For Immediate Release (5/25/98):
by Robert Lederman, President of A.R.T.I.S.T. (718) 369-2111
provided through OPENAIR-MARKET NET
There have been a number of misconceptions concerning the Street
Vendor Review Panels' "vote" on 5/20/98 and its effect
on the City's vendors.
1. The New Restrictions Do Not Just Affect Food Vendors.
According to the N.Y.C. Vending Ordinance, First Amendment protected
artists, newspaper vendors and book vendors (all of whom are exempted
from needing a license), as well as licensed vendors, are restricted
from any street where food vendors are restricted. This means
that the sweeping new restrictions affect far more than food vendors'
business locations and the publics' right to buy a cheap hotdog.
They effectively ban the selling of fine art, books, political
materials, bibles and newspapers on the street as well.
2. No One Has Threatened Violence Except the Mayor. The casual statement by one representative of one food cart vending group that "fights" might occur when the new restrictions go into effect is being deliberately misinterpreted by Mayor Giuliani as an excuse to threaten and demonize vendors the way he has done to cab drivers. That individual's statement referred to the possibility that as the City's food vendors are forced into a smaller and smaller territory by the Street Vendor Review Panel, arguments between vendors over spots are likely. As a class of New Yorkers, vendors tend to get along fairly well in terms of sharing the public space. There was never any threat, real or implied, against the police, the Mayor or anyone else.
Mayor Giuliani was characteristically quick to seize on this innocent statement by one individual in order to set the stage for the real violence to come. That will take place when he orders the N.Y.P.D. Peddler Task Force to begin mass arrests of vendors and the confiscation of hundreds of food carts, art displays, book stands, and piles of daily newspapers being sold on city streets. The "fight" the Mayor is afraid of is the continuing struggle by A.R.T.I.S.T. to expose his police state tactics and his violations of the constitution on behalf of corporations, Business Improvement Districts and real estate interests.
The Mayor is right to anticipate that the new restrictions may radicalize the City's vendors and, as the N.Y. Times suggested on 5/24, push them into an alliance with the City's street artists. That could mean big trouble for the Mayor not only in court but on the streets. The protests A.R.T.I.S.T. has held for the past four and a half years have drawn an increasingly large police presence. Our demo on 5/15 outside the Mayor's opening at the Leica gallery involved more than 100 police officers and a riot squad, all for a peaceful protest by 20 artists. Our next scheduled protest, on 5/27 outside Cooper Union Art School where the Mayor is giving a commencement address, will likely draw a small army of police.
What extremes the Mayor will resort to if we begin mounting demonstrations
with hundreds or even thousands of vendors, can only be guessed
at, but his military style response to the recent cab demonstration
gives some indication.
3. The Panel's Vote Was Illegal. As Earl Andrews, chair of the Street Vendor Review Panel noted in the Times and elsewhere, there is good reason to believe there will be a lawsuit as a result of this staged "vote". The panel is made up of three City officials personally appointed by the Mayor from City agencies known to be anti-vendor. The only non-Giuliani appointed member was missing at both hearings. At the 1/8 hearing on proposed street restrictions the Downtown Alliance showed an absurd video purporting to document congestion which featured a homeless man dropping his pants. Commissioner Andrews later attempted to have me arrested while I was speaking in my scheduled time spot because I was questioning the validity of his panel and of the Mayor's war on vendors and street artists. During the 5/20 "vote" Commissioner Andrews had the police drag me out of the hearing when I made a point of order challenging the legality of the panel voting minus its one non-Giuliani appointed member.
There is no objective criteria for determining that a street is
congested, but even if there was, such criteria were never used
in determining this "vote". The sole criteria was that
an individual or real estate interest aligned with the Mayor wanted
a street closed. The main petitioner for closing these streets
is the Downtown Alliance. This real estate organization is made
up of landlords and businesses who are the traditional opponents
and competitors of vending. Aside from that, the Downtown Alliance
itself closes off entire streets to vehicular traffic, allowing
restaurants and other businesses to set up tables, chairs and
clothing racks in the street. "Congestion" caused by
a few vendors can hardly be compared.
4. The Business Groups Behind Restricting Streets To Vendors Are a Threat To Democracy and the Constitution
It's worth noting that in 1996 the Downtown Alliance joined with
the Fifth Avenue Association, the Madison Avenue B.I.D., the Grand
Central and Thirty Fourth Street Partnerships and the SoHo Alliance
to try to get the Federal Court to eliminate all First Amendment
protection for visual art in order to eliminate the City's street
artists. That the Downtown Alliance B.I.D. is financing and building
a police precinct in which N.Y.P.D. officers and private security
guards for the Alliance will both be headquartered is simply more
proof of the inordinate influence this organization wields with
the Mayor. Not only does this so-called Alliance not represent
New Yorkers generally, according to both City Council reports
on the B.I.D.s, its own members have little if any say in the
decision making process. They are members not by choice but by
the accident of being in the B.I.D.s territory. The extra taxes
they are assessd to finance the B.I.D. are involuntary and are
about to be increased by as much as one third to pay for the police
substation.
5. The Congestion Issue is Being Falsely Used to Target Vendors.
If congestion was something the City was really concerned about, why does it let corporate sponsors promote parades, marathons, film premieres in Central Park and hundreds of street festivals each year? The Macys Day Parade, a commercial for a single retail store, causes more congestion in one day than all the vendors in New York put together do in one year. In 1998 it almost caused the deaths of numerous people. The Times Sq. B.I.D.s' New Years Eve Celebration cost the City millions in police overtime. The City's hundreds of "street festivals", which are nothing more than a scam involving a few individuals using their influence to obtain a permit to hold a street fair and then selling the rights to thousands of vendors, causes immense congestion and inconvenience. These "fairs" celebrate their organizers political connections, nothing more.
The bottom line is that in Giuliani's New York, corporations,
Business Improvement Districts and real estate interests that
contribute money to the Mayor can exploit, congest, damage or
destroy the streets and parks of our city violating every precept
of "quality of life". Vendors, street artists, pedestrians,
cabbies, bicyclists, community gardeners, minorities and other
people the Mayor does not consider to be his constituents are
mercilessly harassed, illegally arrested, demonized, denied due
process and persecuted no matter how much they try to play by
the rules.
6. Mayor Giuliani is Breaking the Law. In 1996, after winning our court battle we believed the arrests of street artists would finally come to an end. The Federal Court declared that: "...paintings, photographs, prints and sculptures, such as those appellants seek to display and sell in public areas of the City, always communicate some idea or concept to those who view it, and as such are entitled to full First Amendment protection...the City's requirement that appellants be licensed in order to sell their artwork in public spaces constitutes an unconstitutional infringement of their First Amendment rights." Has the Mayor, who lost his appeal of that ruling before the U.S. Supreme Court, begun to respect our rights?
To use myself as an example, from 1993 until we won our case in
1996 I was arrested 8 times for selling my art and received 5
separate summonses. In the past three months alone I've been arrested
11 times while displaying or creating art (mostly portraits of
Mayor Giuliani) and received an additional 21 Criminal Court summonses.
Despite being arrested a total of 32 times for protesting or showing
art since Giuliani came into office and receiving more than 40
summonses I've never been found guilty and have only been brought
to trial on one arrest, in which I represented myself and was
acquitted.
Not only have my arrests increased in frequency but the rank of police officer ordering the arrests and the attendant threats and violence against me have steadily risen. It used to be just the cop on the beat or a Peddler Squad officer that I had to deal with. Now I'm routinely confronted by Inspectors, Captains, Lieutenants and officers from the N.Y.P.D. Intelligence Division. My group's activities are routinely photographed and videotaped by the police and I've been interrogated a number of times by N.Y.P.D. Intelligence while in custody.
Am I a terrorist or a violent criminal? My "crime" is that I persistently advocate full First Amendment freedom for all New Yorkers. In Giuliani's New York, that activity has earned me the police tag, "Chronic Offender".
This latest effort by Giuliani to violate the rights and ignore the wishes of the average New Yorker (as compared to the real estate, banking and stock market people he means when he says, "I've been talking to New Yorkers..."), has done us all a big favor. We might now have the beginning of an alliance between artists, vendors, cabbies, community gardeners and activists that could create real opposition to the developing corporate police state that Giuliani represents. Thanks to Mayor Giuliani, We The People of New York may just be waking from our long nap.
*Join the City's artists and activists to protest Mayor Giuliani's speech at Cooper Union Art and Engineering School 5/27/98 1 P.M. St. Marks Place and 3rd Ave. N.Y.C.
Contact#: Robert Lederman (718) 369-2111; E-Mail:<ARTISTpres@aol.com>.
Andrew Miltenberg attorney for the artist plaintiffs in Lederman et al v Giuliani (212) 481-4242 or (212) 223-9008. To read the 2nd circuit decision granting street artists full First Amendment protection go to <http://www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyc.html>
Mayor's Press Office 788-2958
*Also see: NY Times 3/2/98 B1 "Artists Arrested in Protest Near Museum"; Newsday 3/2/98 A7; Village Voice 2/24/98 pg 57 "Chronic Offender"; Newsday 2/26/98 A8; NY Times editorial 3/4/98; Newsday 3/16/98 pg 4. NY TIMES Metro pg 1 3/22/98 "War of the Paintbrushes"; Time Out 4/16-23/98 pg. 39 "Brush With Danger"; N.Y. Times Metro 4/18/98 "Judge Upholds Limit on Artists Selling Pictures Near Museum"; 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"; N.Y. Post Editorial 5/17/98 "The ARTIST Hustle"; NY TIMES 5/24/98, "Giuliani Plans to Prohibit Food Vending in Wide Area"; Daily News, N.Y. Post and Newsday articles same day.
--"Freedom," Giuliani argued, "is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do and how you do it." New York Newsday pg A3 4/20/98 "Taking Liberties / Courts, critics fault Rudy on free speech, public access".