Why NYC Hates Street Artists
Freedom Fighter
by Robert Lederman
[A little background about MOMA, Rockefeller, Mike Bloomberg, the First
Precinct and street artists]
NYC officials always claim the reason they have spent so much time, money
and effort to get rid of street artists has something to do with sidewalk
congestion and public safety. From the beginning of our struggle in 1993 the
A.R.T.I.S.T. group's literature has depicted them as having a completely
different agenda.
We believe that the City's effort is focused on eliminating street artists
specifically because we have full First Amendment freedom and are not
subservient to corporate interests or the so-called official art world, a
politically-compromised arts community whose survival is based on government
and corporate welfare.
Most street artists are preoccupied with the immediate issue of their
vending spot, sales and whether the NYPD will harass them or not but there
is a lot more to this issue than those concerns. Once you understand that
you are seen as a huge threat by the people who actually run NYC: the BID's
(Business Improvement Districts), the Central Park Conservancy and David
Rockefeller, you will feel empowered to fight even harder for your rights.
Those who think the official art world supports street artists are
unfamiliar with the real history of this issue.
MOMA (The Museum of Modern Art) is one of our biggest enemies. They fully
supported City Council Member Kathryn Freed and Mayor Giuliani efforts to
get us off the streets as letters from the museum director to Freed and
their petition to Giuliani's Street Vendor Review Panel prove. Before SoHo
became well-known, Fifty-Third Street was the Mecca of NYC street art.
MOMA's fake art gift shop on 53rd Street believes they lose tens of millions
in sales to street artists each year.
Before we filed our successful appeal in 1995 in the first street artist
case [Lederman et al v City of NY/Bery et al v City of NY] I picketed MOMA
for a week straight and hand delivered a leaflet to every single employee
titled, "Why Doesn't MOMA Care about Street Artists Being Arrested?" Glen
Lowry, MOMA's director had refused to issue a simple one sentence statement
on our behalf and the NYPD routinely told me MOMA was asking them to arrest
artists. As a result of the internal controversy the leaflet generated among
the museum staff, MOMA begrudgingly joined in filing an amicus brief on our
behalf.
The Whitney Museum also refused to issue any statement on our behalf. I
distributed a similar leaflet at the 1995 Whitney Biennial after which the
Whitney also relented and joined in the amicus brief with MOMA.
The Guggenheim was also very much against street artists and refused to join
in the amicus brief. The Metropolitan Museum of Art initially agreed to sign
the amicus brief then asked that their name be removed at the last minute.
Our second lawsuit, Lederman et al v Giuliani, focused on the area in front
of the Met. SoHo's Prince Street, where the Guggenheim Museum had their
annex, was restricted to street artists in 2000 largely as a result of the
Guggenheim's years of unjustified complaints to the police about us. That
will eventually become grounds for another lawsuit.
MOMA is owned by David Rockefeller and was founded by his mother Abby
Aldrich Rockefeller. David Rockefeller's bank, JP Morgan-Chase, also
finances the Manhattan Institute, a CIA front with direct ties to racism,
eugenics and Nazi Germany from which both Giuliani and GW Bush proudly claim
to get all their ideas [see http://baltech.org/lederman/ for detailed
mainstream media evidence on this subject].
To give you an idea of how David Rockefeller manipulates things to confuse
anyone who tries to understand his position consider this. As explained
above, in 1995 Rockefeller's MOMA filed an amicus brief in support of street
artists' First Amendment rights. At the exact same time The Alliance for
Downtown NY BID, another David Rockefeller front, joined with the SoHo
Alliance and three midtown BIDs to file an amicus brief in the same lawsuit
against street artists having First Amendment rights.
One brief said visual art was not worthy of being considered expression, the
other defended it as the height of expression. The idea is to support
opposite sides against the middle so as to keep one's true position unknown
and to be able to claim you took whatever position the person you are
speaking to wants to hear.
Here's an excerpt from the 30 page brief signed in 1995 by The Alliance For
Downtown NY, The Fifth Avenue Association, The Madison Ave. BID, The Grand
Central Partnership and The SoHo Alliance: "The sale of artwork does not
involve communication of thoughts or ideas....the dangers of allowing visual
art full First Amendment protection...An artists' freedom of expression is
not compromised by regulating his ability to merchandise his artwork...the
sale of paintings and other artwork does not reach this high level of
expression (guaranteeing First Amendment protection)..." Note that the area
of NYC which these groups control is home to 95% of the City's art galleries
and art museums.
The Alliance for Downtown NY was founded by so-called art patron David
Rockefeller to enhance his Chase Bank building and was the City's first BID.
It dominates the NYPD's First Precinct and the first City Council district
which includes SoHo, as documented by years of articles in the NY Times and
elsewhere. The reason the First Precinct is always far more preoccupied with
harassing legal street artists than the areas' hundreds of illegal
unlicensed vendors is this hidden connection between the local police, David
Rockefeller and SoHo's City Council representative.
Complaints from the SoHo Alliance are a cover story to obscure the real
source of the complaints against street artists. The First Precinct admits
they know most of those SoHo Alliance complaints are false and are called in
by the same handful of people. Then why would they spend so much time and so
many resources responding to phony complaints? The SoHo Alliance is what is
called a useful idiot.
David Rockefeller wants us all off the street and SoHo's new City Council
representative Alan Gerson cannot do much to help us even if he wanted to.
Gerson's district includes the entire area controlled by Rockefeller's
Alliance for Downtown NY BID including Wall Street, the WTC area, City Hall
and Battery Park. That BID has more power and money that most countries let
alone most U.S. cities or States.
What Alan Gerson will most likely come to us with as his "plan to help
street artists" will be a recycled idea from the previous Council Member to
make us submit to a certification committee. Then we will be under the same
selective screening process as in galleries and museums - exactly the
opposite of what we have now under the full protection of the First
Amendment as applied to a public forum.
All of this will be presented as "advancing culture, protecting the arts and
preserving the unique nature of SoHo". Artists will be told they will no
longer have so much competition for space from vendors or so much police
harassment. Street artists who have a minimal understanding of the
background to this struggle will think someone is doing them a favor instead
of trying to eliminate us all. Eventually if allowed to proceed, the whole
plan will be very clear but then it will be too late.
Like MOMA's "help" City Council Member for SoHo Alan Gerson's "help" will
always be part of a plan to take away our rights, even if he personally
likes street artists and believes in our having First Amendment protection.
Gerson may seem like a decent guy but he cannot oppose these people and have
a political future. His involvement in planning the unprecedented attack on
street artists in SoHo on 4/5/2002 involving the use of garbage trucks
signaled what is to come.
Actually, we already have the fullest protection possible under U.S. law,
the First Amendment. No City Council Member, Mayor or other elected official
could possibly give you better protection than that. Just remember what
those on the right often use as their motto, the price of freedom is eternal
vigilance. It's true for us all.
If you think the police harass artists now, be assured they have worse
things in mind. Privatizing the NYPD is one of David Rockefeller's hopes for
the future. The Alliance for Downtown NY paid millions of dollars to have
their private BID police work out of the same facility as many First
Precinct cops.
No wonder BID police, who are nothing more than minimum wage unarmed
security guards, act like they are the real police. Most BID security in NYC
is run by high-ranking former NYPD officials, many of who were formerly
members of the NYPD Peddler Task Force, created in the 1980's to go after
street artists in the Fifth Avenue Association's midtown BID. See: "Wall St.
Plans to Pay for a New Police Substation There" N.Y. Times 2/16/98 and
"Precinct to House Private, City Cops" Daily News 2/16/98
Here's an excerpt from a Giuliani press release on this:
Archives of the Mayor's Press Office FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Date: Tuesday,
March 16, 1999
Release #094-99 Contact: Colleen Roche/Curt Ritter (212) 788-2958
MAYOR GIULIANI AND POLICE COMMISSIONER SAFIR PRESIDE OVER CEREMONY FOR NYPD
DOWNTOWN CENTER
"New Downtown Manhattan Police Facility Will House Officers From Three
Separate NYPD Units.
Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and New York City Police Commissioner Howard Safir
today joined Alliance for Downtown New York Chairman Robert Douglas in
announcing the opening of the new police facility in Lower Manhattan. The
new site, known as The NYPD Downtown Center, will house officers from the
Scooter Task force, the Citywide Homeless Outreach Unit and the Movie and
T.V. Unit...The new facility will provide much needed space for a police
force that has expanded by 45.5% since 1998. In addition to the officers
from the three NYPD units, the site will also be the new headquarters for
the Downtown Alliance security force...Police Commissioner Safir said, "The
NYPD is proud to have played a part in restoring New York City by achieving
historic low levels of crime. It's important that the police and the private
sector work together for the betterment of all concerned, and today's grand
opening is a fine example of how effective these partnerships can be."...The
Alliance for Downtown New York, Inc. manages the Downtown Lower Manhattan
Business Improvement District."
A lot of street artists imagined we'd get better treatment from the new
Mayor, Mike Bloomberg. Unfortunately Mike Bloomberg's "independence" is as
much of a media-created fantasy as Giuliani's was. He's just another
Rockefeller stooge. His Bloomberg News managed to avoid covering eight years
of news on our lawsuits and demonstrations which were covered in detail by
every other NYC media outlet.
Jokes sometimes reveal more than any serious comment. Bloomberg recently
gave the world a hint of who he works for:
Daily News 4/11/2002 Mayor Says Bloom Is on 1st 100 Days
"As the mayor addressed the New York City Partnership, a group of business
leaders to which his company, Bloomberg L.P., belongs, he seemed relaxed. At
one point, he joked with audience member David Rockefeller that "everybody
in this room is expecting you and I to balance the budget together."
The reason Giuliani had me arrested so many times was that for eight years I
was exposing the Giuliani-David Rockefeller-CIA-Nazi connection. That's what
all those Giuliani-as-Hitler paintings and signs were about and exactly why
he took them so seriously, although he frequently pretended they were about
the NYPD instead of about him. That's why he's in Federal court fighting a
subpeona my lawyers recently served on him to appear for depositions about
having me falsely arrested.
At the same time Giuliani was cutting funding to schools, cultural programs
and the arts he was giving his mega-billionaire boss David Rockefeller
hundreds of millions in tax dollars so MOMA could make a temporary move to
Queens while renovating their 53rd Street location.
See: Newsday 4/22/2002 Museum on the Move 4/22/2002
NY TIMES 4/24/98 MOMA to Get $65 Million for Expansion
"Mayor Rudolph W. Guiliani pledged Thursday that the city would contribute
$65 million over the next three years to help pay for a major expansion
project at the Museum of Modern Art...Facing its huge price tag, trustees
from the museum's expansion committee, including David Rockefeller, the real
estate developer Jerry Speyer and Donald Marron, the chairman of PaineWebber
Inc., approached City Hall. Mr. Rockefeller, whose mother, Abby Aldrich
Rockefeller, was a founder of the Modern, said the city money was "the
financial cornerstone" of the expansion. Of the remaining $585 million the
museum must raise, he said that about $200 million had been pledged by "the
family and trustees." Then he quickly added a qualifier: "When I say family,
I mean the museum family, not my family."
Rockefeller's Chase Bank was intimately tied to the Nazis before and
throughout WWII as you can see by the evidence on my website. Rockefeller
was 1/2 owner of IG Farben, the Nazi company that built Auschwitz and forty
other Nazi slave labor death camps.
President Roosevelt intended to try Nelson Rockefeller as a war criminal
after WWII, but he died in office. President Truman held congressional
investigations of Rockefeller when Truman was a Senator and considered him a
traitor. When Giuliani sprayed pesticide nerve gas on NYC from 1999-2001 -
supposedly to fight West Nile Virus - he used chemicals that were developed
at IG Farben. West Nile Virus was "discovered" by Rockefeller University
scientists in Uganda in 1937. Rockefeller labs in NYC were experimenting
with West Nile Virus for decades before the alleged 1999 "epidemic".
Extensive evidence for everything claimed here is on my website. This Nazi
influence is everywhere around us today.
"During the war, Rockefeller foreshadowed the anticommunist policies of the
Cold War by cozying up to dictatorial regimes in Latin America. Niccolà
Tucci, head of the State Department's Bureau of Latin American Research,
resigned and asked Secretary of State Cordell Hull to abolish his bureau.
"My bureau was supposed to undo the Nazi and fascist propaganda in South
America and Rockefeller was inviting the worst fascists and Nazis to
Washington." (Peter Collier and David Horowitz, The Rockefellers: An
American Dynasty. Holt, Rine-hart & Winston, 1976, p. 236).
There is a lot of published material in books and on the internet about
MOMAs CIA roots. Most of it's early directors were CIA personnel and many
early CIA officials were themselves former Nazis brought to the US after the
war. For decades MOMA has fought in Federal court to keep art stolen from
murdered Jews by the Nazis.
For a full history on MOMA's CIA connection see: THE CULTURAL COLD WAR: The
CIA and the World of Arts and Letters, By Frances Stonor Saunders. For a
very detailed history of the Rockefeller-CIA Nazi connection see The Secret
War Against the Jews by former U.S. Dept. of Justice Nazi War Crimes
investigator, John Loftus.
I know this may seem bizarre to my fellow artists who are unfamiliar with
this history but MOMA and the early SoHo art dealers tied to MOMA had an
agenda behind promoting abstract expressionism which had nothing to do with
art. The reason for making abstract expressionism the "new" American art
form was to sideline and eclipse the millions of artists who were using
figurative painting to do political art which attacked powerful
corporations, corrupt politicians and social injustice. Figurative art was
often used to motivate people to join unions, hold protests and otherwise
resist the growing police state.
The World Bank, IMF and related protests are about this exact same issue of
corporate domination. The puppets and art you see in them are the kind of
figurative art Rockefeller wanted to make unpopular and outdated. I like
abstract art as much as the next artist but you can't rally people to a
protest or inform them about government evils with a Jackson Pollack
painting...and that's exactly why that kind of art was so aggressively
promoted in schools and in the media by the CIA, MOMA and the early SoHo art
dealers.
This effort to sanitize and de-politicize art began when David Rockefeller's
brother, Nelson Rockefeller, destroyed Diego Rivera's famous mural in
Rockefeller Center. The Rockefellers, like the Bushes, were avid supporters
of Hitler. In Nazi Germany, Hitler was targeting artists who exposed the
evils of the Nazi regime and of German society at the same time Rockefeller
was destroying Rivera's mural.
My website is filled with verifiable documentation proving what these
enemies of freedom have been up to for the past seventy years. The Bush
families extensive Nazi connection is finally breaking into the mainstream
media. Just last week both the NY Post and MSNBC had stories on it, which
are included on my website http://baltech.org/lederman/
Bloomberg was hand-picked by David Rockefeller to become mayor and has
decades of close ties to him, so don't expect any better treatment from the
new Mayor than we got from Giuliani. Crushing art in a garbage truck, their
newest policy, gives a good idea of what they have in mind for street
artists in 2002.
When you use your art to defend free speech you are illustrating the real
essence of this issue. Even a little cardboard sign on your display, "Stop
Harassing Artists" is a big threat to them and is conversely a very big
means of defense for you. Don't be fooled by those who advise you not to
show those signs. Those signs do more to stop the police from harassing you
than any court ruling.
The mainstream "arts community" pretends that they care about free speech,
but look closer. Virtually every instance in which they become involved in
defending free speech is really about protecting government funding for art,
not about artists' free speech. These art institutions get their money from
our corrupt government and from the same exact corporations like Chase Bank,
Exxon, Phillip Morris, Ford, Enron etc. which own our government and use art
and culture as a cover for their massive crimes.
Any art they support usually is part of the government's
Rockefeller-controlled agenda of destroying the family, religion and other
institutions. The reason many Americans don't support free speech or art
nowadays is exactly because of the kinds of art that these government
programs funded.
Using the same Madison Avenue mind-control techniques used to sell us
defective cars, illiterate Presidential candidates and toxic cigarettes they
created a link in the public mind between free speech and depravity of every
imaginable kind. I believe that was the plan all along, to support taxpayer
funding for the most distasteful art imaginable as a means of getting a
justifiably angered public to stop supporting free speech. I'm not
suggesting that the artists who get this funding are a conscious part of the
plan. They want the money, and no questions are asked or they don't get any.
It's a classic deal with the devil.
No one was trying to stop these same artists from showing their work in a
private gallery. It was always the public funding that sparked the
controversy. These same "free speech" advocates never supported the rights
of street artists and in many instances have been among our severest
critics.
Independent street artists who use the public forum rather than tax dollars
to communicate with the public are the real frontline in the war for free
speech. Most street artists still have no idea of how important they are in
this struggle. Getting rid of unlicensed vendors, which many street artists
are now being encouraged to clamor for, will not help us one bit. We are and
will remain the real target.
The key to fighting successfully against such powerful people is to EXPOSE
them everyday in everyway and to never be co-opted by them. They hate to be
exposed that's why you will almost never see David Rockefeller mentioned in
the newspaper despite him being by far the most powerful person in the U.S.
Make your work as political as possible. Feature these enemies of free
expression in it. Set up your display where it will cause the most
controversy, not just where you will make the most sales.
Quietly working with our opponents to get a few crumbs of benefit is exactly
what they hope we will do. The latest effort to scare street artists off the
streets - crushing our displays in a garbage truck - was no accident or
misunderstanding by the First Precinct and the City Council Member. It's
perfectly consistent with everything they have done in our regard for the
past eight years. If anything, it may have been done to soften us up so that
we will be more willing to agree to their new "plan". Expecting them to help
us with this problem is like expecting the fox to protect the hen house.
In our current lawsuit, Lederman et al v Giuliani the Central Park
Conservancy (CPC) is a named defendant. In a deposition given in 1998 the
Parks Department legal counsel, Thomas Rozinski, admitted that the CPC had
undisclosed representatives in meeting between Parks Department officials
and me as early as 1995. When I and other artists were illegally arrested at
the 65 day long 1998 Met Museum demo we were often put into NYPD vans with
the CPC logo on them.
CPC is now headed by Rudy Giuliani's first wife and cousin, Regina Peruggi.
I believe we should include Mike Bloomberg, David Rockefeller, the Downtown
Alliance, the SoHo Alliance and the City Council member for SoHo as named
defendants in our next lawsuit.
Don't let our enemies depict street artists as "art hawkers" "art hustlers"
or any of the other derogatory terms they use in their attacks. Be even more
resistant to them trying to include you in the "arts community". You are a
street artist. You are not a welcome part of that community and are in fact
anathema to it. By selling your own art you make art dealers, critics,
curators and the like appear to be what they are: useless obstacles who keep
the public and artists separate from each other.
When they talk about how your little art display set up for a few hours a
week "congests" sidewalks, point to the thousands of concrete planters the
BIDs installed all over NYC streets which seriously congest sidewalks 24
hours a day, seven days a week and which are a genuine safety issue. All
over SoHo the same SoHo Alliance fools and art dealers who call the police
all day claiming we obstructed their sidewalk are installing huge illegal
planters in the same spots where they don't want street artists.
I noticed that the Grand Central BID recently attached sharp metal spikes to
their planters to keep people from sitting on them. One such spiked concrete
planter presents more danger to the public than all the sidewalk art
displays in NYC combined.
It seems clear that no matter how many lawsuits we win the City will never
stop harassing us. In a way that's a tribute to how important they think we
are. Our independent political activism and your part in it remains
essential in the struggle to protect street artists' First Amendment rights.
More than ever I can say I'm proud to be a NYC street artist. I hope that
you are too.
-----------------------------------------
From Encyclopedia Britannica .com "During the height of the Cold War, the
Central Intelligence Agency did a remarkable thing: It bankrolled the
American avant-garde...The championing of American abstract expressionism
represented one of the most dramatic campaigns, exemplified in the paintings
of Jackson Pollock."
"Moma has even been outed as a front for the CIA in the 50s, when its
international touring shows of American art were supposedly little more than
Cold War propaganda exercises."
UK Guardianunlimited 8/29/2000
also see:
http://past.thenation.com/cgibin/framizer.cgi?url=http://past.thenation.com/
issue/000612/0612rogin.shtml
When the CIA Was the NEA
From The Cultural Cold War by Frances Stonor Saunders, New Press [pg 132]
"The fund raising arm of the Free Europe Committee [a CIA front] was The
Crusade for Freedom for which a young actor named Ronald Reagan was a
leading spokeman and publicist. The Crusade for Freedom was used to launder
money to support a programme run by Bill Casey, the future CIA director [and
founder of The Manhattan Institute], called the International Refugee
Committee in New York [aka International Rescue Committee], which allegedly
coordinated the exfiltration of Nazis from Germany to the United States
where they were expected to assist the government in fighting
Communism...[pg 142]...The Ford Foundation gave $500,000 to Bill Casey's
International Rescue Committee and substantial grants to another CIA front,
the World Assembly of Youth...the convergence between the Rockefeller
billions and the U.S. government exceeded even that of the Ford Foundation
."
NY Post 4/16/2002
PAGE SIX
By RICHARD JOHNSON with PAULA FROELICH and CHRIS Bush granddad's Nazi 'link'
"...Dubya's granddad, Prescott Bush, managed the Union Banking Corp., whose
portfolio included the Silesian American Corp. The article cites a 1942
newspaper story linking Bush to Nazi-funding German industrialist Fritz
Thyssen. In 1943, Bush resigned from the bank and later chaired the National
War Fund. Clamor claims that in 1951, Bush used the $1.5 million he made
from UBC stock to set up his son, former President George Bush, in business.
The next year, Prescott Bush won election as U.S. senator from Connecticut.
He died of cancer in 1972. Best-selling author Kitty Kelley - who has done
stinging bios on Frank Sinatra and Elizabeth Taylor - is said to be
rehashing the charges in her upcoming tome about the Bush dynasty."
http://www.msnbc.com/news/740127.asp?pne=msntv
MSNBC and SLATE 4/17/2002 The Bush Family and the Jews
"The charges against Sen. Prescott Bush, the grandfather of the current
president, went beyond the disdain for Jews and discriminatory practices
that were characteristic of New England WASP culture in his day. Prescott
Bush was a director of a New York bank where rich Germans who supported the
Nazis stashed millions in personal wealth. He was still a director at the
bank, Union Banking Corp., when its assets were frozen under the Trading
With the Enemy Act in 1941 - a fact that has provided endless fodder for
leftists and conspiracy theorists since it came to light in the 1990s."
Robert Lederman, President of A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists' Response To Illegal
State Tactics)
robert....@worldnet.att.net
http://baltech.org/lederman/ http://www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyc.html