Violent Protest – 9.11.07
by Ed Weinberg
Twenty minutes before a September 10th anti-casino protest is scheduled to occur, pro-development advocates are already at the site of the proposed SugarHouse casino, preparing for a battle with light conversation and laughter. The group, FACT (Fishtown Action), holds mass-produced signs reading "No Delay, Build Today," and wears matching white t-shirts with the SugarHouse logo. They talk with excitement about the revitalization of the area, and a picnic the casino threw two days earlier.
Across the six lanes of Delaware Avenue, on a traffic island at its intersection with Frankford, a group of rival protesters calling themselves FAST (Fishtown Against Sugarhouse Takeover) hand out colorful signs and shout their own slogans. There's no dress code for this side, and their styles range from blue-collar to shorts and loud t-shirts. The demographic skews noticeably younger, with a handful of toddlers holding signs which read "casiNO!" About the only thing the two groups have in common is talk about the revitalization of the area and the picnic, albeit with a markedly different slant.
Where FACT supporters ask, "Why should Atlantic City get all the business?" FAST responds, "We don't want what's happened to the city of Atlantic City to happen to Philadelphia."
And where FACT sees the picnic as a sign of SugarHouse's generosity and future benefits, FAST tends to focus on one ugly incident in its closing hours.
The incident, in the details everyone can agree on, consisted of FAST supporter Ed Verrall arriving at Penn Treaty Park late in the afternoon, when the cleanup was on and the last of the attendees were leaving. He'd come on bicycle, by himself. He took some pictures. He got into a shouting match with FACT member Donna Tomlinson. Some other attendees approached the two with contentious motives. Verrall was punched, and went down. The police didn't take any names.
Tomlinson says of the incident, "He threw the first punch, and he threw it at a woman."
Daniel Hunter, an organizer with Casino-Free Philadelphia, claims, "His arms never left his side" – although he wasn't present for the altercation.
Mary Ann Worthington, a FACT Board member who witnessed the incident, says, "He was arguing and cursing at Donna, saying that we're paid off, saying nasty things about the Catholic Church."
Verrall says, "I didn't go there to talk to anyone."
If you split the accounts along political lines, the story starts to fill out, and gains more contradictions on final analysis. In FACT's reconstruction, Ed Verrall came to picnic late in the day, taking pictures of the dwindling crowd to simulate a failed event. When approached by Tomlinson, Verrall started yelling things like, "You're ruining our neighborhood!" More people came over. Worthington thinks the skirmish started with Verrall pushing his bike into a woman she knows by first name only, Jerri. John Flanagan, one of the men who came to intercede, says the bike didn't play a part. Tomlinson says he lunged at a woman named Dolores, then one of the men stepped in and it became a shoving match. Worthington says the woman's husband punched him once, and he went down.
This they all agree on. The fight wasn't much of a fight at all.
It came to an appropriate conclusion, Tomlinson says, when the cops came and didn't take any names. "They said, 'Listen buddy, it's common.' Then he started screaming at them!"
The FAST version differs in small but crucial ways. Verrall, a 52-year-old teamster turned activist, face still colored by the remnants of a black eye, says he was taking pictures of six city trucks at the picnic, disturbed by their presence. Tomlinson picked a fight with him, and called other people over. A man – not a woman – grabbed his bike, he grabbed it back, "they punched me from behind and I went down. They said I punched a woman."
Verrall says that other descriptions of the event had inconsistencies, and the police let these witnesses walk away. "They took me back to the station and had me look through pictures. But of course I didn't find anything – these guys aren't criminals."
Hunter has more to say about the ramifications of the incident. He thinks that the casino may have hired thugs, since Verrall – who lives across the street from the SugarHouse site – didn't recognize any of his assailants. He's also disturbed by the lack of police reaction. Though he doesn't say it explicitly, he's clearly concerned that the fight could get uglier.
Hunter says, "This is the first time they've been involved in politically-motivated violence. These are scare tactics. We want SugarHouse to say they don't condone violence – we've said this in the past. But their aim is to divide Fishtown, and this is the way they do it."
One thing stands out in Hunter's conjectures as fact: The casino is dividing Fishtown. Whether this is an intentional maneuver or a side-effect of a controversial issue, the SugarHouse plans have become a polarizing issue.
Late in the protest, after the sun, sloganeering and constant roar of rush-hour traffic have taken their toll, the tension comes to a head. Moon Mullen, a large man with a booming voice and a FACT Board member, says, "It's nice to see Society Hill here."
The man he addressed, Casino-Free Philadelphia lawyer Paul Boni, says, "It's nice to be here."
Mullen asks, "Do you know where this is?" stomping the pavement. "This is Fishtown!" he yells, "Fishtown!"
A man standing next to Boni responds, "I know, I live here!"
Mullen yells, "This is Fishtown!" one more time, and walks away.
When the dust settles, SugarHouse PR man Ken Snyder walks over from the side Mullen had been standing on and shakes Boni's hand. He says, "No hard feelings, I love this guy. We have season tickets together."
Daniel Hunter, Ed Verrall + John Domlen (l. to r.) in front of Sugarhouse site
