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Alan Gerson
and the Future of Selling Art
by Street Artists

by Robert Lederman
robert.lederman@worldnet.att.net
July 19, 2002

Alan Gerson is the City Council Member for SoHo and for much of Lower Manhattan, including the area controlled by the Alliance for Downtown NY BID. People within his staff are making a very concerted effort to depict Mr. Gerson to both street artists and to the local media as being pro-street artist and pro-First Amendment rights.

Unfortunately for this public relations effort, Mr. Gerson has for many years been very closely aligned with and dependant for political support on the most determined enemies of street artists, including former City Council person Kathryn Freed, SoHo Alliance Director, Sean Sweeney and the Downtown Alliance BID.

This is not a matter of guilt by association. It was Alan Gerson, Sean Sweeney and the First Precinct police who recently cooked up the idea in Alan Gerson's office to seize SoHo street artist displays and crush them in a garbage truck as "abandoned property". Alan Gerson told me by phone a few days after this incident that it happened because Sean Sweeney was angry he wasn't doing enough to target vendors. Various articles in the Villager and the Daily News confirmed this. The First Precinct are virtually employees of the Downtown Alliance BID as numerous articles in the NY Times and other papers have documented.

I brought Alan Gerson information on the street artist arrests throughout the period 1994-1997. He never made the slightest effort to address the issue despite being in daily contact with Council Member Freed.

Before being elected to the City Council, Mr. Gerson spent years trying to create a Community Court for lower Manhattan which would focus in large part on vending. Possibly no area has more vending complaints. The court he tried to set up was to be modeled directly on the 54th Street Community Court built and funded by the Fifth Avenue Association BID and Times Square BID. Unlike a real court, defendants don't even get a real lawyer but are represented by someone who also works directly for the court.

Defendants who face vending charges in that court are usually coerced into pleading guilty and then sentenced to do community service for the same local residents, storeowners and BIDs who called the police on them in the first place. Those found guilty repeatedly - repeat offenders- can be banned from entering the community. I've been a defendant in that court three times.

Gerson went so far as to propose that local residents should use the court to swear out citizen complaints against particular vendors who they had a problem with. If you've ever been to the monthly police-community meetings in SoHo you will understand that residents would be lining up to swear out complaints against whichever artists were set up near their buildings.

Following my comments is an article written in 1996 on Mr. Gerson's efforts. That is followed by material downloaded directly from his 2001 Alan Gerson for City Council website, confirming that a Community Court is a top priority for Mr. Gerson.

A.R.T.I.S.T. has won every lawsuit we brought about street artists rights and created the conditions under which anyone can now sell art legally without a permit or license virtually anywhere in NYC. This right is based solely on First Amendment freedom rather than on a favor from or arrangement with some elected official, which can be taken away at their whim. Nevertheless, harassment of street artists still continues because those calling for it, such as the BIDs, basically run the NYPD and have inordinate influence with the Mayor's office. We may sue the BIDs in our next lawsuit. They filed amices briefs against us in the first street artist lawsuit.

I understand that the City's constantly harassed street artists are hoping for someone to magically end all police actions against them but real help in that regard is never going to come from Alan Gerson or anyone working for him. These are enemies pretending to be friends in order to set artists up for a new system of much reduced freedom on the streets.

The people behind Gerson's long-term agenda hope to create a system where only a small number of approved artists will be able to show their art. This system is designed to appeal directly to the desires of street artists who want a reserved spot and less competition from other vendors even if it means sacrificing their First Amendment rights to get it.

Under such a system artists will have to meet certain criteria, get a permit of some kind and competitively bid for one of a small number of reserved spots on the public street, as the Parks Department now does for food vendors. The idea to apply this system to all vendors including artists has repeatedly been proposed by City Council Members and the BIDs during the past few years - including by Mr. Gerson's political patron Kathryn Freed and by CB2. The City instituted a version of this system in Parks in 1998 as a test run for making it a City-wide policy.

You can find their vending proposals on the City Council website. Some of those Parks spots bid out at almost one million dollars a year. Art selling spots in SoHo would also be very competitively bid for under such a system. Most likely, some large art dealing company would buy up all the spots the way one hotdog company owns all the Parks spots.

Our lawsuit, Lederman et al v Giuliani struck down the Parks artist permit system in 2001 after our previous lawsuits, Lederman et al v City of NY/Bery et al v City of NY had struck down the vending license requirement for artists on streets in 1996. Now the BIDs, the SoHo Alliance and the elected officials in their pocket are desperately hoping to find a few street artists to work with them on taking away our freedom since they keep failing to do it in Federal Court.

The BIDs previously tried this same infiltration technque in dealing with Veteran vendors in Midtown, black vendors on 125th Street in Harlem and Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn and with food vendors throughout the City.

To soften vendors up to agree to work with the BIDs they use the tried and true, good cop, bad cop technique.

First they increase police pressure on a group of vendors and threaten new even more restrictive regulations targeting them. Then they promise the same vendors they were targeting protection from the harassment in return for being able to publicly claim they have vendors working with them who are ready to agree to a new system of vending.

In past years Mayor Giuliani, Deputy Mayor Rudy Washington and other high-level City officials were directly involved in these efforts to subvert vending advocacy groups. They even tried to subvert the huge vendor and street artist demo in 1999 that eventually forced Giuliani to back off on restricting 400 new streets.

The food vendor groups who organized that protest along with A.R.T.I.S.T. were promised permit concessions from the City if they could guarantee there would be no anti-Giuliani speeches or signs in the protest. Unfortunately for the Mayor, A.R.T.I.S.T. made no such agreement and the demo made the from page of every newspaper featuring an anti-Giuliani message.

I'm not suggesting that it's wrong to meet, listen to or deal with City officials or the heads of BIDs but it has to be done in the context of the struggle for full First Amendment rights for all street artists. I have nothing personal against Alan Gerson or anyone working with him but I'm not going to participate in the charade of pretending that they are friends of this movement. Falsely claiming that those working directly against us are working for us does nothing but obscure the real issues and sets us up to lose everything we have gained.

Artists, don't give up the real rights and freedom we have won in eight years of struggle for an imaginary helping hand from those directly working for and aligned with our enemies. No elected official can give you even the tiniest fraction of the legal protection we now have based on our lawsuits and on the First Amendment.

"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banners openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their garments, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared" -- Marcus Tullius Cicero 42 BC

"He would give up liberty in the pursuit of safety, deserves neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin

FROM: http://home.earthlink.net/~ynot/commct.html

NEW FORM OF OPPRESSION--THE COMMUNITY COURT by Robert Lederman

The Setting On Tuesday night (9/17/96) I attended a meeting of Community Board #2's Community Court Task Force. As the president of A.R.T.I.S.T., an advocacy group for N.Y.C. street artists, my concern is that CB#2 and City Council Member Kathryn Freed will use the proposed Community Court to further harass and persecute street artists in SoHo and the West Village. Having been an artist-defendant a number of times in the 54th Street Community Court, which CB#2 acknowledges as their role model, I wanted to find out just what CB#2 had in mind.

The 54th Street Community Court specializes in targeting minorities, the poor, the homeless, disabled veteran vendors and street artists accused of "violating" the community. These "violations" usually involve nothing more than being in the area. It is neither a court of equal justice nor of constitutional law. This "court" functions as a mechanism for business interests and local community "activists" to harass and eliminate so-called "undesirables" whom the police are unable to focus attention on while dealing with legitimate issues of public safety and crime.

Alan Gerson is the chair of the CB#2 Community Court Task Force. He took issue with a letter I had written to a local newspaper criticizing the proposed Court as a vehicle for Council Member Freed's particular brand of vigilantism and assured me I'd "...gotten it all wrong". At first, Gerson vigorously denied that Council Member Freed had anything to do with the proposed Community Court. Later he admitted that he was appointed to CB#2 and to the chair of the Committee by Council Member Freed and that numerous other board members were also appointed by Freed. Ms. Freed has built a career on "quality of life" issues and is working with the Fifth Avenue Association BID, the SoHo Alliance and other real estate interests to eliminate First Amendment protection for visual art as a means of eliminating artists from New York City's streets.

Like the 54th Street Court on which it is modeled the goal of CB#2's Court is to address so-called "quality of life" violations rather than robberies, rapes or serious criminal offenses. According to Gerson's outline, "Late night hours would be utilized by the police to bring individuals they find engaged in illicit activity to the court for immediate intake." The "illicit activities" would presumably include displaying art, playing a radio, loitering, panhandling, sleeping on the street, distributing handbills, vending or holding an open beer.

CB#2's proposed court would not just be a vehicle for police activity. Local residents would be encouraged to identify quality of life violators and bring them before the court. "Community residents...must have standing to initiate 'citizen suits' alleging the violation of the administrative code...[by] signing a petition or [by] the endorsement of the community board." While the initial target of this neighborhood "cleanup" will be "outsiders", the outline acknowledges that, "...most such alleged violations involve accusations among neighbors, including neighboring residents and businesses". In other words, anyone with a petty grudge against his or her neighbor will now have a means of dragging them into court on the pretext of having violated their "life quality".

New proposals even more frightening While expressing deep admiration for the 54th Street Court, CB#2 wants to go even further in their practice of "justice" than its role model does. "In criminal violations, the court must be authorized to conduct trials. In that way our court would differ from the Midtown Court which only deals with defendants who plead guilty, and refers other defendants to the regular courts. The CB#2 Court could therefore conduct any necessary trials." In the midtown court defendants who are not successfully coerced into pleading guilty and doing community service are immediately rescheduled for arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court at 100 Centre Street.

Punishment swift and certain for "using our streets" Justice will be swift and certain in CB#2's court. "The Court must be set up to conduct intake for persons accused of criminal violations...and would therefore need to include a holding area supervised by Court Officers. The immediacy of intake would send a positive message to defendants and potential defendants using our streets...".

Nevertheless, CB#2 does not intend to sentence defendants to actual jail time. "Our Community Court would never impose jail sentences. In addition to imposing fines, the Court would utilize alternative sentencing for persons who plead guilty or are found guilty of criminal violations. The court would retain jurisdiction over the sentenced defendant until he or she completes their sentence. Persons who refuse to complete their sentence, and repeat offenders, would be referred to the regular criminal court system, where jail time remains an option." Alternative sentencing includes cleaning and sweeping CB#2's streets, painting buildings and doing landscaping and maintenance for the "community".

Barbara Feldt, a community activist from the 54th Street Court was a guest speaker at the meeting and gave us some idea of just how this "alternative sentencing" works. "My personal interest is in maintaining trees", she explained. "So I call up the 54th Street Court Supervisor and have them send over defendants, who I supervise in maintaining the trees in my neighborhood". When I commented that this sounded a bit like legalized slavery, she became offended and assured me that she had never profited in a personal way from any of the crews assigned to work under her direction.

Taxpayers will pay the bill Unlike the 54th Street court, which was built and continues to be financed by the Fifth Avenue and Times Sq. Business Improvement Districts, C.B. #2 believes their court, "...deserves full public financing from the City and State", and proposes, "...an aggressive campaign for grants from the federal government and from foundations...". The grants from foundations would include money from N.Y.U. which could use the court as a, "...wonderful opportunity for collaboration between the criminal justice system and higher education".

The trend of developing Community Courts goes hand in hand with the spread of B.I.D.s (Business Improvement Districts). Business and community "leaders" are dissatisfied with the delays caused by bothersome constitutional protections such as the First Amendment, due process and civil rights, and the fact that many judges dismiss quality of life cases because they know the defendants were arrested due to their race or social status.

B.I.D.'s and community courts transfer the authority of duly elected government officials and judges to local business leaders who make no pretext of understanding or caring about civil liberties. B.I.D.s and Community Courts are simply advocates for property owners and real estate interests. Protecting the real or imaginary "rights" of property owners is their sole mission.

Unlike Manhattan Criminal court, where only 80- 90% of the defendants are minorities, at the 54th Street Community Court virtually 100% of the defendants are African-American or Latino. Most know nothing of their legal rights. Almost all accept a guilty plea and do community service after being coerced into doing so by their court appointed lawyer, a judge answerable to and appointed by the local community and helpful "intake personnel". They are then used by the same "community activists" who had them arrested and by the B.I.D.s as a source of unpaid labor within the community. The more arrests that are made the greater the supply of free labor.

Admittedly, this is an ingenious return to the plantation system which helped build this nation in the 17th and 18th centuries. Community Court convict-defendants usually wear orange or other easily identifiable coveralls emblazoned with the courts' logo while working out their sentences in the community. Ms. Feldt calls this forced labor, "...giving something back to the community".

Rather than creating jobs or addressing social inequality, this system puts poor people to work as a punishment for being visible in an otherwise middle- class or wealthy community. Community Courts are similar to the vigilante justice practiced by groups like the Klu Klux Klan and can ultimately lead to the kind of police state that existed in Nazi Germany and in the Soviet Union. There, every citizen acted as a police informer reporting the real or imaginary transgressions of foreigners, peddlers, outsiders and eventually, their own neighbors. The motivation is blatantly racist and classist. In the Manhattan D.A.'s words it is, "A bad idea whose time has come".

For more information on A.R.T.I.S.T. contact: Robert Lederman, president of A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics) 201 896-1686

From: Alan Gerson for City Council website http://www.voteforalan.com/position.cgi VALUES AND PRINCIPLES

ALAN JAY GERSON Candidate for City Council - District 1 Statement of Values and Principles

5. We should create community by honoring and respecting individuals, and by fostering mutual support networks. Social services should be delivered through a network of "settlement houses" - public facilities on the community level - to ensure that no one falls through the cracks. Minor violations should be dealt with in community courts, which can utilize creative problem-solving techniques and community service instead of only imposing punishments of incarceration or fines. We should take advantage of our diversity to provide cross-cultural programming on the community level, so people can learn and enjoy each other's languages and cultural traditions. [For more information on these and other related issues, please see my position paper on Quality of Life.]

[On his campaign website a Community Court is Alan Gerson's #1 recommendation for improving Quality of Life.-RL]

From: Alan Gerson website position papers QUALITY OF LIFE IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF LIFE DOWNTOWN

Alan Gerson has dedicated his career to improving the quality of life in our neighborhoods. As chair of Community Board #2, Alan worked on improving community policing efforts, breaking a stalemate between community factions to help make the Hudson River Waterfront park happen, and various measures to decrease noise in the area. Alans innovative proposals on Quality of Life issues reflect his belief in New York City's important historic tradition of innovative problem solving government activism. Alan believes that such activism must be responsible and fiscally sound while being creative and compassionate. While in a sense, every issue in Alans campaign for City Council involves improving the quality of all of our lives in some way, the issues that are specific to improving the quality of life include: 1. Making Downtown Safer and Quieter through the establishment of a Community Court 2. Improving the visual environment through the restriction of billboards 3. Maintaining a healthy community by fighting any expansion of the 14th St. Power Plant 4. Maintaining the health of our children by improving lead paint regulation 5. Maintaining the health of all by reducing traffic on Canal Street 6. Making Downtown a better place to live by building waterfront parks on both the East River and the Hudson River waterfronts.

CRIME REDUCTION MAKING DOWNTOWN SAFER AND QUIETER THROUGH THE ESTABLISHMENT OF COMMUNITY JUSTICE PROGRAMS AND A COMMUNITY COURT Alan believes that a community's problems should be resolved at the community level whenever possible. While crime has gone down significantly in our city, neighborhoods in our district still suffer from chronic offenses that diminish the quality of life for people who live downtown. And for a variety of reasons, our legal system has not effectively tackled these problems. Alan supports the creation of an intensive and community-focused collaboration among the police, prosecutor and the courts to tackle quality-of-life crime downtown. This collaboration could be done with existing agencies, but is ideally coordinated under the umbrella of a Community Court. Such a program would focus on chronic problems in our neighborhoods such as public drunkenness, drug dealing, property defacement, public urination, harassment and other assaults. Building on the model of the Midtown Community Court, which played a crucial role in the dramatic drop in crime in the Hell¡|s Kitchen and Times Square neighborhoods, Alan will champion a program that: Promotes accountability for all offenders on every case Requires people who commit crimes in our neighborhoods to pay back the community through community service where the offense occurred Helps people with problems such as drug addiction or mental illness receive the services they need so that they do not return, again and again, to commit the same offenses Promotes mediation to solve neighborhood disputes involving noise, nightclubs, trash storage and other issues. Alan has produced a comprehensive proposal for community problem-solving court that details how many of these strategies could be put in place. The Downtown Community Court could also serve as a model for other communities Citywide.

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
http://www.konformist.com/2000/rudyg.htm

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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