Jamul Casino Groundbreaking

At right is photo of a billboard trumpeting the alleged groundbreaking of the proposed Jamul Indian Casino (the billboard is on State 94, just west of the intersection with Jamacha Boulevard in Rancho San Diego). I say “alleged” because there is some question about whether any ground is actually being broken, or even if that’s the intent.

The story gets a little complicated, but the starting point is simple enough: the Jamul band of the Kumeyaay Indians want to open a casino, for all the usual and obvious reasons. Meaning basically exactly one reason: to make money.

The Jamul Indians live on a six acre reservation along State 94, just south of the town of Jamul. The non-Indian residents of Jamul are overwhelmingly opposed to the casino, because they fear its effects on their quiet and rural community (I am one of those opposed). In fact, I have not met a single non-Indian who is in favor of the casino.

The photo at right shows one of the protesters we saw today, taking the high ground overlooking State 94. Westbound drivers could see this person for miles. I’ll scatter more of my favorite protester shots throughout this long post; there are many more at the bottom of it…

The first hitch in the casino plans was a doozy: six acres wasn’t enough room for a casino, so the Jamul Indians tried to annex an adjacent 81 acre lot, and then make it part of their reservation. That would have been plenty of room for them to build a casino complex, complete with shops, restaurants, and plenty of parking. But the need to annex the 81 acres provided those opposed with an easy target — and they did everything possible to prevent the Jamul Indians from accomplishing their annexation. Very successfully, in fact. So the Jamul Indians, fed up (or so they say — more on that later), decided to give up on the annexation, and instead drew up plans for a casino on their six acres. Since there wasn’t enough horizontal space for their rather grandiose plans, they came up with a vertical solution: 30 stories of casino. If you don’t know Jamul, you may not realize just out far out and wacky that sounds to the locals. I believe it’s true that we have no buildings over two stories tall in all of Jamul. The area surrounding the reservation is rolling hills draped in meadows and chaparral. A 30 story skyscraper would fit in here about as well as a mobile home in New York City.

There is some controversy about the actual intent of the Jamul Indians with this announcement, however. One school of thought has it that the Indians are desperate and out of options, and are actually just trying to scare the locals into caving on the annexation of the 81 acres — and they have no actual intention of following through on the 30 story casino. The PR piece they published a few weeks ago mentioned one thing that sounded convincingly serious to me: they said that the reservation residents' homes were being moved off the reservation to make room for the casino. That didn’t sound like bluster to me. Well, today we had a chance to look around the reservation — and it appeared to me that there were still homes on it. Furthermore, I didn’t actually see any evidence of homes having been moved (though I can’t be sure that’s correct).

And then we met Walter (and his very friendly dog). I spotted Walter standing alone on a little bump, with a good view, off to the side and away from any of the protesters. He has the classic profile of an American Indian, and he didn’t look unhappy about the protesters, so I approached him and introduced myself, and we had a short conversation. He didn’t give us his last name, and didn’t want me to take a picture of him (which is too bad, as he has a very photogenic face) — but he did tell us that he’s one of the Jamul Indians who is fighting the casino (and other issues) in court. Based on that, I believe he must have been Walter Rosales. If I’m correct, we met a very interesting man, indeed — he (together with a couple of co-petitioners) has been involved in close to ten lawsuits against the other Jamul Indians, including at least one that made it all the way to the Supreme Court of the U.S. (where the petition for a writ of certiorari was denied in 2004). Anyway, Walter told us that his lawsuit (or lawsuits) were still going, and that he was confident that he would prevail. He was utterly unconcerned about the casino actually being built, though he said he was happy to see all the protesters out there. Meeting Walter cheered me up even more than seeing all the protesters! More on Walter and his lawsuits can be found here and here.

Today (December 10) the Jamul Indians had scheduled a ground-breaking ceremony, complete with live music, food, and prizes. A couple of weeks ago they published and distributed to local residents a PR-flack written pamphlet touting the casino and all its supposed benefits to locals (mainly jobs and business relationships), and wall-papering over all the many reasons why the locals object to it. It also tried valiantly to paint a picture of the ground-breaking ceremony as entertainment, and invited one and all to attend.

Though I knew of no organized plans for protests, this was obviously a golden opportunity for exactly that. So together with my friend Jim Barnick, I decided to head down there to see what we could see. I was hoping for a substantial protest (which, if the press latched onto it, might get the issue a little more attention), and I was curious to see if there was any evidence about whether this ground-breaking was for real, or if it was a sham.

Well, as the pictures below make very obvious, we were not disappointed on the issue of a highly-visible protest! By a combination of count and extrapolation, we estimate that there were between 150 and 200 protestors out along State 94. That’s an interesting fraction of the entire population of Jamul (and they sure look like locals to me!). Every individual protester we met was cheerful, enthusiastic, and spirited. Nearly all the signs were strictly amateur (though sometimes very clever or pointed) productions; only a couple of the graphically perfect signs you often see at professional organized protests were in evidence. In other words, this protest had all the hallmarks of a heartfelt, grass-roots effort. Very uplifting for an opposition fellow like myself, even though so far as I know they have no actual plan that has a chance of prevailing — they’re all just yelling and hoping to get someone’s attention…

There were people showing up to attend the ground-breaking ceremony (and they were getting heckled by the protesters as they pulled into the parking area). At right is the line of people waiting to get into the ceremony, just before the doors opened. Looks like less than 100 to me. The parking lot, by my count and extrapolation, had about 120 cars in it. Some of the protesters told us that many of the cars belonged to invited guests from other reservations, but I had no way to confirm that assertion.

We saw one thing that surprised us very much: there was a massive display of armed force at the Jamul Indian reservation. You can see four of these security guys at right; all were armed with (at least) handguns, and all wore shirts proclaiming that they were off-duty officers. Whether that’s true or not, I don’t know. These security folks were scattered over a wide area, and moved about, but we estimate they had somewhere between 12 and 20 of them present. Then in addition, there was a CHP car (with one officer), and a sheriff’s car (with either one or two officers; we couldn’t see inside it clearly) also present. That adds up to a considerable show of force, for no reason at all that I could see. Certainly the protesters were hardly a threat — not counting the many children present with their parents, I suspect the average age of the protestors was between 40 and 50, and you can see in the photos that they aren’t exactly commando types. I wonder what the tribe was thinking? Just scared by all the emotion in the community? I was much more worried by the security guys than I was by the protestors. One security guy accosted us as we walked into the reservation. He asked us whether we were with the protesters, and I said (truthfully) “no”. But then I asked him what would have happened had I said “yes” — and he just shrugged, looked a little embarrased, and laughed it off. But now I wish I’d lied and said “yes", just so I could have seen what would happen. And a little later, I caught a snippet of conversation amongst the four in the picture, and the tenor and tone of the conversation wasn’t reassuring. Especially considering they were carrying weapons (with plenty of ammunition, I noticed — one of the four had at least 8 clips on his belt)…

Well, all in all it was an interesting experience, and definitely uplifting for anyone opposed to the casino. Jim and I were very glad we decided to go. I’m now cheering for Walter Rosales and his co-petitioners, as I think they probably represent the last hope of defeat for the casino — unless, by some miracle, the protests today draw some attention from someone who knows another yet-unexplored path to stopping it. I’ll close with the remainder of my protest photos: