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How do you know when you're in SoHo? When you see artists in handcuffs. How many cops does it take to arrest an artist? Three to put on the handcuffs. Four to confiscate the paintings. Eight or nine to tell onlookers to keep moving and mind their own business. One to call Council Member Freed for further orders.
On Saturday, May 11 1996, on SoHo's Prince Street, I was arrested for the 13th time. When the police arrived I was standing in the hot sun, working on an acrylic painting of four jazz musicians. I heard yelling and saw a police officer tearing my friend Guillermo's abstract oil paintings off of a plywood construction wall. I could have grabbed my own paintings and run away while they were arresting him, but I didn't.
Instead, I took a pile of protest signs out of my car and handed them to the other artists on the block. I began photographing the police confiscating paintings. I walked up and down the street telling passerbys about the City's policy of illegally arresting artists, confiscating their art, dismissing every case to prevent the facts from coming out in court and then selling the art at a monthly Police Department auction. I also handed out leaflets I've written about the First Amendment's protection of artistic expression. At no time did I interfere with the police, try to prevent them from carrying out their assignment or encourage anyone else to interfere with their actions.
People often ask me if I'm trying to get arrested. All it takes for an artist to get arrested in New York City is to stand on any public street and display a single painting or photograph. But you hold up protest signs and make speeches in the street, they argue. Don't you know they're going to arrest you for that?
If writing a leaflet about the First Amendment or speaking out about the NYPD trashing the constitution is asking for trouble, then I guess that's what I'm doing. If educating artists about their First Amendment rights is being an agitator, or "chronic offender", as my police file says, then perhaps I am one. If I don't run away like a criminal when the police come, it's because I'm not committing a crime and there's no reason to flee the "crime scene".
I don't like being arrested. I hate being handcuffed and pushed into a car by someone with a nine millimeter and a club who can barely write their own name correctly let alone mine. It hurts to see my paintings confiscated, damaged and tossed into a black plastic garbage bag. There's nothing amusing about being locked in a cage and made to listen to twenty-something cops talking about how "Hitler had some good ideas", and, "this ain't the sixties".
Famous as the "art capitol of the world" New York is also unique in being one of the world's only great city's that does not have a single street where artists can legally display or sell a painting. The City refuses to issue licenses to artists and then arrests them for not having a license. The City, guided by the "leadership" of Council Member Freed, claims that paintings and other forms of visual art are not worthy of First Amendment protection and that sidewalk art displays are a menace to public safety.
I believe it's corrupt politicians and the police themselves that are a menace to public safety, not artists. I don't want to be arrested again, but I have no intention to give up my freedom or to remain silent while the City violates the U.S. Constitution as if it was doing the public a service.
In Nazi Germany, in Stalin's Soviet Union and in every other criminally repressive government, it was their policy to arrest, silence and eventually murder artists, writers and political activists. After they are taken care of, the rest of the population is relatively easy to control. What we are seeing in New York is the developing model of the future Police State we will all be living under. The only thing standing between us and it is the Constitution and the willingness of some people to speak out, hold up a protest sign or risk their own safety. In the words of Henry David Thoreau, "Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves."
Robert Lederman is president of A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics) and a plaintiff in a Federal suit against New York City. for more information or to join A.R.T.I.S.T. call: (718) 369-2111 e-mail ARTISTpres@aol.com or visit our web site at http://www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyc.html. Photos of the arrest available for publication.
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