The Lunar New Year, during which many New Yorkers celebrate the start of a new year on the lunisolar calendar, also brought out demonstrators this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On Feb. 21, protesters gathered at the Lunar New Year parade in Flushing to confront politicians and voice their dismay over the approval of a gaming license for Metropolitan Park, which occurred late last year<\/a>. While it\u2019s not the first time protests have popped up at the Lunar New Year Parade \u2013 \u201cFree Palestine\u201d protesters marched in the parade in 2024<\/a> \u2013 the No Casino protesters aimed to be more disruptive, following politicians through the route and chanting in an attempt to prevent their speeches.<\/p>\n The casino project, spearheaded by Mets owner and billionaire Steve Cohen, has drawn increasing ire from opponents for months. Many local residents that the NYCity News Service spoke to at the parade felt that some local politicians, including State Sen. John Liu, have failed them by being instrumental in the approval of the casino. Sen. Liu introduced the parkland alienation bill<\/a> that allowed the casino to be built on public land, one of the biggest hurdles the project faced before getting its license approved. However, advocates have not given up on the possibility of stopping the construction of the casino, which is expected to open to the public in 2030<\/a> right next to Citi Field.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe Governor and her Gaming Commission have the power to revoke the license,\u201d Jack Hu, an advocate for the No Casino movement, wrote in a statement to NYCity News Service. \u201cWe\u2019re going to continue to build people power and public pressure to force her to do it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The NYCity News Service spoke with protesters and politicians to understand the community\u2019s perspective on the casino.\u00a0<\/p>\n Watch the story:<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Lunar New Year, during which many New Yorkers celebrate the start of a new year on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":158315,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[128,9,24,63,129,131,130],"class_list":["post-158314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-bronx","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158314\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/158315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}