Giuliani's New Year's Gift To Street Artists
CB
You call your self a street artist. What the hell is that? a dung throwing
dingle berry with a squeegee?
Anyone who juggles a squeegee can be called an street artist and hustle
tourists and locals for a buck.
I'm sure many of your street artists are talented people that under license
can and do earn a living. But if common since (not stereo typing or bigotry)
dictates abusers of the system will skirt that fine line between graffiti
and vandalism and cause trouble for the legitimate artists. That is where
the mayor comes in.
Unlicensed vendors cannot be readily supervised and tax revenue goes
uncollected. Your suit is just another example of what the mayor is trying
to clean up, making legit what is now amuck.
CB
ARTISTpres <artis...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:19991230171927...@ng-fb1.aol.com...
> New Street Restrictions:
> Giuliani's New Year's Gift To Street Artists
>
> The most notable trait of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani is
> consistency. If you make it on to his enemies list you are there
> forever. 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's 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
> Grenwich 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)
> ARTIS...@aol.com (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].
>
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> --------------------------------------------------------
> The following note is forwarded from har...@citystreets.org
> Impeach Giuliani.org
> << Subj: feeling sticky
> Date: 12/15/1999 7:50:36 PM Pacific Standard Time
> Impeach Giuliani.org
>
> We have printed up stickers with a picture of Rudy in a red
> circle with a line going through it and the words impeach
> Giuliani.org. at the bottom of the sticker. If anyone would like to
> stick some up in their neighborhood, in front of their door. On
> the window to their store, the bathroom of their favorite
> restaurant... just send a stamped self addressed envelope to :
> Impeach Giuliani
> PO BOX 30281
> New York, NY 10011
> And we will fill the envelope up with stickers and send it back
> to you. There's no charge for the stickers. But donations for
> future printings will be gladly accepted.
> Please pass this along to anyone you think might be interested.
>
>