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The Freedom Players

The Freedom Players

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Why Participate as a Freedom Player?

You need to become a Freedom Player if you want to help the 40 million Americans suffering harm because of the greed of big gambling operators. 

People like you are the reason why Freedom Players always win.

What is a Freedom Player?

Our action is simple but powerful. We enter a local casino (or local gambling venue), sit down at an electronic gambling machine, put in our money and then we begin Freedom Playing.

Freedom Playing means you play the machine any way you want except you don’t press the Play button. While we Freedom Play, some of us talk with a friend, some read a book and some even knit. The ideas are almost limitless.

While you are Freedom Playing, you are encouraged to ask casino staff some essential questions such as: how do electronic gambling machines work? Why does the casino give away “free slots play” to citizens? Will I ultimately lose all of my money if I play these machines for a length of time? The DSM V labeled gambling an addiction like heroin, cocaine, and opioids so should this slot machine be considered a dangerous and addictive product, and if so, does this casino have a legal duty of care to ensure that I’m not harmed by this product? And so on. You get the idea.

Once you are done Freedom Playing, you will hit the cash out button on the machine and receive a paper voucher that you will present to the Cashier’s Window to receive your “winnings.”

Here are the few steps it takes to be a Freedom Player along with some sample questions you can ask.

What The Freedom Players Aim to Achieve

We use our freedom to play these machines in such a way that:

  • Spotlights the 40 million Americans suffering harm because of the greed of big gambling operators;
  • Demonstrates commercialized gambling extracts enormous personal wealth from ordinary Americans, leaving many in life-changing levels of personal debt, and how this financial devastation affects their future.
  • Highlights the urgency for commercialized gambling to be dramatically reformed in America, especially because we believe the life of every person has intrinsic value and no one is expendable.

All Freedom Players Need to Bring the Following:

  • A $5.00 bill or larger (not surprisingly, many slot machines require that you insert at least a $5 bill even though you may be playing a penny slot machine)
  • Bring a Valid Photo I.D. (All participants need to be 21 years old or older to enter the casino.)
  • Something to do while “Freedom Playing” (i.e. a book, knitting, drawing, etc.)
  • Please bring at least one other person with you, a family member, friend or co-worker.

If you need more info, email us here.

Below is a brief video of the first Freedom Players action from back in January 2008. We were rookies then.

 

Les BernalThe Freedom Players
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The Take a Gambling Break Challenge

The Take a Gambling Break Challenge

Gambling Operators Are Called On to Turn Off Their Lottery Terminals and Gambling Machines for a Day; Citizens Urged to Stop Gambling for One Day and Deposit the Money They Would Have Gambled in a Bank or Credit Union

#TakeaGamblingBreak

 

WHAT:

1) If you buy state lottery tickets, use electronic gambling machines, gamble online or at regional casinos, just stop for one day. Take the money you would have risked and deposit it into a bank or credit union account. If you don’t have an account, open one.

2) Any store, restaurant or regional casino operator that offers lottery tickets, electronic gambling machines, or any other form of gambling, is asked to stop for one day..

3) If you have a loved one or a good friend who is an active gambler, be a sponsor for the one day. As a sponsor, your role is to help your loved one or friend stay away from gambling for the day, encourage them to put the money they would have risked into a bank or credit union (if they don’t have an account, show them how to create one,) and help them participate in other activities to substitute for gambling.

WHY:

1) To spotlight the 40 million Americans who have been harmed by the greed of big gambling operators. This growing campaign first began in Oregon more than 25 years ago out of the work of Ronda Hatefi, a member of Stop Predatory Gambling. Ronda’s brother Bobby Hafemann committed suicide because he became addicted to the Oregon Lottery’s electronic gambling machines. Every year on September 29th, her late brother’s birthday, Ronda has organized a day to spotlight the serious harm the state’s gambling machines were inflicting on citizens and their families.

2) To awaken the public consciousness about how the widespread promotion and availability of extreme forms of commercialized gambling is a major factor behind the financial hardship and unfairness of opportunity facing millions of American families today.

3) To educate Americans on the truth that financial peace occurs most often from the act of regularly saving small sums of money over the long-term.

4) To give families and friends a way to start a conversation about the problem of commercialized gambling with the people they love.

5) To offer an opportunity for commercialized gambling operators to acknowledge they have a duty of care for citizens.

 

KEY FACTS: 

– Americans are on course to lose more than $1 trillion of their personal wealth to commercialized gambling over the next eight years.[1] Many of these citizens are suffering life-changing financial losses.

– Commercialized gambling is a dangerous and addictive product, now recognized as an addiction on the same level as heroin, cocaine, and opioids in the American Psychological Association’s DSM V, used by health care providers and insurers as the principal source for mental health diagnoses.

– Citizens who are financially desperate look to commercialized gambling as a way to improve their lives and help them escape their financial condition.[2] It’s become a Hail Mary investment strategy, one that dooms them to inevitable failure and personal debt. This is a critical issue because asset-building, the opposite of commercialized gambling, is almost non-existent for nearly half of the nation’s population.

– More than 40 million Americans have been harmed by the greed of big gambling operators. 

– All taxpayers, regardless whether they ever gamble, end up paying higher taxes for less services, and the state ends up with worse budget problems over the long term because of commercialized gambling. It’s the ultimate budget gimmick.[4] You pay even if you don’t play!

– Commercialized gambling is an antiquated, outdated public policy and a relic of past failures of leadership. Each year state governments spend more than $1 billion of public money marketing gambling to the most financially-disadvantaged citizens. The state’s gambling monopolies are exempt from truth-in-advertising laws, allowing them to grossly exaggerate the chances of winning and lure citizens into losing their money on gambling games that they are mathematically guaranteed to get fleeced.[5]

– The nation’s political elite – from both political parties- have transformed gambling from a private and local activity into the daily public voice of state government, such that ever-increasing appeals to gamble, and ever-expanding opportunities to gamble, now constitute the main ways that our state governments communicate with us on a daily basis. Nothing else comes even close.

Stop Predatory Gambling: Who We Are

A 501c3 non-profit based in Washington, DC, Stop Predatory Gambling is a national advocacy network of individuals and organizations working to reveal the truth behind gambling operators to prevent more victims.

SOURCES:

[1] This is how much Americans lost on state-sanctioned gambling last year Quentin Fottrell of MarketWatch, published by Dow Jones Media, May 15, 2018. 

[2] Cornell Univ. Professor David Just, The big swindle: In lotteries, the poor are the biggest losers, CNN, Dec. 18, 2013

[3] National Institute for Health, May 2011 

[4] Lucy Dadayan, State Revenues from Gambling: Short-Term Relief, Long-Term Disappointment, The Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government (2016)

[5] This is how much Americans lost on state-sanctioned gambling last year, The Wall Street Journal’s Marketwatch, May 15, 2018

CkirbyThe Take a Gambling Break Challenge
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Week of Action to Stop Predatory Gambling, Sept. 29-Oct. 5, 2024

Week of Action to Stop Predatory Gambling, Sept. 29-Oct. 5, 2024

To spotlight the 40 million Americans harmed by the greed of big gambling operators and to prevent more victims, we are organizing the National Week of Action to Stop Predatory Gambling, Sept. 29- Oct. 5, 2024.

At least 100 actions will be happening across America and the world during the week. 

We are calling for 100% participation from you and everyone who wants a future better than the one predatory gambling offers us. It’s an opportunity for thousands of citizens across the US and the world to act together to confront the unjust and dishonest policy of predatory gambling.

Do your part. Please commit two hours to participate locally in some way during the week of 9/29-10/5. If you can’t commit the time, then please participate by making a gift of $25 or more tax-deductible to support our work locally.

Possible Actions Include: The “action” can be anything you (or your group) want it to be. It could be a prayer vigil, a sign-holding visibility with homemade signs, participating in a “Freedom Players” event at a regional casino (or at a local restaurant/tavern with video gambling machines)…the ideas are limitless.

Also, here is a brief, effective guide that we put together with the Alabama group about how to organize a prayer vigil in your place of worship that weekend.

If you want to stop the harm that predatory gambling inflicts upon your community, then you personally need to act. Don’t think it will happen without your sacrifice because it won’t.

Les BernalWeek of Action to Stop Predatory Gambling, Sept. 29-Oct. 5, 2024
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Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock was a gambling machine addict

Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock was a gambling machine addict

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Las Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock had a serious gambling machine addiction. Read the latest New York Times story on his gambling behavior. Electronic gambling machines were at the center of his life.

Yet news coverage continues to use terms like “professional gambler” when describing Paddock. He was not a professional gambler.

No professional gambler uses slot machines and video poker machines like Paddock did. The machines create the illusion of skill but a user is mathematically guaranteed to lose all their money the longer they play them. Once you press the button on the machine, there is no skill involved. The computer inside the machine (known as the Random Number Generator) decides whether you lose or win. The player has no control over the outcome.

The image below is from the landmark book investigating electronic gambling machines Addiction By Design (Pg 112):

The business model of casinos is based on people like Paddock losing over and over again. While he may have won occasionally, it’s a statistical certainty that he lost huge sums of money the longer and more frequently he played as the graph above shows.

Paddock was playing hundreds of hands per hour (about one hand every six seconds) for many hours straight. Almost day after day.

No credible gambling addiction expert unaffiliated with gambling operators and independently-funded would describe him as a “responsible gambler.” ‘Responsible gambling’ is little more than a marketing slogan made up by commercialized gambling operators and their partners. Its intent is to place the spotlight on the citizen and away from their predatory and fraudulent business practices.

Whether Paddock’s out-of-control addiction to electronic gambling machines was a central factor in what happened last Sunday will be determined by the FBI investigation. But news coverage and public discussion should not normalize Paddock’s single-minded obsession with gambling machines and the exploitive business practices used by the casinos to keep Paddock gambling continuously.

Les Bernal, National Director, Stop Predatory Gambling

Les BernalLas Vegas shooter Stephen Paddock was a gambling machine addict
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What is Predatory Gambling?

What is Predatory Gambling?

Predatory gambling is when corporate gambling interests partner with government to cheat and exploit citizens. It ultimately forces the taxpayers who don’t gamble to foot the bill for the long-term public budget problems that result.

It’s a form of consumer financial fraud like price gouging and false advertising and it causes life-changing financial losses for tens of millions of citizens. Over the next eight years, the American people are on course to lose more than $1 trillion of their personal wealth to government-sanctioned gambling. At least half of this personal wealth – $500 billion – will be lost to state lotteries.

Predatory gambling is America’s biggest most-neglected problem.

The almost sole focus of state-sanctioned gambling has been to maximize profits, not protect the public interest. It’s exempt from truth-in-advertising laws, giving gambling corporations wide latitude to market gambling, grossly exaggerate chances of winning and aggressively lure citizens to lose their money.

Let people gamble if they want, some may say. But we already have the freedom to gamble. Up to now, many Americans participate in office pools for the Super Bowl, NCAA March Madness brackets, make casual wagers on the golf course with their friends, or play a Friday night poker game.

These informal events are examples of social gambling. There is no “house” skimming a large profit, guaranteeing the participant will inevitably lose over the long-term. No one is wagering continuously at rapid speeds of every five seconds, for hour after hour. Very few people feel an intense “buzz” or high from the experience. There’s no aggressive and deceptive marketing to get people to gamble more often with bigger sums of money. No one is lending or borrowing cash to participate or ends up losing their entire pay check. It doesn’t go on all day, every day of the week, year round. And ​it doesn’t require the majority of Americans who rarely gamble to subsidize it with any of their own money.

Without the legal, administrative, regulatory, and promotional privileges provided by state governments, lotteries, regional casinos and other commercialized gambling operators would not be spreading into mainstream American life as they are today. They would likely still exist only on the fringes of the society.

Les BernalWhat is Predatory Gambling?
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The U.S. has a lottery problem. But it’s not the people buying tickets.

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From The Washington Post:

Despite their role in increasing economic inequality, lotteries remain remarkably popular in the United States, as millions of players believe in the distant chance that a lucky gamble will change their life. In 2014, annual sales reached over $70 billion, and Americans spent more on lottery tickets per year than they spent on books, sports tickets, music, video games and movie tickets combined.

The United States has a lottery problem, but it runs much deeper than players duped by a “stupid tax.” Public officials need to address the nation’s lottery addiction. When they do so, however, they need to consider not only the root causes of lotteries’ popularity — for example, declining access to social mobility and the concentration of lottery outlets in poor neighborhoods — but also the beliefs about taxes and state revenue that ushered in lottery legislation in the first place.

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Les BernalThe U.S. has a lottery problem. But it’s not the people buying tickets.
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Judge lets suit continue vs casino tech biz Scientific Games over patent fraud, antitrust claims

A federal judge has denied a request made by Scientific Games Corporation and its subsidiary Bally Technologies Inc. and Bally Gaming Inc. to fold up the sole remaining count in a competitor’s antitrust lawsuit over casino card shuffling technology.

U.S. District Judge Matthew F. Kennelly handed down the opinion on Sept. 1,2017 holding the plaintiffs provided sufficient evidence that Las Vegas-based Scientific Games may have acted fraudulently.

Scientific Games is accused by rival Shuffle Tech International LLC and its subsidiaries, Aces Up Gaming Inc. and Poydras-Talrick LLC, of misusing patents for an automatic card shuffling device to stifle competition

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Les BernalJudge lets suit continue vs casino tech biz Scientific Games over patent fraud, antitrust claims
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In System With Little Oversight, Connecticut’s Biggest Lottery Winners Often Pay Huge Price

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Lottery players in Connecticut spend millions on tickets every day, most chasing a once-in-a-lifetime dream that never comes. But a handful of big winners show up again and again, seemingly beating astronomical odds to rack up dozens, even hundreds of sizable payouts.

A first-ever analysis of lottery winnings dating back to mid-1998, conducted by The Courant in collaboration with students at the Columbia School of Journalism, found 57 people who have won $1,000 or more at least 50 times. A dozen have won that much at least 100 times.

For those in Connecticut who have beaten the odds an extraordinary number of times, chances are most of them have spent far more on tickets than they have won.

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Les BernalIn System With Little Oversight, Connecticut’s Biggest Lottery Winners Often Pay Huge Price
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