NIAGARA FALLS: BROKEN BEFORE THE CASINO CAME TO TOWN

Having successfully avoided—for the most part—Bruce Jackson’s hopelessly one-sided, incessant and interminable series of anti-casino agit-prop pieces in your publication, I finally broke down yesterday when I noticed Ken Ilgunas had decided to cover the “casino has killed small business in Niagara Falls” angle, and read the piece in its entirety (“There Goes the Neighborhood,” Artvoice v5n8). As a Seneca who moved to the Falls to take a job at the new casino three years ago I, and any resident there, can tell you Niagara Falls’ problems were around long before the tribe ever came to town. To cherry-pick five businesses and one local character is a laughable and lazy way to gauge the casino’s impact on the community. Having met two of the owners of the aforementioned businesses, I find it difficult to believe they would blame the casino for their woes…unless cajoled. One of the businesses, Kelly’s Korner, a neighborhood tavern in the LaSalle district, is located five miles from the casino site, for goodness sakes!

What the casino has done is force many small business owners to realize the impact of the project and either spruce up their properties and cater to the 3,000-some employees looking to hit the town for a drink after work, or get the hell out of the way. Some businesses have actually done this, including Players bar and grill and Steve Fournier’s excellent jazz club and restaurant, Cafe Etc., on Third Street, and have thusly reaped the benefits. I failed to notice either of these places featured in Ilgunas’ piece.

Niagara Falls’ problems have been around a lot longer than just the last three years. From destroying large swaths of downtown in a shortsighted attempt at urban renewal back in the 1970s to not making the transition from industry and chemical jobs to service and tourism, many of these problems have been self-inflicted. Compound this with recent political scandals and an ill-advised reconstruction of Third Street and the city won’t turn a corner until it helps itself. A friend of mine, born and raised in the Falls with a well known family business that originated there, once joked to me about my frequent trips to Niagara Falls back in the 1990s by summing it up this way: “Ah, Niagara Falls…the land that time forgot.”

Tim Saracki

Buffalo

LETTERS RESPONDING TO LETTERS

Mr. Lloyd A. Marshall writes that the victims of Hurricane Katrina had enough time to get themselves together in a six-month period (“Letters to AV,” Artvoice v5n8). This after the most devastating force of nature in U.S. history destroyed lives and property. The psychological and physical toll is impossible for most to imagine. Men, women and children, according to Mr. Marshall, should have gotten it together in six months, grieving for lost loved ones and all. Now FEMA, the very agency, along with the White House, that failed, are stopping vouchers for those still in need of food and shelter.

Mr. Marshall states, “If they couldn’t bring themselves to get anything worthwhile done during their six months of eating, drinking and sleeping at our expense, too bad.” I find it impossible to judge such a mentality and will not try. As for “those” people eating, drinking and sleeping at “our” expense, eating, drinking and sleeping are all required for living and breathing organisms to exist. I have no doubt that Mr. Marshall and family eat, drink and sleep.

What is being done at “our” expense includes developing the largest trade and budget deficits in history, fighting two wars, a lack of moral, ethical and civil behavior from the top down, on both sides of the aisle, and many other things too numerous to list. I ask Mr. Marshall for only one thing: Please do not spew your poison and hatred; if it must be then let it devour you and you only, for it is a stench in the nostrils of God. I believe the victims of Hurricane Katrina can teach Mr. Marshall a few things: strength, courage and, yes, compassion.

Larry E. Salley

Buffalo

I was shocked by Michael I. Niman’s willful and juvenile response to Charles P. Jamieson’s letter correcting Niman’s claim that slavery was always unconstitutional (“Letters to AV,” Artvoice v5n8). While Professor Niman will always be free to interpret the Constitution as he sees it, if he wants to be taken seriously as a commentator he should spend a little more time studying and thinking before he writes.

Slavery was in fact legal in these United States and explicitly protected by the Constitution until the 13th Amendment (not the 14th Amendment) was passed in 1865. Indeed, the slave states’ primary weapon in defense of slavery prior to the Civil War was its legality and the explicit constitutional prohibition barring the federal government from interfering with each state’s right to regulate it. Each of the Amendments of the Bill of Rights famously begins “Congress shall make no law…”

Prior to the ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868, the Bill of Rights was binding only on the actions of the Congress and not the actions of state governments. Until 1868, the states were free to define certain classes of people as property, which, of course, the slave states did. In this regard, the states needed no help from the Supreme Court.

Acceptance of slavery in the Constitution was the devil’s bargain that the slave states demanded for their ratification of it. Undoubtedly, the Supreme Court of the day was deeply racist but to suggest that the nation was under the thrall of some kind of judicial tyranny that acted to preserve the slave power contrary to the will of the people not only misrepresents the historical record but also, and more importantly, wrongfully serves as absolution of the nation from its founding hypocrisy.

David G. Cohen

Buffalo