Giuliani’s New Year’s Gift To Street Artists
By Robert Lederman 12/30/99
The most notable trait of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani is consistency. If you make it on to his enemies list you are thereforever. That’s why even in the midst of what he is promoting as the "largest celebration in human history", his apocalyptic gala for tourists and terrorists in Times Square ominously code-named Project Archangel, the Mayor still has time to persecute his oldest enemies, New York City’s street artists.
After a year of releasing false statements to the media about a "compromise" on the number of streets to be restricted to all forms of vending, the Mayor’s compliant puppets on the Street Vendor Review Panel [SVRP] have finally released their list of newly restricted streets, a list which is in fact quite brief. Its most significant feature is that it appears to be focused not on reducing locations for the City’s thousands of corporate run food vendors, but on eliminating the City’s much smaller number of First Amendment protected street artists.
While there are a small number of street artists scattered on blocks throughout the City, the largest concentrations are on 53rd Street in front of the Museum of Modern Art, in SoHo on Prince Street and on Fifth Avenue in front of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Apart from the Met location which is currently the focus of a Federal lawsuit, these are the exact locations which the City is now going to restrict.
I’m often asked why I keep going after Giuliani. "You won your lawsuit in 1996", people say. "Now it’s legal for anyone to sell art on the streets of New York City without a license. Why don’t you just leave the poor man alone?" I wish it were that simple.
When we won our consolidated street artist lawsuit [Bery et al v City of New York; Lederman et al v City of New York 95-9089] the 2nd circuit Federal Appeals court severely criticized the Mayor’s policy as a deliberate violation of the First Amendment. Giuliani’s appointees had crafted a blatantly illegal policy of arresting artists and destroying their original art without ever bringing a single case to trial. Internal memos obtained by the plaintiffs which were written by the District Attorney’s office and the Corporation Counsel described a policy that was fully understood to be unconstitutional from the time of the first arrest. After making more than 700 false arrests of artists and then losing the case (which Giuliani unsuccessfully appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1997), we thought the Giuliani administration would bite the bullet and finally leave street artists alone.
Not ex-federal prosecutor Rudy Crueliani. Almost immediately after the court found the City’s licensing requirement for artists unconstitutional Giuliani’s 680 lawyers got to work and created an almost identical artist permit policy, which we are still litigating in Federal Court [Lederman et al v Giuliani 98 Civ. 2024 (LMM)]. The case is classic Giuliani, filled with false arrests, violations of free speech, obstruction of justice, outright lies to the judge about the most basic facts of City policy and a dogged insistence that it’s all being done in the name of public safety and quality of life. I and the other plaintiffs were no longer simply being arrested for selling art without the new permit but for creating art, demonstrating against the policy and for making anti-Giuliani speeches.
My own arrests dramatically changed after the first lawsuit. I was no longer harassed and arrested by low-level peddler squad cops enforcing vending laws. My arrests were now supervised and personally executed by NYPD captains and by the NYPD Intelligence Division. The Mayor took particular offense at the content of my paintings, which began featuring portraits of him as a Hitler-like dictator and were being carried by protesters in numerous demonstrations against a wide variety of City policies.
Recently the New York art establishment rallied to the cause of artists’ First Amendment rights, closing ranks to protect the Brooklyn Museum’s controversial art show Sensations, which featured a painting of the Madonna decorated with elephant dung. While I actively participated in the protests and was even arrested in front of the Brooklyn Museum for carrying a painting of the Mayor with feces on his forehead titled, "Giuli-Anus", this clamor for artists’ rights had a very ironic aspect for myself and the City’s street artists. It was in fact the very same art establishment which is dominated by real estate interests that had put Giuliani up to the artist arrest policy in the first place. Galleries in SoHo, a phony arts organization called the SoHo Alliance, and the City’s top museums had been demanding artist arrests for years and were thrilled with Giuliani’s willingness to sweep us all off the streets.
The new street restrictions just approved by the Mayor’s vendor panel were instigated and lobbied for by some of the same cast of eminent art world advocates. The SoHo Alliance, a landlord advocacy group masquerading as community activists which is dominated by City Council Member Katherine Freed, and the Museum of Modern Art, the Rockefeller museum which boasts the City’s top real estate investors and Giuliani contributors on its board of directors, were the key petitioners to the Street Vendor Review Panel requesting that artists be eliminated. Their petitions are on record at the Street Vendor Review Panel and can be obtained by contacting the panels legal counsel, Andrew Schwartz (212) 513-6428.
As always, we have no intention of complying with any of the Mayor’s efforts to restrict or eliminate our rights. Once the New Year is over and everyone emerges from their millennium bunkers, members of A.R.T.I.S.T. will set up as always on the exact streets that have been illegally restricted. I will be especially pleased to stand in front of the Museum of Modern Art displaying my latest portraits of the Mayor. It’s the very least I can do to show my appreciation for his New Year’s gift to me.
For background on this issue visit the A.R.T.I.S.T. website [http://www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyc.html]
Also see:
NY TIMES 6/2/98 Street Vendors Say First Amendment Rights Threatened By MIKE ALLEN; NEWSDAY 6/1/98 "More Vendors Curbed / Rudy aide: Food rules hit art, books, papers", by Dan Janison. STAFF WRITER pg A 23; Newsday 4/20/98 cover story "Under Giuliani City Has Repeatedly Stifled Dissent"; N.Y. Times 5/7/98 pg B4 "For Giuliani, A Different Big Picture"; NY TIMES 5/24/98, "Giuliani Plans to Prohibit Food Vending in Wide Area".; NY TIMES 5/31/98 "Vendors Face a New Round of Street Bans".
For more information on the Street Vendor Review Panel [SVRP] contact Deputy Mayor Rudy Washington at the Department of Business Services (212) 788-0120; SVRP Andrew Schwartz chief counsel, (212) 513-6428 Mayor Giuliani's press office 212 788-2958 fax 788-2975. Fax 406-3587 (Sunny Mindel).
Robert Lederman is an artist, a regular columnist for both the Greenwich Village Gazette [See: http://www.gvny.com/ ] and Street News, and is the author of hundreds of published essays concerning Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. His essays and letters have appeared in the NY Times, NY Post, Daily News, Newsday, Brooklyn Bridge, Park Slope Courier, The Daily Challenge, Amsterdam News, Sandbox, Penthouse, Our Town, NY Press and are available on hundreds of websites around the world. Lederman has been falsely arrested 40 times to date for his anti-Giuliani activities and has never been convicted of any of the charges. He is best known for creating hundreds of paintings of Mayor Giuliani as a Hitler like dictator.
Robert Lederman, President of A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists’ Response To Illegal State Tactics)
Email <ARTISTpres@aol.com; Ph: 718-743-3722; http://www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyc.html
Also see: http://www.levymultimedia.com/news.htm for Lederman’s essays on Malathion and the spraying of insecticides on NYC [scroll down the menu to the items highlighted in blue].
For information contact:
Robert Lederman, President of A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics), Ph: 718-743-3722
Email: ARTISTpres@aol.com
Website: http://www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyc.html