San Diego Asian Film Festival

I recently went to the San Diego Asian Film Festival to watch "A Village Called Versailles", and upon entering the theatre to find a seat, I was handed multiple coupons, some of which being for local casinos - namely Barona and Harrah's.

I find this extremely troubling. On www.sdaff.org, the proclaimed mission statement of SDAFF is "to connect audiences with the human experience through the Pan Asian media arts." and one of their methods of fulfilling this mission statement is "Engaging the public in meaningful discourse and positive social change through our programs".

There's no positive social change happening if gambling casinos are being advertised at an ASIAN film festival. Perhaps the organizers of the event are disconnected from issues affecting 'Asian-Americans', but casinos specifically target Asians who have one of the highest rates of gambling problems.

It's a sick cycle that keeps people in poverty and destroys families. People lose their jobs and go into debt because of gambling and being unemployed only further encourages gambling because of the false hope that you can 'win it big'. It's especially problematic in Asians who are not very open about addictions or traditionally mentally-based problems and language barriers only make getting help even harder. The whole gambling issue also perpetuates youth gang violence in the community.

It also doesn't help that now Asians are getting a reputation for being good at gambling ever since Vietnamese players started winning Poker tournaments. At least in my family, people like John Phan are regarded as heroes because he represents the Vietnamese community. These aren't good role models. They're one-in-a-million. Gambling is very much like capitalism. There are the rare, but exceptional rags-to-riches stories that get shoved down the throats of the masses to keep everyone hooked on the prospect of making it big while in reality, people are getting screwed left and right while feeding into the machine.

If SDAFF wants to enact positive social change, I think they should address the gambling issue. Don't give casinos another venue to target Asians more than they already do. Fight back - help empower the community to resist the gambling industry. Casinos already go to great lengths to get people hooked on gambling through tactics such as bussing people to casinos free of charge and offering vouchers and free lunches. A study done by NICOS Chinese Health Coalition reported that gambling is viewed by the community as the biggest issue and that more than a fifth of the community are self-proclaimed gambling addicts.

This is a real problem and SDAFF needs to address this. It's unacceptable for the organization to feed into the hands of the system that is fucking their community for monetary sponsorship.