be p-------. They should be extremely p-------. I'm from the surrounding communities and I've been p------- since April. And we should all be especially p------- that Mr. Bond and his fellow board members took three months to cavalierly enter into an agreement that wouldn’t only effect the future of his own town, but that of the entire South Shore of Massachusetts. This isn’t like building an office park or a shopping mall - this project would carry with it extreme economic, environmental and social consequences. Any of our towns would have been required to study such a project in tortuous detail, provide thousands of pages of carefully laid out plans and approvals, and jump through several million hoops. But it’s not as if Mr. Bond needs me to get the surrounding towns p-------, he does a fine job of that on his own.

More? No, I won’t devote a full blog or web site to them. I’ll only offer you three of my personal favorites and let you judge. I know the identities of the persons who posted these quotes on the now-extinct forum but, since it’s not my intention to bully, but to bring some perspective, I’ll leave them off. And just so you don’t think I’m picking on an errant one-or-two-time poster, these quotes are from full members who posted numerous times virtually every day while the forum was up. In fact, the number of their posts exceeded ours!

From a Middleboro resident:

8-16-07
“The Orange Shirts aren't saying we are supporting this because
of the tribe, though that certainly is another reason to feel favorably toward it. But it's hardly a reason.. no, we're in this for the money. Pure selfish self-interest - how nice that it helps them too, but that isn't more than a parenthetical aside.”

From a Raynham resident in one of the very few local industries which may actually benefit from a Middleboro casino:

8-17-07
“I was never here to make sense, I want a Resort 1500 room
Hotel, it will help me. Before you say it YES! its all about the Money.”

8-20-07
“Supposed to look something like this,

You can still see the Night stars twinkling in the windows,No
lie you will probably be able to see them in Carver!”

I could go on, but you get the idea. I guess it's probably a good idea for them that they never had their own forum.

Do I, personally, have strong opinions about some members of the pro-casino side? You betcha. And let’s not leave out the Middleboro Board of Selectmen. Do I voice my opinions? This is still America, right?

The more I kept going to Middleboro, the more I realized how much fear and intimidation were becoming an important part of the effort to ram a casino into being. I once wrote a blog, called the Laugh Factory, in response to this.

There are many good people on the pro-casino side. In fact, one of them is my life long friend. We all know that not everyone on a team is a goon. Just the ones that make the rest of them look bad.

But sadly, instead of focusing on the issues, the major pro-casino web site and Mr. Bond now accuse our group of child endangerment. Because of his position as a selectman, the hard work of my group, CasinoFacts, is thrust aside by the press to address his concerns.

In fact, the majority of our members are parents. I am a parent. For many of us, this whole issue has been about our children and the future and quality of life of the children of our towns and state. I am personally disturbed that Mr. Bond would pervert words out of context regarding children to further his own agenda or imply his own perceived injury.

The pro-casino web site has printed pictures of our children, the children of the anti-casino movement, without permission, for their own purposes. No one in the anti-casino movement, including myself and the webmaster of CasinoFacts.org has, for even a moment, ever considered, ever, posting a picture of a child on either side of the debate on any of it’s web outlets as part of this issue.

And in case Mr. Bond feels he and his family are the sole casualties of the casino debate, I recieved the following little love note in my inbox one morning.

In response to your outrageous and inappropriately threatening posting to Adam Bond, I would like to assure you Madam/Sir that you will not be anonymous for long - so I'd be mighty careful as to what you say. Clearly, you and others have not done adequate research on Mr. & Mrs. Bond. Mrs. Bond, who you are so fond of criticizing, comes from a prominent family with significant political ties, on a national level. The proper authorities ARE taking your threats of violence against this man and his family quite seriously. Whether or not Mr. Bond will seek
financial retribution from you is up to him. I will say, however, that the well-established Massachusetts family behind the "Bonds" would be glad to see each and every one of you loose your homes in a series of well justified libel suits. If I were you I'd think long and hard before posting anymore libellous, threatening or defamatory statements about Adam Bond and his family. Statements such as these are not covered by "free speech" and the law is not on your side.

The Voice of Reason

Oddly enough, this vitriol was spewed at me after I attempted to defend Mrs. Bond. Not because I care for her behavior or sentiments towards anti-casino folks, or for using her position to gain a platform, but because, like me, she is a mom to small children, living in a small town, and expressing her opinion - and not a public figure, member of a committee, or elected official.

I'm not the only one to receive these threatening messages from the pro-casino side. It's becoming common practice.

I currently moderate the comments on this blog. I publish the great majority of them, including the negative ones, if I feel they express a valid concern. But there have been a few I haven’t published due to their agressive nature. There is one of these however, I personally treasure. The author, anonymous of course, simply left for me the following words to unwrap like a special and unexpected gift one morning: “rude bitch”.

So, if you want to talk about name-calling, venture no further. I would like to point out that, on our forum, while it existed, nothing remotely ever came close to approaching the exquisite profanity and wrath of those two profound words: ‘rude bitch’. I’m thinking of having it printed on a t-shirt.

There is a very large, very wealthy law firm which is represented by an attorney named Dennis Whittlesey, whom I parodied in my blog Transylvania 947, which has, since it’s publication, been checking my blog at least three times a day.

As if I hadn't been downing enough Maalox since April.

Am I intimidated? Sure. Am I getting afraid of going to Middleboro? I’m sad to say this because I really love that town, but – yes. I’m frequently reminded of another anti-casino mom, who came out of a Middleboro supermarket recently with her kids, where they discovered a man spitting on their car.

Make no mistake, my guys aren't the goons on the ice in this hockey game.

I don’t go to visit pro-casino sites. Why bother? I tried once or twice, but it was mostly personal attacks. I’ll usually hear about those things from others. I don’t respond to them. It takes too much time away from my efforts against this proposed casino and the misinformation surrounding it.

But now the attacks in the press are disturbing. Not just to me but to my associates in this campaign, who are good, informed and responsible people

We're a grassroots organization, not a professional lobbying group. We’re learning as we go along, and learning that it doesn’t always pay to be nice. Though as far as I’m concerned if lawyers and politicians are going to cry like babies and go on the attack when people say unpleasant things about them, then they’re definitely in the wrong profession.

Aside from that gem of a comment ‘rude bitch’, I’ll never forget something someone once commented to in response to one of my blogs:

Gladys, a number of Middleboro residents have stepped forward to ask me to express their appreciation to you for keeping 'certain others' off the streets of Middleboro, some lurking in corners waiting to snap pretend photos (with an empty camera), others .... well just 'lurking.' You have 'lurk-proofed' the street of Middleboro, for which they are forever grateful! Please keep up the good work of cleaning up our streets! And otherwise occupying the riff-raff!

So I guess I’ll keep blogging. I’ll keep fighting. I’m just a mom, just a person who loves her town and values her part of the world, and is trying her best to defend it. And like the saying goes, if I didn’t laugh, I’d cry.

And sometimes, I wonder if a hundred or more years from now, a student of history will ever find themselves leafing through the official minutes of the town of Middleboro, only to discover to their utter bewilderment that a certain early 21st century selectman by the name of Pat “Tank Man’ Rogers once mentioned enjoying a ‘wonderful’ video with dog heads.

But hey, that’s why I’m here.