You may have seen me sharing information and action steps regarding gambling over the last few years. When there are so many problems in the world, one might wonder, why does that matter? Who is gambling really hurting anyway and shouldn’t people just be able to do what they want?

While I don’t think a general ban and enforcement with policing and incarceration is the answer to gambling (or anything really, also see: Prohibition, which did not work out), there are major concerns and steps we can take to make things better.

The modern gambling environment is far different and more dangerous than office NCAA pools, dining room poker games, and placing an occasional bet on the winner of a sporting event. Most of the industry involves games designed and run by large corporations with huge amounts of customer data, the same design teams that crack how to make social media addictive, backing of state governments making millions of dollars, and the right to kick you out if you start winning too much.

Gambling is not at all a fair playing field for the individual user in this environment, and is designed to take your money, shuffle you to more addictive forms of gambling, identify addicts, and prey on their addictions to make money.

A few key facts:

• Somewhere between 30-60% gambling revenue comes from addicted people, according to at least 9 studies on the matter. The industry would not be sustainable without gambling addiction.

• Youth addiction rates are 2-7 times as high as adult rates and 60-80% of high school students have participated in gambling in the last year.

• Gambling addiction has the highest rates of suicide of any form of addiction and in a survey of addicted people, two thirds had contemplated suicide.

• Addicted gamblers’ divorce rates are three times normal rates.

• Lower-income people are disproportionately impacted.

The rapid expansion of sports betting, especially it's ever-present advertising and the in-game bets and parlays which carry the most risk, raises even greater dangers, and many of the same companies behind sports betting are lobbying to take casino-style games into legal online play in the same manner and reach even more potentially addicted people with 24-7 mobile addiction.

John Oliver did a great segment on this recently. If you're ok with clever comedians who do include some crude language and jokes in presentation, his segment provides great information in an entertaining package (as he usually does). I encourage you to watch. Les Bernal, who features in a clip, leads the Stop Predatory Gambling organization with which I volunteer.

I hope as I continue to share here about gambling and action steps, that you’ll join along with me in advocating. Though government won't solve everything here, it's important for someone to be talking with legislators about how to rein in the gambling industry and prevent its most harmful practices.

Click here to check out some other recent John Oliver segments on key topics like ICE, mass deportations, tasers, social media regulation, and Trump 2.0. He’s doing a great job.

Book Notes: Let This Radicalize You, Part 2

I wrapped up reading Let This Radicalize You. (See part 1 here) I think it’s a great resource to read through. Here are a couple of notes on the later half of the book.

I appreciated Hayes and Kaba's discussion of making connections, not comparisons. Often news of injustices can lead to a competitive instinct of comparing the severity of one unjust situation to another, in an attempt to dismiss someone else's suffering or compete for limited organizing, attention, and support resources. They discuss the helpfulness of a framework of making connections. How are the two struggles actually connected? Are there related causes behind both of them? Are there shared experiences that can build empathy for one another? Are they each actually part of a larger shared struggle where those who organize related to them are actually in solidarity with each other? This is very helpful and healthy as we engage with news around us.

They also helpfully discuss the nature of the term violence, and it's flexible deployment by the state and media to vilify anyone who threatens the status quo or harms property. Instead attention ought to be given to the very conditions that the state characterizes as peaceful - the daily experience of exploitation in capitalist systems that violate human dignity. That is true violence. They highlight the state’s practice of narrowing migration routes (whether through legal options made available or the methods of enforcement) to the point that situations are created in migration that necessarily result in mass death. The mass death we see in migration is a result of policies that create poverty in other countries which drive people here, create opportunities for exploitation of migrants on the way to the US, incentivize dangerous crossings instead of safe legal migration, create harmful conditions in shelters and detention, and prevent productive participation in the legal workforce that would allow health and thriving.

Another helpful discussion was their warning against putting organizers on a pedestal. Like in any sector, that treatment of leaders is a setup for disappointment and dehumanizes the leaders by seeing them as just a facet of their whole selves. The pedestaling also distances everyday people from action by making it harder to see themselves in the work the organizer does. They highlight the helpfulness of being specific about actions or characteristics we admire, rather than general blind idolization, and they note that good organizers want co-strugglers rather than fans.

Another unhealthy dynamic is the demanding of perfect ideological alignment in order to work together. The authors highlight this and advise on working together with others across a broad spectrum and developing patience with others in their ideological journeys. They highlight working through one's own trauma in therapy and healthy community as a key part of developing that capacity.

Finally, they discuss burnout and the importance of identifying what will allow you to sustain being in the work for the long-haul, such as setting boundaries and accepting the reality of shifts from season to season in one’s capacity and role as well as the level of involvement of others and the amount of organizing that is able to take place.

Part of Kaba’s conclusion leaves us with these helpful questions paraphrased here: When we see injustice, ask, “How can I educate myself? Who is already working on these? Do I have capacity to offer support? How can I be constructive?”. She notes we are not able to be everywhere, but we can contribute somewhere, find that somewhere and plant yourself there.

Way-Too-Early 2028 Speculation

I completely recognize this section serves no actual purpose, that presidential politics isn’t going to save us, and that the horse race of elections can be a distraction. I just enjoy this kind of thing, so take it for what you will and keep focused elsewhere.

This is based on the combination of “Likely to Run” and “Likely to Win if Running”

Democrats

The Front Runners, clearly maneuvering for the role

• Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer

• Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro

• Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker (definitely positioned as the most progressive of this group, so far)

• California Governor Gavin Newsom

• Former Cabinet Secretary Pete Buttigieg

• Colorado Governor Jared Polis

Potential Breakthroughs

• Maryland Governor Wes Moore (going to run eventually, is 2028 too early?)

• Senator Mark Kelly

• Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (wants to run, but will 2024 hurt him?)

• Senator Raphael Warnock (faces a tough route to reelection and would be a great campaigner, but not clear he wants to run)

• Senator Cory Booker (his last campaign did not impress, but his 25-hour Senate floor speech was a declaration he wants to try again)

• Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (it seems Bernie Sanders is trying to pass her the movement, but she may go for NY Senate instead of the more risky presidential run, with many years left in the tank)

• Representative Ro Khanna

• Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear

• Senator Chris Murphy

Republicans

The Front Runners

• Vice President J. D. Vance (it seems Trump has set the logistical wheels in motion behind the scenes for him to inherit the movement, with the ways he's being entrusted with fundraising and organizing tasks for the party)

• Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin (term-limited, can speak to various wings of the party, swing state, skilled politician)

• Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders (natural heir to the evangelical-populist faction that has only grown since her father's campaigns, and she's played nice with Trump)

• Senator Rick Scott (prominent political force from MAGA's key state of Florida, without the conflicts with the movement Gov. DeSantis has, and he didn’t win the Senate leadership fight so he may take his ambition to a higher stage)

Potential Breakthroughs

• Vivek Ramaswamy (Looks like he’s running for Ohio Governor, but maybe that’s just a launching pad. He's ambitious enough)

• Former Republican Party Co-Chair Lara Trump (if the name is enough to carry one to the presidency on the shoulders of the MAGA movement, Trump daughter-in-law Lara seems the most savvy of the bunch and most positioned to make it a reality)

• Attorney General Pam Bondi (seems most likely to make it through a Trump administration with political capital with the movement, and she has the Florida-MAGA vibe down perfectly)

Ambitious, with baggage that cause problems with MAGA

• Secretary of State Marco Rubio

• Senator Ted Cruz

• Georgia Governor Brian Kemp

• Florida Governor Ron DeSantis

• Former White House Strategist Steve Bannon

Contenders, but content where they are?

• Senator Josh Hawley

• Senator Tom Cotton

• Senator Tim Scott