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Update on
Intro # 160

by Robert Lederman
roberoberobert.lederman@worldnet.att.net
October 14, 2002

Council Member Perkins has withdrawn his name from Intro # 160. We thank him for standing up for free speech. As of 10/11/02 the NYC Council has not scheduled any hearing on Intro # 160. We are awaiting a ruling by the 2nd Circuit Federal Appeals Court in Lederman et al v Giuliani. We are also awaiting a ruling on the date for former Mayor Giuliani's deposition in the case and ten other depositions.

Here is the latest print media coverage of the Intro # 160 issue:

Christian Science Monitor from the October 11, 2002 edition

STILL FIGHTING: Robert Lederman, shown here painting outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1998, leads a coalition of art vendors protesting proposed regulations on such activity.
BEBE TO MATTHEWS/AP/FILE

Artist dispute smudges New York - again

Proposed restrictions
have outdoor art vendors
putting more passion into a
decade-old fight with City Hall.
By Stella Lee | Special to The Christian Science Monitor

NEW YORK - After an afternoon viewing Leonardo da Vinci, Monet, and Picasso, visitors to the Metropolitan Museum of Art can sort through the photos of Wangmo or the acrylics of R.O. Crouch. But the Wangmos aren't actually in the marbled-floored museum. They're outside on the concrete, not far from the hot-dog stand. At least for now.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has introduced legislation requiring Mr. Wangmo, Mr. Crouch, and others who sell art in the parks of New York to get a license, the same as the hot-dog seller. For the artists, it's as if they have just been asked to sell pretzels.

"The bottom line is that this is not an issue about the business of selling art, but a rightful defense of the First Amendment," says Robert Lederman, president of Artists' Response to Illegal State Tactics (A.R.T.I.S.T.), a coalition of art vendors protesting such changes.

Oh no, says the city: It's a question of pedestrian safety. Indeed, it's dangerous enough trying to walk down the crowded venues, let alone dodging tables full of porcelain figurines. Plus, says the city, that pigeon-filled plaza outside of the Met is public parkland where restrictions have always been in place.

"This permitting system will allow the agency to coordinate the need for pedestrian safety and access to parks with the rights of vendors to sell written matter in parks," says Chris Osgood, a spokesman for the city's Department of Parks and Recreation.

For many New Yorkers, the argument may seem like a familiar painting. Indeed, it has been hanging over New York for nearly a decade. Yet as time wears on, both the government and artists' hold to their positions only more strongly, promising to match the other side's bolder moves with greater aggression of their own.

"If this [legislation moves closer to reality], there will just be more stuff down the road that we need to defend," says Crouch.

The controversy first flared in 1993, when then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani claimed the artists were just like any other vendor. Countless pieces of artwork were confiscated and destroyed, and the police arbitrarily arrested the art sellers.

Mr. Lederman, who sells art himself - pictures of Mr. Giuliani as a Hitler-like dictator - took on the former US attorney. And he won: The Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which is just below the US Supreme Court, ruled that art vendors are equally as valid as newspaper publishers.

But their battle was far from over. In 1998, Giuliani required the artists to obtain permits. This prompted a 65-day artists' protest. And once again - this year - Lederman prevailed in court.

So, the artists were amazed, perhaps even shocked, when in August, a former publisher, Mr. Bloomberg, asked a city councilman to sponsor a new law that prohibits city artists from selling art, books, newspapers, and any other form of reading or visual material in public parks without a permit or license granted by the city. Distribution of free literature and public speeches of protest on the street or within 350 feet of any New York City park would also be illegal. Once more, the artists took to the barricades, so to speak. One day in August, 400 art vendors rallied in front of the esteemed museum. "We are protesting because it is our right. We don't need permission to speak, to work, to yell, to anything. We have the liberty to express ourselves through sculpture, pictures, photography," says Marlene Ronan, who sells miniature marble sculptures outside the Met.

The parks department contends that the opponents of the proposal have spread misleading and incorrect information. It is not trying to stifle artistic expression, the department says, but there are a growing number of art vendors - 100 in three areas of Central Park alone. It looks like some kind of bazaar, all on public land.

Thus, the department says it hopes to bring order to these heavy congregations of artistic activity. It says its aim has nothing to do with regulating the content of the artwork being sold. "New York City's parks are - and always will be - a haven for free speech," says Mr. Osgood, who says the legislation simply clarifies the city code.

The parks department has yet to establish the number of permits that would be issued and the duration of the issued permits under the new proposal.

Still, to many of the artists, the issue is a matter of survival. "If I weren't able to sell in the streets, I will have to get into construction work," says Michael Bozneak, a Polish immigrant selling handmade aluminum wire sculpture. "Construction work is very dangerous because I don't have health insurance. But selling in the streets is not dangerous, and every day I am speaking to people and improving the language."

For some, a cut in the number of art vendors would dilute the character of New York. "The type of art in display at Chelsea and SoHo galleries is different from the art sold in the streets," says Svetlana Mintcheva of the National Coalition Against Censorship. "It's important to keep both alive."

The artists add that without those figurines, photos, and acrylics being sold outside, New York will be boring. "If you take all that off the streets," says Mark Nilsen, who has been selling his work in outside venues and galleries for the past five years, "it's just not going to be as interesting anymore."

New York Sun
9/24/02 pg. 2

ARTISTS GAIN STRENGTH
IN FIGHT WITH MAYOR

"Support appears to be slipping for a mayoral proposal to rein in vendors who sell their art on the street. One councilmember who had signed on to co-sponsor the proposal, Bill Perkins of Harlem, has asked that his name be removed from the bill, which would permit the Parks Department to regulate the vendors. "I did not intend to support in any way legislation that restricts freedom of speech, and this bill has a tendency to do that," said Mr. Perkins, deputy majority leader of the council. The mayor's support of the bill means that it still has a good chance of making it into law. But Mr. Perkins move was welcomed by Robert Lederman, an artist and long-time foe of Mayor Giuliani who is leading the fight against the bill. Mr. Lederman last year won a federal suit forcing the city to stop permitting the artists. "We blackened Giuliani's eyes and now it seems that we're going to have to do the same thing with Bloomberg," Mr. Lederman said."

Mayor's Bill Is
Last Draw For Artists

By Peter Bailey STAFF WRITER
August 15, 2002

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has enraged artists and reignited what seems to be a never-ending feud between the city and street vendors.

Bloomberg has proposed legislation that would prohibit the sale of art, books, newspapers and any other form of reading material on city sidewalks without a permit or license.

"Bloomberg should be held in contempt of court," said artist Mitchell Balmuch. "How many times are they going to take us to court and lose? He and the rest of those city officials need to realize that we're not going anywhere."

Balmuch was one of more than 200 street artists and vendors gathered at Fifth Avenue and 79th Street yesterday to protest the bill they called "an attack on First Amendment rights."

Protesters feel the bill infringes upon free speech because a permit would be required to sell art, which is "the truest form of expression," many artists said.

City Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe said yesterday that the bill was proposed to serve the best interests of both pedestrians and vendors.

"New York City parks are and will always be a haven for free speech. The proposed legislation complies with the General Vendors Law, which allows our department to regulate a permitting system beneficial to the artists and pedestrians who buy their work," he said.

In 1994, the Giuliani administration enforced a permit law against street artists similar to that placed on other street vendors. Many artist were arrested and their work confiscated, but they were never ultimately barred from city sidewalks.

Leading the protest yesterday was Robert Lederman, who in some sense has become the face of the street artists' struggle. The painter's lawsuit against the city, filed in 1996, was considered a significant triumph for the more than 500 city street artists.

In 1997, the state appellate court ruled that a mandatory permit for artists to sell their work was an infringement on their First Amendment rights. Copyright (c) 2002, Newsday, Inc

NY Times 9/4/02

Commerce Rushes in
Where Art Once Ruled

By MICHAEL WILSON

They have been at war since brush first touched canvas on a busy sidewalk: The artist, narrow shoulders flaring beneath a beret, and the police officer, all brass buttons and nightstick and move-it-along-pal.

But as sidewalk artists and city officials prepare for the next fight over regulating art vendors in and around Central Park, both sides find themselves bumping against a third group: the grinning salesmen hawking similar mass-produced pictures of the Brooklyn Bridge and the World Trade Center and the financial district's bronze bull.

No one really wants these vendors around - except the people spending money.

"It's not yet Wal-Mart, but it's following that model," said Jack T. Linn, assistant commissioner of the New York City Parks and Recreation Department, as he strolled past booth after booth of photographs near the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The artists - an organized team that a year ago logged the last major legal victory in the dispute - said the city exaggerates the presence of these vendors to make its case for regulation. They argue that the sidewalks are not that crowded and that parks officials are being hypocritical.

"The Parks Department is at the absolute forefront of commercialization of the parks," said Robert Lederman, an artist and a leader of the artists' group. "They grant permits for huge activities that affect the wildlife, destroy the fields."

Until August 2001, vendors needed a permit from the Parks Department to sell on the sidewalks in and around the parks, with winners chosen by lottery every three months. (Different vending permits apply to sidewalks elsewhere in the city.)

The artists' group challenged the park permit system, first on the sidewalk, where they were arrested for illegal selling - one time, protesting artists lay in the street in front of the squad car that held Mr. Lederman - and then in court. They won last summer, when a judge ruled that the permits violated the city code. The state's highest court upheld that decision in December. But the permits had played another role: they limited the spaces to artists selling their own work. Without them, capitalism flourished - for good and bad.

"We are being killed," one artist said. "Really crucified. There is no space. There are maybe six real artists, and the rest are vendors." The artist asked not to be named for fear of retaliation - not from the vendors but from other artists who want to present a unified front to the city. "Nobody makes any money because they're all selling the same thing, for $14 in a frame. Real artists cannot compete with that."

Mitchell Balmuth, part vendor for his artist wife, Soo Balmuth, part sidewalk peacekeeper and elder, and part plaintiff in vendor litigation, used to make secret videotapes of booths selling copies of someone else's photographs, to prove the city's fallibility in granting sidewalk permits. Now he defends the vendors. "They have a First Amendment right to be here," he said, pausing to scold a newcomer to a corner of the park who had taped copies of souvenir watercolors to the park wall - a no-no. "We police ourselves," he said.

Some of the vendors who sell mass-produced pictures at multiple booths were once scraping by themselves with single tables.

George Kunze, 50, recalls fondly the days he sold his pictures in the park. "It was fun, I have to admit," he said. "With the permit system, sometimes you won, sometimes you didn't, whatever, but when you won you were the only guy on the corner. Then a judge decided to throw the whole thing out. That was the beginning of the end."

Suddenly he was just one of many photographers in front of the museum. "There was this Russian kid selling next to me. He was selling garbage, but he could sell. I was amazed he could sell as much as he did." So Mr. Kunze hired him. He recalled the young man asking, "You want me to tell them I'm the photographer, or I'm the assistant?"

Now Mr. Kunze's work can be found at three stands, while he himself can be found at home. "Let them sell. I print, I produce, they sell," he said.

The city says the sidewalks in and around the park are too crowded. Where there were between 75 and 85 permits for all of Manhattan's park artists last year, there are now more than 100 vendors around Central Park alone. Most of them set up near the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where there were fewer than 30 permits in the old system.

Mr. Linn has watched the growth from his office, bunkered in the Arsenal, just inside Central Park near 64th Street and Fifth Avenue, a sometimes difficult place to walk to without passing someone who wants to sketch your portrait.

"There are many public needs in a park," Mr. Linn said. "We serve one, and to us, it is sacred. The park is a retreat from the tumult of the city, not an extension of the commercial activity." He pointed out benches hidden behind the artists' booths in a corner of the park that are unused by anyone but the vendors.

The artists won their victories based on a 1982 provision of the city code that makes anyone selling "written materials" exempt from city permit requirements. The courts have interpreted that to include artwork. The Parks Department has proposed amending the code to allow a permit system for artists in and around the park.

The proposal is in the early stages of review. "Any permitting system we put in place would obviously have to be constitutional," said Alessandro G. Olivieri, a Parks Department lawyer.

Many of the artists say they have no interest in expanding to multiple booths. Alexander Glayzer, 33, a photographer who moved to New York from Russia four years ago, said, "I just want to sell my work. I don't want to do business. I'm happy to be alone. It makes me more free. Artists should be independent of anything. If you're doing business, you're not independent. Business stops creative work."

That idealism grows fuzzier a few booths down, where Fu Wu Zhang, 61, sells his photographs 21 blocks from where another man sells the same pictures for him. Sure, he said, he takes the same pictures of the bull and the bridges and the Statue of Liberty as everyone else, but his are better. He points out his photo of the "Imagine" mosaic tribute to John Lennon in Central Park. "Too much flower, no good," he said, pointing to a neighboring booth's picture of the memorial. "I only have one flower. Different feeling."

NY Sun August 14, 2002

Parks Commissioner Planning a
Crackdown On Venders of Artwork
They're `Out of Control, `He Says
By RACHEL DONADIO Staff Reporter of the Sun

MEETING, PROTEST
SCHEDULED FOR THIS WEEK

A clash is looming between art venders and the Parks Department over a plan to require permits for those selling their wares in the city's parks. Legislation has been introduced in the City Council to revise the city's administrative code, granting the Parks Department the authority to issue permits. Last August, a judge ruled that issuing such permits violated the city code, six years after the Giuliani administration first instated them. Although the code revision is not yet on the legislative agenda, venders are already up in arms. They are planning a demonstration today to protest the permits, which they say would violate their First Amendment rights, as they say previous court cases have proven. But Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe says he sees the permits as a quality of life issue, not a First Amendment one. "The proliferation of private commerce in a public park has gotten out of control," Mr. Benepe told the Sun. "We're getting complaints from concession- aires who say their business is dropping." Mr. Benepe said the number of art venders has doubled since the city stopped issuing permits last August. He said the Parks Department wanted to create a lottery system to regulate the number of spaces for venders, not to control the content of their works. Revising the code would still "allow full and free artistic expression" Mr. Benepe said, but would also "safeguard the right of the public to use and visit parks without having to run a gauntlet of venders." Robert Lederman, an artist who has sued the city over the permits and is organising today's protest, said he was not impressed by the permit proposal. "It's up to the same old stuff," he said of the city. "The city has lost this in six different courts already." Mr. Lederman, who is known for his paintings depicting Mayor Giuliani as Hitler, called on Mayor Bloornberg to "withdraw this needless, bill." He said he had collected 10,000 signatures against the code revision. "If there's a hearing we'll certainly be there in force," he said. "Every City Council member is getting e-mails and calls. The Parks Department wants to revise an exemption to the general vending code the City Council passed in 1982. That code says venders of "written matter" in city parks are not required to have permits like food and other venders. The new rule would revise the Parks Department [rule] to read that "nothing.. .shall be construed to deprive the commissioner of the department of parks and recreation the authority to regulate through a permitting system the time, place and manner of the vending of written matter in areas under the jurisdiction of parks and recreation as it relates to public health, safety or welfare." The text of the bill says that it was introduced by the Parks Committee "at the request of the mayor," but Mr. Benepe said the initiative came from his office. The rule change is pending in the City Council's Parks Committee. "We are in discussions with the Parks Department," said Council Member Joseph Addabbo of Queens, who chairs the committee. "Legislation has been introduced and allocated to y committee, but at this point here is no timetable to put it as item on the agenda." A meeting between Mr. Addabbo and Mr. Benepe is scheduled r this week. "I'll speak to him bout certain issues with the legislation, but at this point I have no comment," Mr. Addabbo said. In past years, the Parks Department issued 75 permits per year to art venders, compared for 600 for food concessions. Mr. Benepe said he did not know how many permits he would issue if the rule change is approved. He said art venders would be required to pay $25 a year for a permit, and the lottery would apply to both artists who sell their own works and reproductions. Some venders were concerned there wouldn't be enough permits to go .around. "Last year, we had eight permits for Battery Park and maybe 100 artists were applying for them," said Vlad Tixon, a vendor who sells his own paintings in Battery Park. "If you're lucky you get a permit, if you're not you cannot sell, your art." Venders say they already have to conform to a hefty list of regulations. Mr. Benepe said there aren't enough police to enforce all the laws on venders. "Police have much better things to do than monitor how much space a vendor is taking up," he said. The proposed rule change would apply only to venders selling art in parks.

To a Directory of Mr.Lederman's Essays

Robert Lederman is an artist, writer and activist and is also the President of the street artist advocacy group, A.R.T.I.S.T.
Click here for an archive of A.R.T.I.S.T. related news articles on the Freedom Forum website

His essays and Op-Eds have appeared in hundreds of alternative publications as well as the Daily News, Penthouse, Africa Sun Times, Street News and The Shadow.
Lederman was falsely arrested 41 times for his anti-Giuliani activities and was never convicted of any of the charges. As a result of the arrests, he's won four Federal lawsuits and overturned three laws.
He is best known for having created hundreds of paintings of Mayor Giuliani as a Hitler like dictator which were carried in demonstrations throughout the eight years of the Giuliani administration. Images of his paintings and articles about his arrests and lawsuits have appeared on all of the major television networks hundreds of times as well as frequently appearing in the NY Times, Daily News, NY Post, Newsday, Newsweek, People, The Washington Post, LA Times and NY Magazine.

Robert Lederman,
President of A.R.T.I.S.T.
(Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics)
robert.lederman@worldnet.att.net

For a detailed exposition on the West Nile issue
http://www.nospray.org/
For an article on the Manhattan Institute go to
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If you would like to help oppose the spraying,
please write to the
No Spray Coalition
PO Box 334
Peck Slip Station
NYC, NY 10272-0334
or call the No Spray hotline at (718) 670-7110.

Any funds you can send to help continue the lawsuit
and this work are greatly appreciated.

Important Note:
Mr. Lederman has explained that his articles posted here are not to be taken as official statements by the No-Spray Coalition of which he is a member or of the "No-Spray" lawsuit in which he is a plaintiff.

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