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To View the April 7, 2003
Briefing Paper Of The
Governmental Affairs Division
from the Committee On Consumer Affairs
covering General Vendor Licensing
and Regulation Click HereThe Problem With Vending:
A Crisis Facing All NYC Vendorsby Robert Lederman
robert.lederman@worldnet.att.net
April 6, 2003The NY City agencies, Business Improvement Districts (BIDs), corporations and landlord advocacy groups who have been trying unsuccessfully for many decades to get rid of vendors and street artists are about to launch a full frontal assault on vending. This fist of steel will be hidden inside a velvet glove.
Unlike the heavy-handed efforts of Mayor Giuliani, who made his hostility to vendors and street artists very clear yet failed to have any effect on us despite an intense eight year effort, those behind this new push to eliminate vendors will try very hard to convince you they are your new best friend. They want you to believe that they only want to "help" you; that they are trying to "improve" vending so as to make it easier for you to get a vending spot; and that they want to eliminate only the "illegal" vendors so as to make more room on the street and in Parks for "legitimate" vendors and for "original" street artists.
Don't believe it. There are at least six incredibly unfair and punishing new laws being proposed before the City Council and the NY State legislature concerning vending. These include:
*Intro # 160, which tries to reinstate a permit requirement for artists that was previously overturned by six different courts; *A proposal to require fingerprinting for all vendors. * A proposal to make three misdemeanor convictions within ten years the basis for an automatic felony conviction and a one year prison sentence (most Park vending violations and many street vending violations are misdemeanors) *A requirement that all misdemeanor arrests will require the defendant to submit to having a DNA sample taken. *A restriction on the allowable content of First Amendment-protected vending materials starting with pornography. *And a proposed new law allowing the City to completely restrict vending from certain streets simply because some people find it to be offensive there. This last proposed law would create an entirely new and arbitrary precedent for banning vending based on something other than a concern for public safety. The area surrounding the site of the World Trade Center is the first of what we can expect will be many such newly restricted areas if this law is passed.
I've been selling on the street for more than 40 years. Every vendor I've ever met had their own concept about what the "problem with vending" is and how to deal with it. It's not that some of these views are absolutely right and all others absolutely wrong. The main difference between these varied viewpoints involves how big a picture is being looked at.
If a vendor is focused on only the small piece of sidewalk where they sell it's easy to see other nearby vendors who compete with them for sales and vending as the main problem. If a vendor is focused just on the neighborhood where they sell they may see a slightly bigger picture involving landlord advocacy groups, the local BID or the local police precinct. Such vendors often believe that if we street artists and vendors can just accommodate the demands of local stores, residents and landlords - however arbitrary and irrational they may be -that everything will be O.K.
If only the solution were that simple. There is a bigger picture worth looking at.
My focus is not just protecting my vending spot, or begging vendors and artists to keep things quiet and tidy in the neighborhood where I sell so that we won't be targeted for enforcement. Nor is my focus on desperately trying to get the local police, landlords and stores to like me or my fellow street artists. First Amendment rights are not dependant on being liked or welcomed by the community. In fact, the entire purpose of free speech is to protect unpopular views. What the community thinks about us ultimately has nothing to do with our rights.
Even though I am a street artist who only sells his own original art and could well play the game of claiming to be special or better than some other vendors as is now fashionable in some quarters, I choose to see all other vendors as being in the same boat as me whether they are artists, art vendors, disabled vets, veterans, general vendors, food vendors, book vendors or yes, even so-called unlicensed illegal vendors.
For more than 35 years I was classified by the City as a so-called illegal vendor and was routinely arrested for it. In 1996 a Federal Court issued a ruling acknowledging that street artists didn't need a license or a permit -a fact which every single NYC official involved in ordering our arrests over the years already knew very well. Those misguided artists and licensed vendors who today insist on scapegoating other vendors as if they were the real "problem with vending" should read a page or two from their own history. Just a few years ago we were the "illegal" vendors.
The reality is that the government officials creating this latest crisis for vendors care no more for original artists than for art vendors. They abuse licensed vendors as readily as unlicensed ones. They have no more concern for the rights of disabled veteran vendors than they do for the Senegalese vendors of counterfeit merchandise they love to play the disabled vets off against.
Our collective boat will either sink and we will all drown together or we
can pull together and save ourselves, each other and vending itself. The City sees it that way as well - but that's exactly the opposite of what they will tell you.
Their updated strategy is a classic - divide and conquer.
The idea is to play off artist-stooges who work for an anti-vendor City Councilmember against real street artists who stood up for their rights. To play licensed vendors against unlicensed vendors whose only "crime" is not having a license which by design is unobtainable. Right now in Albany they are busy playing disabled vets against all First Amendment-protected vendors, demanding that the vets agree to limit artists and book vendors to only one per block. They know no shame as they play this game of vendor extermination.
These City officials like to set up private meetings for carefully-selected vendors, pretending that they are open to hearing your input and want to help you with your problems. In reality all they want is for you to complain bitterly about other vendors, to inform on each other and to depict your fellow vendors and street artists in the worst light possible. That way they can use your testimony as "proof" that vendors are people who for the sake of society must be rigidly controlled, regulated and phased out of existence.
In these meetings they flatter each group of vendors about how special they and make promises of reserved vending spaces, protection from competition and other absurdities - none of which they could keep if they wanted to.
For me the issue is not other vendors, nor is it any of the phony justifications that have been used against us for so many years. The "problem with vending" is not primarily about congestion, or public safety, or "unfair competition" or copyright infringement. It's about nothing less than a brutal struggle over territory, public territory.
The struggle we face is a war, a war which has been waged for decades by corporate interests to determine who will control the public spaces of this great City. These sidewalks and Parks are the most valuable real estate in NYC.
The ultimate key for them to fully seize control of those public spaces is to weaken the rights of the First Amendment-protected vendors; those vendors who have a Constitutional right to use sidewalks and public parks for communication, commerce and expression without needing a license, a permit or anyone's permission.
Those rights are ultimately not subject to the effects of corruptly written legislation, quid pro quos in exchange for City Council votes or the perjured testimony of City officials whose allegiance is to the corporations which put them in office rather than the voting public.
Robert Loutitt is the public safety director of the Fifth Avenue BID. Years ago he was the very first commanding officer of the NYPD Peddler Task Force, created by Mayor Koch. He is an authority on this issue.
Mr. Loutitt explained the reality of our struggle to me in 1994, moments before supervising my arrest in front of Trump Tower for the third time in three days. "Once we can get rid of the First Amendment-protected vendors," he explained, "we can get rid of all the vendors." That was a valuable insight and I've never forgotten it, or failed to thank Mr. Loutitt for sharing it with me.
Since 1994 when Giuliani became Mayor, City officials have dreamed of selling off the public sidewalks and Parks of the City to the highest bidder. On the streets, this privatization program is known as The Street Furniture Initiative. It involves a multi-billion dollar contract for the advertising rights on thousands of NYC sidewalk kiosks, benches, bus shelters, pay toilets and sidewalk advertising billboards.
But there's a big problem in implementing this initiative. Your little art display is an obstacle for this contract to go through. How can the City sell off the right to use public space to a right wing corporation like Clear Channel Communications for billions, when you can sell in the exact same spot for free? It's no coincidence that at the same time Mayor Bloomberg proposed Intro # 160 he revived the Street Furniture Initiative. [For details see: The Village Voice "Pro-War Media Conglomerate Tries to Take Over New York; Bush's Voice of America by Wayne Barrett April 2 - 8, 2003]
In Parks this exact same agenda has long been manifested by their concession program. The Parks Department has spent many years selling the right to public space to the highest bidder as even a casual examination of their concession and special event permit programs makes clear. A single vending stand concession in a NYC Park already sells for as much as $750,000. The Parks Department sells large vending companies a monopoly on vending within each Park with the public paying the price in highly inflated prices, poor quality food and an artificially limited selection of third-rate tourist-oriented merchandise. Parks Commissioner Benepe started his career as one of these Parks Department food concessionaires. His fondness for and comfort with this corrupt system is perfectly understandable.
Special event permit fees like the one the Central Park Conservancy recently pressured Christo to "donate" $3,000,000 for are the rule rather than the exception. For Sony, Nike or Chase Bank - David Rockefeller's Bank, which virtually own Central Park and uses it as it's playground - a $3,000,000 permit fee is a profitable tax write off and much cheaper than a TV commercial. Plus, they get to pretend that they are good citizens who are "helping our public Parks."
There's no NYC agency with a better documented history of censorship, shakedowns, racism and corruption than the Parks Department. In light of this larger picture, only the most gullible street artist can seriously believe that all Commissioner Benepe wants from you is a $25 permit and proof that you made your art as he has recently been suggesting.
In my experience there is not much you can believe from most of the NY City officials involved in the vending issue, even when what they say seems perfectly reasonable on the surface. If one does the research as I have you will see for example that raising money for the Parks budget has little or nothing to do with Intro # 160 or their concession system.
Most of the hundreds of millions of dollars the Parks Department took in from concessions and special permits sold to Disney, Sony, Chase Bank and other giant corporations during the eight years Giuliani was Mayor went to two groups; The Central Park Conservancy (CPC) - an elite club consisting of the City's wealthiest real estate magnates; and the Public-Private Initiative - a transparently phony "charity" set up to funnel millions of dollars to Giuliani's political campaigns and pet projects.
Ironically, these two groups are in many respects virtually identical. The Central Park Conservancy's president is Regina Perrugi, Giuliani's first wife. The board of directors of the CPC is a who's who of Giuliani's former Deputy Mayors, his former chief of staff, his aides, his press agent, a former mistress and his wealthiest campaign contributors from the real estate sector. These same real estate big shots were the personal beneficiaries of billions of dollars in undeserved tax write-offs granted to them by Giuliani when he was Mayor.
A large part of why the City is now broke was these same corruptly-motivated tax write - offs. Sad to say, Mike Bloomberg has long been one of the key board members of the Central Park Conservancy.
To win this fight we must identify, study and fully understand our enemy. If we allow ourselves to see only the smallest picture and insist on narrowly focusing our attention solely on the vendor next to us, imagining him or her to be our worst enemy, we are surely lost. If on the other hand we can muster the courage to understand and face who and what we are really up against we can chose to study their weaknesses exactly as they are so intently studying ours. Can we win this fight?
It is true that we cannot hope to match such an enemy as ours in the arenas of money, influence or power. However, there is one arena in which we can not only match them but can actually beat them if we use our resources properly. The resource we can exploit to beat this enemy is as close as your art display or vending stand. It is the very right to free speech they are trying to buy from the City and take away from us.
A cardboard sign, a leaflet alerting the public to what is really going on or a petition for passerbys to sign can be our means to victory. "The pen is mightier than the sword" and "A picture is worth a thousand words." How many times have we read those cliches without ever considering the power of their message and what they mean in the context of our vending struggle.
This power is already in your hands if only you can open your eyes to see it. Companies like Clear Channel Communications want your vending spot because they know that from your little 8' X 3' X 5' sidewalk stand you can deliver a message to the entire world. Why not reach it with a message other than just, buy my art or buy my merchandise?
See the bigger picture. Know your enemy. Fight the power. Whatever you do, don't waste your time or do the enemies work by fighting each other. That's exactly what they want you to be doing.
If your imagination can open up to the possibility of victory rather than be crushed by the sense of an imminent defeat, know that our success will be a victory for every person in America who may ever want or need the right to free speech on public property.
Be proud to be a vendor. Be proud to be a defender of the rights that make this nation unique in all human history. Be proud to be a street artist.
ARTIST POWER!
RUDY'S EX LANDS TOP PARK JOB New York Daily News Dec 2, 2000 "Mayor Giuliani yesterday praised the selection of his first wife, Regina Peruggi, as president of the Central Park Conservancy..."I think it's a great selection, but I was notified afterward," Giuliani said. "I had nothing to do with the selection. If I had been asked, I would have been very strongly in favor of it."..The conservancy is a nonprofit organization that raises money and manages the city's premier park. But Peruggi's appointment was cleared by Parks Commissioner Henry Stern, a Giuliani appointee, who sits on the conservancy's board of directors. Asked whether he felt awkward about Peruggi's selection to a post with city ties, the mayor said, "No. I know lots of people. . . . Sometimes I feel more comfort when I know somebody's qualities and abilities. . . . I know they're going to do a good job."
STERN SEESAWS, SAYS PARKS 'MISHANDLED' SOLICITATION New York Daily News; New York, N.Y.; Sep 24, 2000 "Parks Commissioner Henry Stern yesterday apologized for the way his agency solicited a donation from a nonprofit set to hold a fund- raiser in a city park, adding that he would soon draw up new guidelines to avoid future confusion. The comments marked a stunning turnaround for Stern, who all week defended his agency's decision to demand $20,000 from the new National Museum of Catholic Art in exchange for letting the group hold a fund-raiser in an East Harlem park Tuesday. Museum officials had said they felt "held up" by the last-minute request and complained to City Council Speaker Peter Vallone, who called for Council hearings into the matter. But Stern yesterday seemed eager to put the matter to rest, telling the Daily News that his agency had "mishandled" negotiations with the museum. And while Stern defended the practice of charging outside groups for the private use of parklands, he agreed that a more defined policy was needed. "That was not well-handled by us, and we apologize to the Catholic Museum - not for the substance [of the donation], but for the way it was brought to their attention," said Stern, who continued to describe the $20,000 fee as "appropriate" in size."..Walt Disney, for instance, shelled out $1 million in 1995 to premiere the movie "Pocahantas" on Central Park's Great Lawn, while many smaller companies or charities are routinely charged $20,000 to $30,000 to use any park. More recently, the Best Buy Co. shelled out $1 million to stage a Sting concert in Central Park - with half the money going to the Central Park Conservancy and half going to New York City Public/ Private Initiatives, a charity set up by Mayor Giuliani in 1994 to help back his pet projects."
PARK CONCERT TO HELP AID RUDY'S PET PROJECTS New York Daily News; New York, N.Y.; Aug 31, 2000 "Half of a $1 million payment being made to the city by the corporate sponsor of next month's Sting concert in Central Park will go to a little-known charity created by Mayor Giuliani that uses business dollars to help finance his favored projects. New York City Public/Private Initiatives, established by Giuliani in 1994, will get $500,000 in the deal with Best Buy Co., a Minnesota- based electronics retailer that is bringing Sting to the park Sept. 12. The nonprofit charity is run by Tamra Lhota, a former fund-raiser for the mayor and the wife of Deputy Mayor Joseph Lhota. Its contributors include corporate giants like AT&T and American Express. The other $500,000 from the event will go to the Central Park Conservancy, which manages the park in cooperation with the city Parks Department."
Village Voice Pro-War Media Conglomerate Tries to Take Over New York Bush's Voice of America by Wayne Barrett April 2 - 8, 2003 "Clear Channel Communications, the Texas-based media colossus that's fomenting pro-war rallies and submarining airplay for anti-war artists, has quietly become a brash and hungry player in New York politics. With the likes of GOP power broker Al D'Amato and Democratic consultant Hank Sheinkopf on the tab, the $8 billion conglomerate is chasing city deals, from a new concert hall on Randalls Island to a franchise on all sidewalk advertising. If you get in the back seat of a cab, you may already be faced with Clear Channel's televised commercials, or wind up riding underneath one of their taxi-top posters, all approved by the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission. Or, if you enter a subway station, you'll pass their billboards, soon to be changeable digital ads, on the way down the steps, awarded by the MTA. If you catch a flight out of Newark Airport, it's their ads that work on your subconscious while you wait, courtesy of the Port Authority. If you're taking a walk in Times Square, you'll be surrounded by their towering, city-authorized, street signage, even while you're buying a ticket to any of the five Broadway shows they produced. If you've paid a fortune to see a concert at either of the two publicly owned amphitheaters in the area, Jones Beach or the PNC Arts Center in Holmdel, New Jersey, it was Clear Channel that sold you the ticket. And if you turn on a radio in New York, it's hard to miss their five stations (WHTZ, WKTU, WAXQ, WWPR, WLTW), which combine to make them number one in this market . What's good for business in cowboy country, however, could hurt them on old Broadway. Paul Krugman, the best reason to read the Times, revealed last week that Clear Channel is the sponsor, albeit indirectly, of the carefully synchronized pro-war rallies taking place all over Bush country...The company has tried to draw a flimsy line of distinction between itself and the rallies that its wholly-owned stations host, but anyone can see that's just one more lie out of Texas about this war...Leapfrogging from 43 stations to 1,220 since the passage of the deregulating Telecommunications Act of 1996, Clear Channel hired the congressional aide who drafted the act, and is represented by the former law firm of the head of the Justice Department's antitrust division. Clear Channel's vice chair, Tom Hicks, made George W. Bush a multimillionaire by buying the Texas Rangers from him, and chaired a state university board that steered most of its endowment to firms with Bush and GOP ties...Clear Channel's strongest local interest now is its attempt to win a contract with the Bloomberg administration for a concert facility at Randalls Island. The company retained Sheinkopf to represent it on the deal last fall, and he has lined up meetings with Manhattan Borough President Virginia Fields, Assemblyman Keith Wright, City Council Finance Committee chair David Weprin,, and Comptroller William Thompson. Fields and Thompson, whose 2001 campaign was managed by Sheinkopf, are members of the city's Franchise and Concession Review Board, which will vote on the contract after the Parks Department picks a winner...The company recently contributed $5,000 to Council Speaker Gifford Miller and Queens councilwoman Melinda Katz, who chairs the land use committee...The company also retains legendary lobbyist Sid Davidoff, who's pushed Bloomberg deputy mayor Mark Shaw and Buildings Commissioner Patricia Lancaster on billboard regulations. Claudia Wagner represents it on the potentially multibillion-dollar street furniture franchise, which the Bloomberg administration is considering putting out to bid. That would seek to secure a city commission on all sidewalk advertising, on bus shelters, pay phones, rebuilt newsstands, pay toilets, information kiosks, etc...In December, the company also won a three-year extension of its contract with the MTA for the billboard space on subway entrances. It got the extension, according to MTA spokesman Tom Kelly, because it proposed converting the outdoor space to digital panels, which would permit additional advertisers on screens at high-traffic stations, increasing the commission paid to the MTA. Authority officials did not answer questions about whether D'Amato, whose lobbying activities at the MTA are notorious, had anything to do with the lucrative, no-bid contract."
Excepted from: New York City's Shadow Government NY Newsday 12/27/99 Public Office, Private Funds / Little-known entity gives private money to mayor's projects By Dan Janison "When Mayor Rudolph Giuliani collaborated on a children's book last year, the giant investment firm Goldman Sachs & Co. kicked in $25,000 toward its publication. When Giuliani proposed a critical study of the City University of New York, the John M. Olin Foundation, which promotes conservative causes, donated $25,000. And when the mayor wanted money for celebrations after New Year's, which will help keep him in the spotlight during next year's U.S. Senate race, he turned again to corporate donations-with more than $2 million raised so far. All those funds were funneled through a little-known entity called New York City Public-Private Initiatives Inc., based in a city office and run by Tamra Lhota, a longtime political fund raiser for Giuliani who worked in his 1989, 1993 and 1997 campaigns...Yet, boosted by $374,000 last year from city taxpayers-in a contract signed and currently overseen by Deputy Mayor Randy Levine-PPI has raised and committed more than $6 million for 32 favored mayoral causes since its creation in 1994. It is a registered charity with a full-time staff of four. It also has more than 7 board members, mostly from the city's real estate, financial, media and entertainment elite. The list, filed in April with the Internal Revenue Service, included former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, financier David Rockefeller, businessman Roland Betts, singer Carly Simon, Daily News publisher Mortimer Zuckerman, former New York Post publisher Martin Singerman, Queens developer Joseph Mattone and retired corporate magnate Preston Tisch. Not surprisingly, many of Giuliani's campaign contributors also are PPI's benefactors. Thirty-three board members contributed a total $185,050 to the mayor's 1997 re-election campaign, many of them donating the legal maximum for individuals, or $7,700, records show. But the corporation attracts other contributors as well-notably, bond firms that, as underwriters of city debt, are barred from supporting candidates in municipal elections. Four firms with leading roles in issuing city bonds-Paine Webber, Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley-had donated a combined $295,000 to five PPI efforts as of June, according to the corporation...Reached on a trip to the Dominican Republic, Kissinger said, "They [city officials] have a millennium series of discussions. I think I'm playing a role... I'm doing this as a service to the city. It isn't a political thing. I'm pretty sure there are Democrats involved, too." NYC 2000, based in the mayor's special-events office, is run by a small executive council of Giuliani loyalists, including PPI's Tamra Lhota; the mayor's Senate committee director, Bruce Teitelbaum; Cristyne Lategano of the New York Convention & Visitors Bureau; and longtime Giuliani friend and former City Hall aide Lou Carbonetti. Some of the funding for the post- New Year's events has already sparked public controversy. In September, American Express paid $1 million for the use of Central Park to stage an invitation-only Sheryl Crow concert. Half that total was quietly steered to the NYC 2000 effort- for which PPI is the official fund-raising arm-despite earlier plans to turn the full amount over to the city Parks Foundation. Elizabeth Cooke, executive director of the Parks Council, an advocacy group, has contested the use of the money for anything other than parks, saying the practice encourages using the parks to generate cash..."It is the foundation for those city activities that don't have their own foundations," explained PPI's counsel, Robert Kaufman of the Manhattan law firm Proskauer, Rose-where Kaufman in 1997 also served as an intermediary for Giuliani campaign donations from fellow firm members...Such entities have sometimes drawn scandal. For example, there is an ongoing criminal investigation of the city- controlled Parks Foundation, on behalf of which park officials allegedly pressured citizens for donations in exchange for services...The Olin Foundation, headed by President Richard Nixon's former Treasury Secretary William Simon, joined with the Henry Luce Foundation and the David and Lucille Packard Foundation in providing the $115,000 that went to the mayor's controversial Advisory Task Force on CUNY." ----------------------------
Also see today's NY Times...NY Times 4/6/03 Branding in New York Is Just the Beginning
Dykstra's Onion
[A Report on the City Council's Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) Hearing Held on 4/7/03]
by Robert Lederman
President of A.R.T.I.S.T.Dear Consumer Affairs Committee members,
To begin her testimony before your committee, DCA Commissioner Gretchen Dykstra gave each committee member an onion and then held up an onion herself. This visual aid was intended to depict the many-layered complexities of the vending issue.
Allow me to take this analogy a bit further than the Commissioner did, to peel off a few more layers and show how her testimony was actually intended to obscure rather than illuminate the real nature of this issue.
First, let me thank you for holding a hearing, the first in many years, on the overall issue of vending. The briefing papers compiled by your legal counsel, Ms. Debra Brown, were excellent.
Unfortunately, despite those briefing papers clearly acknowledging the central role in the vending issue played by A.R.T.I.S.T. and our lawsuits and the parallel role of First Amendment-protected written matter vendors, you didn't allow even one of the many members of A.R.T.I.S.T. or any of the book vendors who came to the hearing to testify.
I understand that there were unanticipated time constraints on the Committee and hope that this serious imbalance will be fully redressed on May 1st at what you described as a second part to this hearing.
Both the hearing itself and the pre-hearing "Let us pay taxes and fees" rally on the steps of City Hall organized by the carefully selected vendor advocates you did allow to speak - those solely being newfound representatives of unlicensed vendors who desperately want a license - added to the imbalanced picture of what this issue is really about.
I believe those vendors are ultimately going to be used by the City as pawns towards fulfilling a long-term agenda of destroying vending altogether and predict that the outcome of these hearings and of DCA's year long series of secretive meetings with vendors will play out in the following scenario - if the Council members on the Consumer Affairs Committee fail to understand the real nature of Commissioner Dykstra's Onion.
The DCA Deception
Here's what I believe is DCA's game plan:
First, the cap on licenses will be lifted and hundreds of new licenses will be issued. For a brief time the vendors who wanted licenses will think their dreams have been answered. DCA and the BIDs will take their bows, pretending to have "liberated" and "democratized" vending.
A few months later DCA will claim that there are now so many licensed vendors in addition to the veteran vendors and First Amendment-protected vendors "congesting" Manhattan that the City has decided it must implement a system of reserved vending spots, limiting them to two per block. To obtain these spots, vendors will have to submit to competitive bidding as has been done inside NYC Parks for many years.
A few carefully selected veteran vendors and food vendors with longstanding relationships to the BIDs will be allowed to claim certain choice spots based on having sold there for some considerable length of time, rather than having to bid for them. These selected vendors will be tokens, allowed to continue vending in their spots so the City can point to them and say, "You see, we really weren't trying to eliminate all the vendors."
The rest of the City's vendors including all the new license holders will find themselves bid out of existence by corporate interests, exactly as is now the case in all NYC Parks, where three or four corporations already own a monopoly on all the vending spots.
At this point the Street Furniture Initiative will have become law and all the reserved vending spots will be absorbed or bid into this system, which will replace vendors with digital ad-covered sidewalk billboards, planters, information kiosks, pay toilets, bus shelters, phone booths, BID-controlled newspaper vending boxes and benches. So as to preserve at least the illusion of vending, there may also be a few mall-style pushcarts allowed to sell McDonalds, Wendys and DCA-approved "authentic" NYC souvenirs. Due to zoning restrictions and size and placement rules, all of this ad-covered street furniture will have to be located in the exact sidewalk locations where vending is now legal. Needless to say, it will cause far more sidewalk congestion than the vendors ever did.
It is important to understand that when DCA agrees to uncap the limit on vending licenses they will be doing so for exactly the opposite reason the vendors are asking them to do it. It will be done to destroy vending, not to expand it. None of the impoverished and abused vendors who came to the hearing will be in a position to buy a viable vending spot on a well-traveled street once these vending spaces are for sale. Their licenses will therefore be worthless pieces of paper.
The reason the cap on licenses has not been lifted in the past is that City officials and the business community they work for have no interest in increasing the number of "legitimate" vendors nor any interest in collecting more taxes, sales or otherwise, from vendors. What the City really wants to do now is sell off the prime vending locations on sidewalks and in Parks to corporate interests for advertising and promotional purposes.
As noted above, this multi-billion dollar plan is known as The Street Furniture Initiative and the prime contender for that contract right now is a huge right-wing media conglomerate, Clear Channel Communications [See: Village Voice Pro-War Media Conglomerate Tries to Take Over New York-Bush's Voice of America by Wayne Barrett April 2 - 8, 2003.] If you are not yet familiar with that name, I assure you that soon you'll be hearing a lot about it in the City Council and elsewhere. At the same time he proposed Intro # 160 Mayor Bloomberg also proposed a new version of The Street Furniture Initiative.
Increasing the number of legal vendors who will have a right to vend in the very locations that are earmarked for exploitation by the Street Furniture I nitiative is in direct opposition to the City's stated intention to sell those same spots for advertising. Both the DCA Commissioner and the Parks Commissioner are very much involved in pursuing the Street Furniture Initiative and in privatizing public property.
These officials are privatization zealots. In Commissioner Dykstra's case, her BID was involved in seizing both private property and public property while executing the so-called revitalization of Times Square, one of most corrupt and shameless land grabs in the City's history. For Commissioner Benepe, allowing a few street artists to exercise their rights is a public safety menace, but selling off the City's Parks to Wendy's, Chase Bank and McDonalds, is a proper use of our public parks.
Commissioner Dykstra is best known as the first President of the Times Sq. BID. If one looks at Times Sq. they will see a very graphic illustration of the extremes the City plans to go in corporatizing, privatizing and plastering advertising on every square inch of available space in the City.
Obstructing (the city's plan to privatize) The Sidewalks
There are three categories of vendors who are an obstacle to this privatization plan as it effects public sidewalks and Parks because they have well-established legal rights to vend there: written matter vendors, street artists and veteran vendors, especially disabled veteran vendors. These three classes of vendors are the main reason there are any legal vendors still working in NYC after more than 100 years of determined efforts to destroy vending - a reality your own briefing papers made explicitly clear.
One of the very few things Commissioner Dykstra testified to that I found myself in agreement with, either factually or in principle, was her acknowledgement that it is these same three groups of vendors who are the issue or as she might put it, "the problem" with vending. On this all parties are in full agreement.
The New World Order of Vending
Commissioner Dykstra keeps telling elected officials, vendors and the media that, "the City has no plan for vending," yet, her testimony implicitly stated what that non-existent plan was. "We want to make one, simple, unified system of vending." In that seemingly reasonable statement is exposed the entire strategy for eliminating vending as we know it.
Commissioner Dykstra is a smart, capable and charming person, but behind her 'New World Order meets Mayberry' have-a-granola-bar style is a hidden and quite sinister agenda. I'm not kidding when I call her and her accomplices such as the BIDs and the Mayor's Criminal Justice Coordinator, vendor exterminators.
One might say in response to this viewpoint that it's absurd to compare a geo-political agenda such as the New World Order with the City's vending policy - but is it?
The streets and Parks of NYC and in particular of Manhattan are the pre-eminent public forum in all the world. NYC's political rallies and demonstrations, which date back to the Revolutionary War, are the stuff of history.
We are the brand name which implies authenticity, diversity and street smarts. Every corporation and cultural institution seeks to carve it's logo on our public spaces and to identify itself with our local culture. Every television network seeks to locate it's newsroom to our street level so they can show busy New Yorkers walking the streets behind their anchors - presumably to give credibility to the idea that they are up-to-the-minute and cutting edge - rather than merely regurgitating sanitized government-approved news.
What I and my fellow street artists discovered in fighting Mayor Giuliani was that a simple cardboard sign could be seen around the world if displayed at the right time and place on a NYC street. Every advertiser in the world wants to locate their messages in this same forum and political strategists of every persuasion likewise want to preclude their opponents from doing so.
In this context, consider the coming Republican convention and the vast number of anti-Republican activists who will come to NYC in 2004 seeking to communicate their message to the world from our public spaces. In a very real sense, vendor law reform in NYC and the connection it has to every New Yorkers' First Amendment rights will have global implications.
Exactly like the geopolitical strategy known as the New World Order, this local version of the agenda seeks to eliminate the boundaries between groups, to create one all-inclusive system of international law or in this case vending law which erases all the old distinctions - distinctions which have acted in many cases as beneficial obstacles to the application of universal control. It is in this exact context that Commissioner Dystra speaks of one unified vending law which will eliminate the special rights of veterans, First Amendment-protected vendors and food vendors.
The leading proponents of this geopolitical strategy are David Rockefeller and Henry Kissenger, his most famous operative. The Bush dynasty are it's longtime political front men. One should note for the record that according to her resume, before heading the DCA and before heading the Times Sq. BID, Commissioner Dykstra was a project Director for the Rockefeller Foundation.
David Rockefeller's JP Morgan Chase Bank dominates the Central Park Conservancy (CPC), the leading group apart from the BIDs which is currently driving the new vending policy on the streets and in Parks. Rockefeller, Kissinger, Giuliani's first wife Regina Perrugi and numerous Giuliani operatives, Deputy Mayors and aides run the CPC. It was the CPC that actually created the Parks artist permit that Intro # 160 seeks to reinstate. Chase Bank's part in taking over Central Park, and Rudy Giuliani' s part in making that takeover possible, is a fascinating glimpse into this NWO concept of privatization and corporate domination over democracy and public space.
By encouraging the creation of new vending licenses on a large scale while watering down or eliminating the current distinctions between the various categories of vendors - a simple, unified system of vending rather than the many-layered onion that the Commissioner claimed brought her to tears - the City hopes to overcome all obstacles to vendor extermination. The main obstacle as I've previously described and as the Commissioner herself told you, is the individuality of the laws concerning First Amendment-protected vendors, food vendors and the disabled veteran vendors.
The crafts vendors who were given an extensive opportunity to speak at the hearing are also being drawn into this scheme as pawns by Commissioner Dykstra and her accomplices. Among these accomplices is Council member Alan Gerson within whose district many of these vendors sell side by side with street artists.
I note for the record that the BID within which Council member Gerson's district is located, the Alliance For Downtown NY BID, was founded by David Rockefeller and that this BID is home to more First Amendment-protected street artists and book vendors than any other in the City. In 1995 the Alliance For Downtown NY BID filed an amicus brief against street artists' rights in Bery, claiming that visual art was "unworthy" of being given First Amendment protection because, "it did not express ideas." Exactly like the Parks Department, this BID uses art as a cultural cover story while censoring artists and real freedom of speech at every opportunity.
By offering these potentially First Amendment-protected craft vendors licenses and an alternate venue within which to sell - as Both The DCA Commissioner and Council member Gerson claim they want to do - the City hopes to prevent them from filing lawsuits which could further expand the definition of what a First Amendment protected vendor is. In other words, the idea is to give them licenses by which they can be completely controlled by the City in order to keep them from winning the rights that would protect them from the City.
How would creating more licenses do that?
Part of the reason we street artists won our rights in 1996 was that vending licenses were capped at 853. In 1994 I got a former DCA Commissioner, Richard Schrader, to submit an affidavit to the Federal court stating that artists absolutely could not get a vending license due to the cap. This document became a key piece of evidence in winning our first lawsuit. Once an alternative venue and more vending licenses are available - licenses which can be revoked or made useless at the whim of the City - these vendors will likely never succeed in winning their potential Constitutional rights as First Amendment-protected craft artists.
The notion that having a license would end these vendors' problems is ironic. Perhaps the single most abused group of vendors in NYC are the licensed general vendors, who are routinely given multiple summonses, sometimes numbering as many as ten in one day. Unlicensed vendors may be giving up far more advantages than they are getting in return by accepting a DCA license.
From the perspective espoused in Commissioner Dykstra's testimony, citizens widely exercising their First Amendment freedom on public property and the recognition dating back to the Civil War that veterans should have a right to work anywhere as peddlers after risking their lives for their country are problems. These rights are in fact what she sees as the real, "problem with vending."
Filing A Consumer Affairs Fraud Complaint
After attending the hearing, I felt the need to make a detailed Consumer Affairs fraud complaint. Unfortunately, it is fraud by the Commissioner of the Department of Consumer Affairs and her accomplices from the Mayor's Office of the Criminal Justice Coordinator that I want to complain about. Let me describe just a few of their many - in my opinion - deliberately fraudulent misrepresentations to the committee.
The Commissioner stated that the Bery decision said that unlike artists and written matter vendors, jewelry and craft vendors were not protected by the First Amendment. What the decision actually said was that some jewelry and craft vendors may be protected and that it was up to the courts to decide.
Here is an extended quote for your reference and the website where you can read the entire decision:
Bery et al v City of New York; Lederman et al v City of New York UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT (Argued: April 26, 1996 Decided: October 10, 1996) Docket Nos. 95-9089 (L), 95-9131, 96-7137 "Appellants Robert Bery et al. (94 Civ. 4253) and Robert Lederman et al. (94 Civ. 7216), in separate actions below, sought by motions for a preliminary injunction to enjoin enforcement of the General Vendors Law, § 20-452 et seq . of the Administrative Code of the City of New York ("General Vendors Law"), which bars visual artists from exhibiting, selling or offering their work for sale in public places in New York City without first obtaining a general vendors license. Appellees City of New York and various municipal bodies and officials charged with administration and enforcement of the General Vendors Law ("the City") opposed the motions. The district court denied the motions; both sets of appellants appeal...Visual art is as wide ranging in its depiction of ideas, concepts and emotions as any book, treatise, pamphlet or other writing, and is similarly entitled to full First Amendment protection...Visual artwork is as much an embodiment of the artist's expression as is a written text, and the two cannot always be readily distinguished...The sale of protected materials is also protected...Furthermore, the street marketing is in fact a part of the message of appellants' art. As they note in their submissions to the court, they believe that art should be available to the public. Anyone, not just the wealthy, should be able to view it and to buy it. Artists are part of the "real" world; they struggle to make a living and interact with their environments. The sale of art in public places conveys these messages. The district court seems to have equated the visual expression involved in these cases with the crafts of the jeweler, the potter and the silversmith who seek to sell their work. Bery , 906 F. Supp. at 167. While these objects may at times have expressive content, 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. Courts must determine what constitutes expression within the ambit of the First Amendment and what does not. This surely will prove difficult at times, but that difficulty does not warrant placing all visual expression in limbo outside the reach of the First Amendment's protective arm. Courts have struggled with such issues in the past; that is not to say that decisions are impossible." -Excerpted from the 1996 Second Circuit Federal Appeals Court ruling that made it legal to sell art without a vending license or a permit on NYC streets. The entire ruling is at http://laws.findlaw.com/2nd/9590890.html
Your Fingerprints Please
The DCA Commissioner and Deputy Criminal Justice Coordinator also testified that they want you to pass a new law requiring vendors who are arrested to be fingerprinted because in the present system, they claimed, vendors are not fingerprinted. This testimony was a knowing deception setting you up for a future bait and switch operation which itself is worthy of a Consumer Affairs investigation.
I've been arrested more than 40 times on vending-related charges. These arrests took place in various boroughs, in numerous police precincts, on both the streets and in Parks over a period of many years. Never once did the police fail to fingerprint me - even when the same officers arrested me twice in the same day - nor have I ever met any vendor who has been arrested who was not also fingerprinted.
Why is the Mayor's Criminal Justice Coordinator and the DCA Commissioner trying to get you to pass a totally unnecessary law requiring arrested vendors to be fingerprinted? I would guess that their real agenda is going to be what follows that law, a subsequent amendment to it requiring all vendors - including all First Amendment-protected vendors - to be fingerprinted BEFORE they are allowed to vend, most likely, "In the interests of Homeland Security."
Three Strikes And You're Out, and by the way, We Want Your DNA
Like their other proposals such as making three misdemeanor convictions for vending within a ten year period the basis for an automatic felony conviction with a mandatory one year jail sentence, and the recent attempt to get the Council to agree to a mandatory DNA sampling of EVERYONE arrested on a misdemeanor charge, this is a police state tactic right out of the Rudy Giuliani playbook.
It's also the exact agenda of the NWO, which demands a universal system of identification using fingerprinting, face-scanning and DNA sampling - and we 're not talking science fiction here.
Right now, anyone put through Central Booking in NYC is fingerprinted on an electronic digital computer system which forwards the prints to numerous police agencies including the FBI and Interpol. All Central Booking arrestees are also digitally face-scanned with those scans becoming part of a computerized national ID system. In fact, a large part of why Giuliani was so intent on having as many New Yorkers as possible arrested on petty charges was to enlarge this very database.
The proposal to take a DNA sample from everyone arrested in NYC on a misdemeanor charge (many vending charges and most Park charges including unlicensed general vending are misdemeanors) was heard before the City Council Public Safety Committee just one week before this hearing on vending with Council member Alan Gerson among it's sponsors. It seems rather obvious that NYC's racial and ethnic minorities are going to be the prime targets of these proposed new laws.
Is The City Too Soft On Vendors?
Both the DCA Commissioner and the Deputy Criminal Justice Coordinator depicted what happens to vendors who face police enforcement as if it was a very mild experience, like getting a parking summons from the DOT or an hour 's detention in the principal's office. According to them most vendors don't even bother to show up for court, virtually all the cases are dismissed and when a defendant is found guilty, the City's softhearted judges just let them off for time served.
Allow me to tell you the reality of what police enforcement on vending is really like from my own 40 years on the street. As someone who has received more than 50 assorted Criminal Court and ECB summonses for vending and been falsely arrested an additional 40 times, I know about vending enforcement from firsthand experience. Until 1996 when A.R.T.I.S.T. members won the Bery case I had been classified as an illegal vendor for more than 35 years.
Previous to 1996 the police routinely took my art and destroyed it right in front of me, on occasion crushing it in a garbage truck, a practice Council member Gerson and DCA recently attempted to get away with in SoHo. On occasion they would knock me down on the street and place me in a chokehold, despite my never resisting arrest. When I was being arrested rather than simply being "relieved" of my property they would toss my original paintings in garbage bags and then sell them at a monthly NYPD auction, despite never getting a single conviction, guilty plea or plea bargain on any of my summonses or arrests.
For every arrest I was handcuffed behind my back (which is illegal in Europe) and made to sit in a police van while they drove around for hours searching for other vendors with which to fill their assigned quota. Then I' d often be kept handcuffed inside my jail cell while awaiting fingerprinting. Men arrested for armed robbery and other real crimes would sometimes be in the cell with me, unhandcuffed. On one occasion the police arrested me despite having a Federal Court order stating I was not to be arrested.
Parks Enforcement arrests were worse. The PEP officers are not allowed to actually process arrestees so they would first take me to the Central Park police precinct for an average of three hours in handcuffs while the NYPD would write up the blatantly false vending charges, every single one of which was eventually dismissed. Then they'd transfer me to the 122nd Street precinct in Harlem where I would be electronically fingerprinted, a laborious process which sometimes took an hour or more. Seven to nine hours later they'd get a call from the fingerprint office in Albany confirming that my prints had been received, that there was no warrant on me and that I could be safely released.
On special occasions when City officials wanted to impress me with their power, they'd then transport me to the rat-infested Tombs where I'd be treated to the hospitality of laying on a filthy concrete floor for 24 hours while awaiting arraignment on additional false charges. Some of my cases took as long as three and a half years to be dismissed and required me to go to court each month on a separate date to appear for each charge. That's hundreds of daylong court appearances of excruciating boredom in which you are not allowed to speak or even read a newspaper while in the court.
That I beat all the charges was not due to having brilliant lawyers or in most cases a sympathetic judge. Many of the things I was charged with were not even illegal under NYC law at the time of my arrests.
I'd like to say that my experience is unique, but that would not be true. Anyone who has been a NYC vendor for very long can tell you their own horror stories. I'd also like to make something very clear. Neither the police nor the PEP officers were the reason for this mistreatment.
It was the DA's office, the DCA, the Mayor, the Corporation Counsel, the Parks Department, the BIDs and various Deputy Mayors who were behind these false arrests and selective enforcement policies. In the course of the discovery phase in my lawsuits we obtained City memos, which I'll be glad to give you copies of, showing that the Corp Counsel and DA's office had determined in 1993 and 1994 to never prosecute any street artists' arrest. I met and corresponded with DCA Commissioner Fred Cerullo repeatedly in 1994 about this and publicly discussed it in 1994 with Mayor Giuliani at a Town Hall Meeting. Right after that meeting Giuliani began targeting me personally for arrest.
None of the hundreds of street artists who were arrested under this blatantly illegal policy were ever prosecuted, including after 1998 when the City created a Parks artist-permit they knew directly violated the NYC vending laws, the US Constitution, the NY State Constitution and the Federal Court ruling in Bery - and then proceeded to falsely arrest hundreds more artists.
In my experience, I had it fairly easy compared to many Black, Latino and Asian vendors who were often treated far more harshly and who today, after we've won numerous Federal, State and Criminal Court rulings on the arrests of First Amendment-protected vendors continue to be abused, harassed and threatened on a daily basis on the streets and in Parks throughout the City.
Intro #160, which seeks to reinstate the same Parks artist permit overturned in 2001 by Lederman et al v Giuliani / Bach et al v City of NY, is a parallel effort by the City to destroy artists' First Amendment rights on public property. Like Commissioner Dykstra, Parks Commissioner Benepe feels it is necessary to deceive the City Council about even the most basic legal facts which are the background to this controversy.
To take just one particularly clear example which he repeats at every opportunity, at the Intro # 160 hearing on 1/27/03 Commissioner Benepe testified that only one court had ruled against the artist permit and that this one misguided court had misread the law. In fact as he well knows, six different State and Federal courts have come to the identical conclusion, that the Parks artist permit directly violated NYC law.
Peeling The Onion
Commissioner Dykstra testified that the vending law is not understood by either the police or the vendors. She used an onion to illustrate this, referring to the vending laws as being many layered. Perhaps there is another more apropos meaning for this analogy - that the City's vending policy stinks.
How could it be otherwise. Every NYC law about vending was written to make being a vendor as difficult as possible. These laws were written by the real estate lobby and were intended to exterminate vendors rather than to improve vending conditions or protect public safety. That they have failed to obliterate us is a testimony to our survival skills rather than to DCA having benevolent intentions towards us. There's barely a single vending law that is rational in its design nor does DCA have any interest in letting vendors or the police even know what those laws actually are.
When new proposed vending laws and hearings are publicly announced as they must be by law, the City does so by placing a single obscure notice in the City Record, a newspaper not even available on newsstands which costs $500 a year to subscribe to. Is it a surprise that most vendors only learn about changes in the laws when a police officer places them in handcuffs and announces it?
Every year I get hundreds of calls from vendors requesting my aid in dealing with their summonses, some of which are written for things which are not even in the vending law, such as selling someone else's art. Since Commissioner Dykstra took office the DCA has become far less, rather than more, cooperative.
Enforcement abuses in the Times Sq and Fifth Avenue BID districts are perhaps the worst in the City. Simple requests for information on what laws DCA is enforcing are now met with a routine demand to file a Freedom of Information request. Are these secret laws that one needs a law degree to find out what they are? Did DCA even bother to notify the City's 853 licensed vendors on their mailing list that there was going to be a public hearing on their destiny as vendors?
One might suppose that the DCA is under-funded and could not afford to have printed up a few leaflets letting at least licensed vendors know about the hearing. Yet, on 1/8/03 Commissioner Dykstra personally found the resources to write, print and have DCA employees hand out to the public thousands of copies of a leaflet attempting to refute various charges I had made about the DCA at a protest held outside her office on Broadway. Her testimony at the hearing on Monday actually confirmed many of the same charges which a few months ago she was strenuously denying, including that the City wanted to make three misdemeanor convictions an automatic felony with a mandatory year in jail and that they wanted to fingerprint vendors.
When Commissioner Dykstra described the arbitrary nature of the street restrictions she was absolutely right, however, she failed to note that as the first president of the Times Square BID she was one of the very people pushing Giuliani to pass those same arbitrary street restrictions.
As far as enforcement being ineffective in so far as doling out sufficient punishment to "teach vendors a lesson" The Times Sq BID and the Fifth Avenue BID built, financed and run their own court, the 54th Street so-called Community Court. This corporate-sponsored kangaroo court pressures vendors to plead guilty to what are often false charges and then assigns them to do so-called community service as unpaid menial labor working for the same BIDs which ordered their arrests. It's legalized slavery, not justice.
Councilmember Gerson, another advocate for what is euphemistically called "reform" of the vending laws, has spent more than seven years trying to create his own community court in SoHo where street artists can be forced to do similar community service for the SoHo Alliance landlords who recently put him in office. Commissioner Dykstra and Councilmember Gerson are working closely together to "help" vendors. Perhaps if their version of, "three strikes and you're out" gets passed we will see chain gangs of vendors and street artists replacing the WEP workers Giuliani previously tried to teach the "dignity of work."
Do I sound angry at how the City treats vendors?
Believe it or not, I'm not one of the really angry vendors that are out there. I won four Federal lawsuits as a result of the City's efforts to shut me up and in doing so helped restore the rights to street artists that the City keeps trying to strip away. There are other vendors who are far too angry or depressed to tell you what they really think of DCA, the Parks Department and the City's vending policy generally.
Many of my fellow artists gave up due to the abuse DCA and Parks in particular dealt out to them. Some gave up being artists altogether as a result of seeing their art destroyed. I hope you can understand that we have good reason to be mistrustful when dealing with City officials on this issue. To blindly trust in their good intentions at this stage in the ongoing vendor wars would be foolish and irresponsible.
In all fairness, I will say that the members of the 2003 Consumer Affairs Committee are not the City officials I've dealt with on this issue in the past nor are they responsible for any of the abuses described above. No one is taking it for granted that you are anti-vendor or that you have anything but an open mind on this issue. My purpose in writing this detailed letter is to guarantee that you at least have an alternate viewpoint before you to compare to the Commissioner's seriously flawed testimony.
We are more than willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, to hold off on any criticism of the Committee members until we see and hear what you come up with in regard to reforming vending. I would ask however, that you don't assume that we are naive or inexperienced in these matters. Years in the trenches and in court have taught us how to read between the lines.
Also, please don't allow yourselves to be hoodwinked by anyone representing themselves as a 'vendor advocate' who tells you that we will ever agree to submit to any form of license, permit, reserved spot or certification process for First Amendment-protected vendors.
But Do You Have Anything Good To Say?
At this point you might well ask if I have anything positive to offer to you as an alternative. I do.
What I've proposed for years is for the City to eliminate all the street restrictions it arbitrarily created at the request of the BIDs, to eliminate the 20' law which is impossible to follow and then to create a law requiring vendors of all kinds to be a few feet apart, between five and ten feet being more than adequate. Additionally, a law could be drafted prohibiting vendors from setting up directly in front of a doorway. These two simple rules would change the whole "problem" with sidewalk congestion caused by vending. In countless conversations I've found that thousands of NYC vendors agree with these exact same proposals.
Instead, every new law on vending makes the situation worse not better. Every new proposed vending law that I've read in the past decade starts off with three or four paragraphs of hyperbole about what a great tradition there is of vending in NYC, how much we've contributed to the culture, how the Council would never ever do anything to violate First Amendment rights and how all the City wants to do is just adjust the vending laws to attain a proper balance. It's only way down in the text that the bad news shows up, hidden in a thick layer of legalese which even judges find indecipherable.
I ask the committee members to take the time to peel back the layers of Commissioner Dykstra's metaphorical onion and see for themselves the knowing disinformation from City officials that underlies this entire issue of vending before adopting any of the ideas DCA or the Parks Department are presenting to you. Making new laws based on false claims from these City agencies will only make things worse for the City and for all vendors.
Even more than the bad effect it would have on street artists and other vendors, your facilitating the NWO of vending would be a great disservice to the civil liberties of all your constituents and of all Americans.
Sincerely Yours,
Robert Lederman,
President of A.R.T.I.S.T.
(Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics)
(201) 896-1686
robert.lederman@worldnet.att.netALSO see:
NY Times 9/4/02 Commerce Rushes in Where Art Once Ruled Newsday 5/20/02 Street Artists Refuse to Be Curbed NY Sun 1/8/03 To Vend Or Not To Vend NY Sun 12/24/02 City Is Planning New Rules For Vendors NY Sun Editorial 8/15/02Paranoid Protesting NY Sun 8/14/02 Parks Commissioner Planning a Crackdown On Venders of Artwork NY Times 8/11/01 Judge Bars Permit Requirement for Art Vendors NY Post 8/11/2001Court: Permit Art Without Permit Newsday 8/11/2001 Judge: Street artists no longer have to buy vendor permits Newsday 1/28/03 Selling Art In Parks At Issue OUR TOWN 2/13/03 City May Subject Park Artists to Permit System, Many cite First Amendment violations NY Sun 1/28/03 Venders Protest City Plan To Require Park Permits Newsday 1/22/03 Putting Burgers Before Art Parks Commissioner Wants Artists Out, Fast Food In NY Newsday Jan 20, 2003 Wendy's Plan Makes Park A Garden of Eatin'; Fast food on public property New York Sun 9/24/02 ARTISTS GAIN STRENGTH IN FIGHT WITH MAYOR Newsday 8/15/02 Mayor's Bill Is Last Draw For Artists Newsday 3/2/98 Objections D' Art Newsday 2/26/98 Artistic Licenses NY Times 3/2/98 Artists Arrested in a Rally Opposing Permits NY Times 3/22/98 War of the Paintbrushes NY Times editorial 8/20/01 New York's Art Wars Continue NY Times editorial The Fight Over Street Art 3/4/98 NY Post editorial 5/17/98 The ARTIST Hustle N.Y. Post editorial 8/20/98 Free Speech Or Free Exhibition Space? NY Post editorial 6/16/98 Demonizing Rudy Giuliani Christian Science Monitor 7/14/94 New York Reins In Street Art Christian Science Monitor 2/14/96 Conflict on the Street: Artists v. N.Y.C. Washington Post 3/20/2000 Speech Activist 2; Capitol Police 0 Washington Post 6/1/2002 Capitol Ban on Protests Nullified Court Opens Sidewalk To Demonstrators [Ruling: Robert Lederman v. United States] NY Daily News 4/12/2002 Peddlers Take Stand Vs. Cops for Art's Sake Newsday 12/19/99 A Thorn in the Mayor's Side Village Voice 4/2/03 Pro-War Media Conglomerate Tries to Take Over New York NY Observer NY 3/31/03 Will Parks Department Once Again Regulate Art Vendors? Village Voice 3/12/03 Christo Challenges Bloomberg on Art in the Parks; Closing 'The Gates' to Intro #160 Newsday 1/28/03 Selling Art In Parks At Issue NY Times 8/17/01PUBLIC LIVES End Draws Near for Mayor's Artful Adversary "Chronic Offender", Village Voice 2/24/98; 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"; Editorial: "the Big Chill" by Bob Herbert NY Times 5/31/98.; NY Times 6/2/98 "Vending Ban Widens: not Just Food But also Books and Art". Consumer Affairs Committee members
may be sent email at:
- Reed@council.nyc.ny.us
- jackson@council.nyc.ny.us
- barron@council.nyc.ny.us
- davis@council.nyc.ny.us
- golden@council.nyc.ny.us
- koppell@council.nyc.ny.us
- liu@council.nyc.ny.us
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 websiteHis 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
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