Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at:
http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="">ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
--- Begin Message ----Caveat Lector- The following was just sent to all NYC Councilmembers and NY State legislators2/9/04 Dear Councilmember, There are now four new proposed laws aimed at NYC vendors, all of which you will soon be asked to vote on. You'll hear from the Mayor, DCA Commissioner Dykstra, Parks Commissioner Benepe and the BIDs about the "urgent" need for them. Here's a very different perspective on these proposed laws from someone who has spent 41 years as a NYC vendor and won four Federal lawsuits in regard to free speech on public property. These proposed laws are: A. Intro # 48 (formerly known as Intro # 160) now before the Parks Committee, authorizing the Parks Commissioner to impose a permit system on First Amendment-protected artists and written matter vendors; B. Intro # 104 before the Sanitation Committee which allows the police to issue vendors summonses for any nearby litter, including litter that did not come from their stand; C. Intro # 109 before the Consumer Affairs Committees which severely increases the existing penalties for vending; and D. A proposed bill before the NY State legislature A09054 concerning disabled veteran vendors and First Amendment-protected vendors in Midtown and around the WTC area. According to our sources in Albany this State law will direct the City to create arbitrary vendor-free zones around various areas of NYC, including most of Midtown, and to create a completely new regulatory system on the street for First Amendment-protected vendors which will involve a lottery, assigned spaces, an arbitrary numerical limit and/or a permit. What's Behind The Anti-Vending Agenda I will comment on these proposed laws separately below alongside the text of each, but first, here's the supposed rational for these laws as described by those who have proposed them. You are being asked to believe that due to the rulings in the street artist lawsuits and the expiration of the disabled veteran vendor law restricting certain streets in Midtown, that the City of NY no longer has ANY ability to regulate vending or to regulate any vendors. You are also being asked to believe that vending by street artists and disabled veteran vendors has become a serious threat to public safety; that the already severe penalties for vending are somehow too mild; that NYC Parks are overrun with street artists whose vending activities are not consistent with the proper use of Parks and that the Parks Department has no ability whatsoever to regulate street artists without resorting to a permit system. I respect the Mayor, his commissioners and the BIDs right to express their own opinions about vending, opinions which are obviously quite different from mine. What I can't support is City Council members and NY State legislators being asked to vote for laws based on outright deception and fraud. Recently the NY City Council voted to oppose the Patriot Act and many Councilmembers have made their opposition to the war in Iraq well-known. Allow me to draw a parallel between these national issues and our local issue. The justifications being offered for these new vending laws are very like the justifications President Bush offered for the war in Iraq. An exaggerated threat is being created for the purpose of rushing you to vote for laws you would not otherwise be inclined to support. These justifications are knowingly false, culturally and racially biased and they are motivated by a corporate agenda which itself is far more of a threat to public safety than anything even the most imaginative critic of ours would claim to be caused by vendors. Like the war in Iraq and the Patriot Act, once one understands what those pushing you to pass these new laws really have in mind, it's impossible to see them as anything but a cynical exercise in privatization and a blatant attempt to violate the Constitutional protections of this State and this nation. Shortly you will find yourself in a similar position to that which the US Congress found itself when they were asked to vote in the dark for a Patriot Act which strips Americans of their rights then asked to authorize a war that is both needless and damaging to the genuine interests of the American public. In hindsight many of these US legislators have expressed serious misgivings. The War on Vendors is a similarly misguided effort, designed not to protect the public but to benefit the wealthiest corporate interests. The Big Lie Exposed The most blatantly false aspect of this anti-vendor propaganda is the notion that the City has no ability to regulate vending due to the rulings in the street artist lawsuits and the expiration of the disabled veteran vendor street restrictions. Here's an excerpt from a typical example of this anti-vendor propaganda, out of more than forty such that have recently appeared in the NY media: NY Post 12/31/03 NYERS GET FED UP WITH HAWKER CLOG "When the law expired and state lawmakers were unable to reach a deal to renew it, the floodgates were opened, vendor chaos was born, and pretty much anyone interested in selling on a city street could...BID President Tim Tompkins said, "Having this many vendors, totally unregulated, is not only unsafe but it also contributes to a sense of disorder." He said the NYPD doesn't "have the legal tools to do anything about it." "Pandemonium" is how Police Commissioner Ray Kelly described the street vending situation. "We are evoking our emergency powers" when the streets become too congested, he said. And, he added, "Obviously, we need the state to pass a new law." Aside from scores of newspaper articles and editorials making this absurd claim about the City being unable to regulate vendors, it has been repeatedly made by the Mayor, the BIDs, Commissioner Benepe and Commissioner Dykstra at various Council hearings and in the press. Is there even a shred of truth to it? In reality, the NYPD Commissioner has issued internal directives to all police precincts ordering police officers NOT to enforce the existing and still valid size and placement vending restrictions, based on the knowingly-false concept that the expiration of midtown street restrictions on disabled veteran vendors means that NO vending laws can be enforced against them or any other vendors. [See Operations Order #33 issued on 7/15/03] Optically scanned excerpt: "1. On February 28th, 2003, FINEST Message Serial # 018236 was published to inform members of the service that on March 1St Section 35-a of the New York State General Business Law would expire. This section of law regulated the activities of Disabled Veteran Vendors. The State Legislature recently adjourned its legislative session without renewing the above section of law. 2. Therefore, members of the service are reminded NOT to enforce the provisions of the above section of law or the provisions of Section 20-465 of the New York City Administrative Code relating to the size and placement of general vendors' displays or any of the restricted street provisions against Disabled Veteran Vendors." END QUOTE However, this very same NYPD directive then goes on to list numerous circumstances that allow the police to summons, confiscate and arrest disabled vets, artists and all other types of vendors, and even to clear entire blocks where vending is perfectly legal DESPITE the disabled veteran vendor law expiring. In other words directly confirming that the City still has numerous means at its disposal to regulate vending and to deal with congestion without a single new law being passed. Let me state for the record that I do not blame Commissioner Kelly or the NYPD legal division for misleading the media and the City Council about this issue. Like the CIA intelligence analysts, Secretary Powell and other Bush administration officials who were apparently pressured to falsify data, these are good soldiers obeying their orders. In NYC those orders come from the Mayor and the Business Improvement Districts or BIDs. BIDs are corporate interests which as you surely know have a very incestuous relationship with the NYPD. BIDs are where many high-ranking NYPD officials go to work after they retire and some BIDs, such as the Alliance for Downtown NY BID, actually provide the NYPD with precinct houses, vehicles and other equipment as well as employing them as security guards when they are off-duty. It's hardly surprising that police officials feel pressured to do the BIDs anti-vendor dirty work. Contrary to these obviously false claims about there being no enforceable vending rules, neither the Kaswan decision concerning disabled veteran vendors nor the various Federal rulings concerning street artists [Bery et al v City of NY /Lederman et al v City of NY; Lederman et al v Giuliani / Bach et al v City of NY] ever suggested that the City could not continue to enforce most of the Vending Ordinance's 60 pages of existing time, place and manner vending regulations against such vendors in Parks and on the streets. All the disabled veteran vending law expiring in 2003 actually meant was that disabled veteran vendors could now vend (exactly as the original Civil War era law stated) on any street, including those midtown streets the BIDs had pressured Mayor Giuliani to arbitrarily restrict. After the law expired, disabled war veteran vendors have remained subject to all other existing laws about the time, place and manner of their vending activity. In reality, they are frequently summonsed or arrested for violating these vending restrictions, a fact which City officials and the media have conveniently hidden from the public but which is known firsthand to every NYC vendor. Likewise, street artists and written matter vendors remain subject to numerous restrictions on the size and placement of their displays on City streets and in Parks and are routinely summonsed, confiscated or arrested if they violate them. Additionally, the rulings in our lawsuits specifically stated that the Parks Department retains its right to impose any new rules it needs about size and placement of art vending displays, so long as it does not impose a permit and/or lottery system. All our rulings mean is that we are fully protected by the First Amendment and cannot be subject to a license or a permit. Why the Need For Deception in The War Against Vendors? You might ask, why are BIDs and some City officials falsifying the real vending situation, going so far as to direct the police not to enforce the existing vending laws? Their idea is to make the vending situation seem as chaotic as possible in order to stir up City Councilmembers and the public against vendors. This, they hope, will pressure you to blindly vote in favor of these proposed new laws. An analogy to this would be a police directive ordering officers not to enforce the existing laws against prostitution, drunken driving or drug dealing so as to agitate the public against these activities and prepare the way for drastic legislation that might not otherwise seem acceptable. Exactly as in the Iraq analogy, corporate interests in NYC exemplified by the BIDS are the hidden force behind this misguided War on Vendors. Ironically, in some instances the exact same corporate interests are pulling the strings behind both issues. In Iraq, seizing control of the oil is the motivation while here in NYC these interests have a very clear agenda aimed at seizing control of the City's public streets and Parks so as to use them to advance their own financial, political and media interests. Can We Prove They Are Lying about Vending? The real question should be, how can anyone miss it? One has only to compare the Parks Commissioner's many statements in which he claims that a handful of street artists are "commercializing" Central Park to his daily actions, in which he aggressively and very publicly seeks out corporate interests to take over entire parks for fashion shows, food promotions, fast food restaurants, sneaker companies promotions, bars, movie premieres, film shootings and corporate ads of every imaginable variety [See: Newsday 1/22/03 Putting Burgers Before Art Parks Commissioner Wants Artists Out, Fas t Food In]. On a weekly basis the Parks Department puts ads in newspapers and sends out email announcements soliciting corporate vendors to submit bids to set up new Park vending concessions all over the City. If Commissioner Benepe thinks street artists are incompatible with the intended use of Parks can he explain promoting hundreds of such absurdly Park-incompatible events as a Boloney Festival, a Wendys and a bar built right alongside a playground? Mayor Bloomberg is the real sponsor of intro # 48. If he thinks there are too many street artists taking up too much space in Central Park, can he explain his own media company and the Central Park Conservancy (a group he is a very prominent member of) arranging for hundreds of giant works of art to be set up throughout the exact same Park - at the exact same time he is proposing this bill? [SEE: NY Times 1/29/04 "The Whitney Biennial Will Be Playing in the Park" Quote: "There will be art from one end of Central Park to the other, including grotesque sculptures of werewolf heads, a ferocious life-size tiger, a bronze bust of Michael Jackson and a 50-foot-tall inflatable pink rubber ketchup bottle topped with a snowmanlike head."] The answer is that this is all elite corporate-sponsored art, in some instances by artists such as Christo and Jeanne Claude whose works our billionaire Mayor collects. The Mayor and the Central Park Conservancy (financed in large part by JC Morgan Chase Bank) think it's reasonable to allow a twenty three mile long art display for Christo, then eliminate street artists from the same Park via Intro # 48. I note here for the record that Christo and Jeanne Claude have written to their good friend and patron the Mayor and publicly opposed his attempts to impose a permit on NYC street artists [See Village Voice 3/12/03 Christo Challenges Bloomberg on Art in the Parks; Closing 'The Gates' to Intro #160]. Are we to accept as plausible that the Mayor and the Central Park Conservancy sincerely believe a 23 mile construction of banners, a giant statue of accused child molester Michael Jackson, a huge Ketchup bottle and a huge arrangement of "werewolf heads" among other gigantic constructions are a good use for Central Park, but a few 6 foot art displays by the members of ARTIST are not? This is corporate-sponsored elitism on an almost comical level. It is also censorship, with government officials and their corporate pals choosing which forms of expression, which artists and which works of art they will allow to be shown on public property. For an example you might find even closer to home, take a look at the bizarre giant sculptures that the Mayor, and JP MorganChase bank have been installing inside City Hall Park, a park where political artists such as myself were repeatedly arrested for daring to sell so much as a 4 X 6 inch political postcard criticizing JP MorganChase Bank's connection to Mayor Giuliani. Please don't misconstrue my meaning here; I am not opposed to controversial works being shown in Parks or to the artists showing them, only to the City picking and choosing which artists have access to public property. Public Safety is A Cover Story This pattern of deception about the vending issue is remarkably consistent because it's all part of one well-orchestrated plan by the BIDs and similar groups such as the Central Park Conservancy, which both runs and financially profits from all the vending concessions in Central Park. On the sidewalks, you are being asked to believe that a moderate increase in the number of vendors in Midtown (which the Times Sq. BID itself has admitted is only a slight increase) justifies a ban or drastic limitation on all vendors in Midtown. [NY Times 12/2/03 At Crossroads of World, Gridlock on the Sidewalks "The Times Square improvement district has surveyed vendors three times since the law lapsed. It found 208 vendors on the Times Square sidewalks on Oct. 15 - 66 more than were there on April 23."] Is that the "emergency" justifying these drastic new restrictions on disabled veterans and free speech, an additional 66 vendors in a 40 block area that routinely holds millions of tourists? Can you blame me for saying these people have a sinister and deceptive agenda? You are being asked to accept that these proposed laws are intended to protect public safety - but is there the slightest shred of evidence to back this up? The real issue here is that the BIDs want to use the exact same space vendors are in for advertising - and that advertising is itself the real threat to public safety. Compare the safety rational for the proposed vendor ban to the fact that the Times Sq. BID has recently installed 400 four-sided ad-covered trash cans in the same area, all of which are bolted to the sidewalk near crosswalks. On these garbage can ad kiosks they are charging $500 a month for each ad [Daily News 12/2/03 City Trashes Sponsors - For A Fee "A single panel on a four-sided Times Square bin is already fetching $500 per month, Cranston added...Some 400 large, square trash cans were installed there over the summer, and 80% of the cans have been sold to advertisers by the Times Square Business Improvement District. The ads are due to appear next month."] This money goes to the BID not the City. Soon, every BID in the City will follow suit. There are 40 or so BIDs. Multiply that times 400 and you will have a mere 16,000 of these new BID-owned trash can ad-kiosk obstructions sprouting up near every crosswalk in NYC. Need one mention the thousands of knee-high concrete planters the BIDs have (in most cases illegally) installed in the exact locations where vending is legal so as to displace vendors? Can we have a statistic for how many thousands of pedestrians have been injured bumping into them? Some blocks within the Midtown BIDs have a planter every two or three feet. Now these same BIDs are applying for permits to install thousands of concrete "security" boxes, also aimed for the most part at displacing vendors. Can any City official explain how a temporary vendor causes congestion but a permanently installed forest of concrete planters with BID logos do not? The Media Is The Message You've likely seen many of the 40 or so recent mainstream news stories and lead editorials hysterically declaring this to be a City under siege from street artists and disabled veteran vendors. Might the handful of media conglomerates that now control virtually all news reporting have an agenda in this as well? Compare this proposed ban on vendors to Mayor Bloomberg's misguided Street Furniture Initiative in which 3,000 very large ad-covered sidewalk kiosks disguised as bus shelters, pay toilets and benches will be set up on the exact same spots where vendors now legally sell their wares. These digital ad kiosks, which the Council was tricked into voting for under the deception that the initiative was about 20 pay toilets, will damage business for stores by distracting customers from looking in their windows, obstruct the sidewalks 24 hours a day seven days a week and will get in the way of emergency responders whenever there is a fire, an injury or anything else they must react to. These kiosks cannot be moved in an emergency - short of using heavy equipment to rip them out of the street. Need one mention the effect on pedestrians of these 3,000 permanently-installed new sidewalk obstructions displaying disorienting lights, video and audio advertising to pedestrians and drivers? Just imagine how many car accidents will result from drivers watching these ads. According to industry press releases, it appears this Street Furniture will also house cell phone transmitters and repeaters, which many scientists and health advocacy groups worldwide consider a likely source of cancer-causing radiation. So far, not even the most rabidly anti-vendor organization has gotten around to claiming vendors cause cancer. Clearly, there is an agenda here in which public safety, like weapons of mass destruction, nation building and encouraging so-called democracy, is merely the cover story. Media conglomerates, many of which started the BIDs or sit on their boards of directors, are trying to displace vendors with advertising on public property. To accomplish this they want to take away not only vendors rights but the free speech rights of the entire public. As City officials sworn to protect the interests of all New Yorkers and to uphold the Constitutions of both NY State and the US, you cannot responsibly ignore these facts. Unlike the BIDs, we seek no exclusive right to this property, only that it continue to be kept accessible for every New Yorkers' speech, association and reasonable commerce as ordered by various Federal and State courts and by both the NY State and US Constitutions. Corporate interests surely have more than enough venues in which to advertise and promote their mind-numbing propaganda messages on private property and on the publicly-owned airwaves without them seizing the last remaining public spaces in NYC for their exclusive private use. If anything, Midtown, Times Square and SoHo are already inundated with a virtual orgy of advertising, and now Commissioner Benepe has stated that he wants to bring this same proliferation of advertising right into our public parks. Mayor Bloomberg has even brought this commercial advertising into all the public schools via his controversial deal with Snapple - and now he wants it in every NYC hospital. [See: NY Post 2/8/04 City Hospitals Get in Bed With Advertisers "As if New Yorkers weren't bombarded with enough ads on subways, buses, bus stops, billboards, garbage cans, television and phone booths, now they're getting hit at hospitals. Beginning this summer, in what the city calls a first in the nation, 20 public hospitals will be festooned with 2,500 indoor electronic ad banners and an unspecified number of outdoor advertising kiosks."] We're not against the free speech rights of these corporate interests. Unfortunately, they are apparently very much against and very envious of ours. We are asking you for a fair and reasonable balance; to defend First Amendment-protected street artists and disabled war veterans instead of one-sidedly favoring the interests of BIDs and of these corporations, most notable among them the notorious right wing conglomerate, Clear Channel Communications, which is poised to get the lucrative Street Furniture Initiative contract. We are asking you to defend the interests of the vast majority of your constituency, who will lose their own rights on public property simultaneously with these bills passing. We are asking you to do the right thing and vote no on all of these proposed new vending restrictions. Robert Lederman, President of A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics) [EMAIL PROTECTED] [ARTIST has a large archive of newspaper articles about the Parks Department, The Street Furniture Initiative and vending proving these allegations. The rulings from our lawsuits are available at in the links section and in the archives of our website http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NYCStreetArtists/ as are hundreds of news articles on vending. ] >From the City Council website http://www.council.nyc.ny.us/ Intro # 0048 (See the address below for the entire text) http://www.council.nyc.ny.us/textfiles/Int%200048-2004.htm Int. No. 48 [IMPORTANT NOTE: Because of the history of vending law in NYC "vending of written matter" always means books, newspapers, art, sculpture, paintings, photos etc...anything protected by the First Amendment] By Council Member Foster (by request of the Mayor) ..Title A Local Law to amend the administrative code of the city of New York, in order to clarify the express authority of the commissioner of parks and recreation to regulate the vending of written matter within the geographical areas under the jurisdiction of parks and recreation. ..Body Be it enacted by the Council as follows: Section 1. Declaration of legislative findings and intent. The Council finds and declares that the vending of written matter should be free of unnecessary restrictions as long as such activity is not a threat to the public health, safety or welfare. The Council also finds that geographical areas under the jurisdiction of the department of parks and recreation are integral in preserving the welfare of the public. As such, the commissioner of parks and recreation has the responsibility of balancing the interest of the public to enjoy the resources of parks with the rights of the vendors of written matter. Permitting unbridled and unregulated vending of written matter in parks seriously undermines the ability of the commissioner of parks and recreation to provide public recreational activity and to preserve the character of parks for the benefit of the public. Moreover, parks and parks facilities should not be overrun with commercial activity. The Council further finds that there is a specific need for reasonable measures to regulate the time, place and manner for the vending of written materials in parks consistent with the First Amendment. Accordingly, the commissioner of parks and recreation shall be authorized to regulate, through a permitting system, the vending of written matter in areas under the commissioner's jurisdiction. --------Sanitation Committee Intro # 104---------- [NOTE on Intro # 104 - This law is an open invitation for harassment. There's no way any vendor in NYC can stop litter from ending up in front of their display, even if they clean the area every few minutes. The wind will blow new litter there continuously. Stores already get tens of thousands of these unfair summonses for litter that has no relation to their business activity. The penalties for vending summonses double each time you get one. A $25 fine becomes $50, then $100, then $200 and so on. The police could give a vendor a sanitation summons every day and put them out of business in no time. I have no problem with requiring vendors to clean up their own garbage and most already do so in the interests of making their stand presentable, but that's not what this is about. "General vendors" in this context means all vendors including artists and disabled vets. ] Intro # 104 Vendors to keep the area free from litter. A Local Law to amend the administrative code of the city of New York, in relation to requiring food vendors and general vendors to keep the area in which they vend free from litter. ------------------------------ ----------INTRO # 109 Consumer Affairs Committee-------- [Note on Intro # 109 - Are the penalties for vending too lax, as Commissioner Dykstra has testified before the Consumer Affairs Committee? So-called illegal vendors as well as any other vendors who get arrested are already subject to confiscation, arrest, a $1,000 fine and imprisonment for up to a year. What's lax about that? Contrary to the claims of Commissioner Dykstra and the Mayor's Criminal Justice Coordinator, Mr. Feinblatt, every single vendor who is arrested is already photographed, ink fingerprinted and in most cases, also digitally fingerprinted as well. If they go through the system, as I have, they are also digitally face scanned. None of these records are ever discarded or truly sealed, contrary to popular myth. What this bill proposes is vague and is likely to be an opening to even further penalties, but we can surmise what it's sponsors really have in mind. Last year Commissioner Dykstra and Mr. Feinblatt were advocating a plan in which three misdemeanor convictions for vending violations would become an automatic felony with a mandatory year in prison. The judge would then be forced to give a convicted vendor this sentence even if they think it is completely unwarranted. Once there is a permit system in Parks and on the street (Intro # 48 and the new proposed disabled veteran vendor and street artist restrictions) any legal vendor who violates those laws will then also be subject to this new law, Intro # 109. In other words, artists and vets who violate these new laws will be considered illegal vendors. Please note that Commissioner Dykstra is the former head of the Times Sq BID and that Mr. Feinblatt ran the BIDs 54th Street Community Court for many years. That court assigns vendors to work for the very BIDs that had them arrested. ] Intro # 109 Increasing penalties for illegal general vendors and food vendors. A Local Law to amend the administrative code of the city of New York, in relation to increasing penalties for illegal general vendors and food vendors. Please address your comments or questions to: Robert Lederman, President of A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics) [EMAIL PROTECTED] Street artist information http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NYCStreetArtists/ http://www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyc.html www.ctrl.org DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ <A HREF="http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/">ctrl</A> ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
--- End Message ---
