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--- Begin Message ----Caveat Lector- Protests and Permits on August 30thThe Newsday article below on the endless series of obstacles the City is placing in the way of protests scheduled for the GOP convention illustrates a point I've been making for the past ten years: permits exist soley to deny freedom of speech to protestors. Bloomberg's quote that in order to protest you need a permit is the police state's key message in this regard, and it is an affront to the US Constitution. Permits are the antithethis of free speech. Having won four Federal lawsuits on free speech activity, specifically about permits, I know there are ways to do this lawfully without getting a permit. Particularly in this regard, in 2001 I won a lawsuit [Lederman v U.S.] about the permit requirement in front of the US Capitol.The Federal Appeals Court for the DC District overturned the permit requirement. Having to beg the very government you are protesting against for permission to protest, for the time you can protest within and for the location you will be allowed to protest is usually more than enough to cause most protest activity to stop without the need for any other police action. How many activists really want to submit their names and addresses to One Police Plaza, to go on the record as being anti-Bush and to open themselves up to so much governmental snooping? Intimidation, chilling of speech and the ability to do survelliance is the context behind this application process. Considering what this protest faces in terms of a massive police presence, blocked streets, pens etc. what good will the permit be anyway? Thousands are likely to be arrested regardless of what they do or don't do and tens of thousands are likely to never be allowed to reach the protest area. You'll recall that the Million Youth March riot was started because the permit they were given demanded it cease at 5PM and when they went a minute over that the police moved in. When the time limit for this protest arrives, and 500,000 protestor are told to go home, and can't move because they are in pens, will the police use it as an excuse to start arresting people? I intend no criticism of the organizers by my comments. They have spent more than a year trying to professionally organize this event according to City guidelines so that it will be safe, orderly and effective. The problem is that the City and the GOP just don't want there to be any protest. They not only don't want a giant protest, they don't want there to even be one sign visible at ground zero when Bush and Giuliani continue their "hero" charade at the site in front of the world media. Perhaps the solution is a dispersed protest everywhere in NYC at once, with protest signs on every street corner rather than all in one spot; with hundreds of thousands of individual protestors walking up and down on all the Midtown streets with signs and with no permit (none is needed to do this). If 100,000 protestors come to Central Park as individuals or in groups of 20 or less, no permit will be needed there either. The only way the City could stop that protest would be martial law and that would say more about the GOP than any protest. Robert Lederman <http://nytimes.com/2004/06/16/nyregion/16permits.html> June 16, 2004 Deadline Extended for Applying to Protest Convention By THE NEW YORK TIMES he New York City Police Department has extended the deadline for organizations that plan protests around the Republican National Convention to apply for permits. The original deadline was yesterday, but the department will continue to take applications up to a month before the convention, which begins Aug. 30, said Paul J. Browne, the deputy police commissioner for public information. He said the city received applications from 12 groups. "We're going to make a good-faith effort with all of the groups in front of us," said Mr. Browne. But at a news conference across from Madison Square Garden, members of eight groups said they felt that city officials were stalling. Bill Dobbs, a spokesman for United for Peace and Justice, said, "We are having serious difficulties with Mayor Bloomberg, police and others rolling out the red carpet for the Republicans but doing very little to accommodate the rights of those who wish to dissent." Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | Help | Back to Top <http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local/manhattan/nyc-protest,0,2734452.story?c oll=nyc-moreny-headlines> City: protesters scuttling negotiations By Daryl Khan and Glenn Thrush Staff Writers June 13, 2004 The mayor and the police commissioner Sunday accused the anti-war group organizing the largest protest against the Republican National Convention of deliberately scuttling negotiations to settle on a route. "We've been waiting to meet with them for a couple of months now," Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said of United for Peace and Justice, the anti war group that is planning for a protest march and rally for 250,000 people this summer. "They've been told the park was not available," Kelly said. "We gave them some alternatives at that meeting. They haven't met with us." Mayor Michael Bloomberg repeated the city's decision to deny the protesters the use of Central Park's Great Lawn as the terminus of their protest route and stressed that the city is willing to entertain a protest as long as it's permitted. "If you want to protest, you have to get a permit," Bloomberg said. "This city is perfectly prepared to issue permits. But you've got to come and ask for them. If you rush to the newspapers and complain you haven't been given one and you've never asked, I don't know why it makes any sense." Officials from the police department have said that they are going to need several weeks to review all the permit applications that come in by the June 15 deadline. United for Peace and Justice spokesman William K. Dobbs said he was baffled by the mayor's and Kelly's comments, since his organization has met with members of the police department, most recently the week before Memorial Day. "We ask to reschedule and suddenly the police commissioner goes ballistic, and sends out a letter to the media before it gets to us," Dobbs said. "It makes one wonder whether the NYPD is coming to the table with good faith, because we are." Dobbs added that his group filed for their protest permit a year ago. "The negotiations have been proceeding," Dobbs said. "There have been moments when the police couldn't meet. They're blowing it all out of all proportion." Dobbs said he is frustrated that Bloomberg and Kelly are squabbling about broken appointments. "It's regrettable that the commissioner is wasting his words on a matter like this rather than addressing the substance of the issues like public safety," Dobbs said. Copyright � 2004, Newsday, Inc NY Times PHOTO: Courtesy of Arthur Robins A video of Arthur Robins, left, being questioned by the police at home. In Post-9/11 World, Police Star in Artist's Video By JULIE SALAMON Published: June 12, 2004 It looked as if it was going to rain. That minor portent of gloom catapulted Arthur Robins into the middle of a police drama involving a mystery at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, an elite antiterrorist squad from New York's finest, George W. Bush and a possible case of sartorial profiling. Ripped from the headlines? Well, yes. But this New York story played more like "Seinfeld" than "Law & Order," while tapping genuine concerns about police boundaries and behavior in a post-9/11 world. The half-hour of video on which Mr. Robins recorded part of his experience belongs, perhaps, to its own genre: call it sur-reality TV. The beginning: Mr. Robins, a 50-year-old artist who often sells his work on the street, decided to set up shop outside the Met last Saturday. But on arrival the weather looked dubious. Realizing that he hadn't been inside the Met in years, he decided to leave his prints and paintings in his van and pay a visit. He spent an hour or so strolling through a special exhibition, "Painters of Reality: The Legacy of Leonardo and Caravaggio in Lombardy," and then moved on to the Impressionist galleries. Mr. Robins is a noticeable but not all that unusual type in a museum crowd: longish curly gray hair, jeans and almost always a tie-dyed shirt and cap. Last Saturday he wore a tie-dyed jacket, too. It was chilly. Next stop, he thought, would be the armor collection. But instead, Mr. Robins found himself surrounded by security guards and a policeman, who took him to an unoccupied gallery for questioning: Had he been in Philadelphia recently? What was he doing at the Met? He soon learned he was a suspect in the case of an unauthorized art hanging. While he was touring the Met, guards there and at the Guggenheim discovered that someone had taped up an image of President Bush in front of a field of chopped-up United States currency. The paintings were accompanied by notes, sealed in plastic bags, that protested genetic profiling. Similar renderings had been discovered at museums in Philadelphia, Washington and Baltimore. According to Mr. Robins, the guards told him a woman in her 60's had pointed him out as the culprit. The guards then took Mr. Robins to an office and showed him the offending piece of art. They asked Mr. Robins if the painting was his. Until then, the artist said, he had been experiencing shock, fear, curiosity and even a little amusement. But the question of authorship hit a nerve. "It was an insult," he said. "That piece was so cartoonish and trite. I don't do overt political art. I consider it a cop-out." Plus, said Mr. Robins, who is a born-again Christian, the politics are wrong. "Out of 90,000 street artists in New York, they picked the one who doesn't despise Bush," he said. After a half-hour, the guards told him to go. Mr. Robins resumed his museum tour in the armor galleries. Then he called Robert Lederman, an old friend. Mr. Lederman is an artist known best for the sardonic portraits he painted of Rudolph W. Giuliani when he was mayor and for waging four successful federal lawsuits on behalf of the rights of street artists to display their work. The two men met 15 years ago when Mr. Robins, then earning a living as a carpenter, saw Mr. Lederman selling art on the street and asked for advice. After that, Mr. Lederman became a political activist and Mr. Robins always supported him. But while Mr. Lederman was bold - with 40 arrests (no convictions) under his belt - Mr. Robins was cautious, willing to protest but not to confront. He has never been arrested. Mr. Lederman advised Mr. Robins to keep a tape recorder at the ready, in case the police came to call. That night, at 11 p.m., they did just that. Mr. Robins was startled to hear someone knocking loudly on the door of his apartment in Queens. He looked in the peephole and saw a badge. Five police officers walked in, no uniforms: three were wearing suits, one a sports jacket and slacks, and a fifth dressed more casually, in jeans. Remembering Mr. Lederman's warning, Mr. Robins immediately asked the officers if he could videotape them. No problem, one said, just no faces. But nobody checked the viewfinder when Mr. Robins propped the camera on top of his television set, affording a full view of his living room, the art displayed on shelves and walls, himself, and his five visitors, faces included. For several minutes the police rehashed questions Mr. Robins had been asked at the museum: Why was he there? Had he been out of the city recently? Then, in one of those odd shifts that can make reality television so riveting, the discussion turned to why five policemen, including two from a terrorist investigative unit, were in Mr. Robins's apartment, unannounced and without a warrant, on a Saturday night. They acknowledged the crime in question - if indeed a crime at all - was small. "The criminality here is like this," one officer said jovially, putting his index finger very close to his thumb to indicate a very small amount. But the world has changed. "The picture of Bush, the whole thing, people get worried," an officer explained. "Five or six years ago everyone would have said, `Pfft.' These days, an empty suitcase in Manhattan can cause mass hysteria." They took a tour of Mr. Robins's studio, one floor down from his living quarters, and complimented him. "I actually do like your paintings," one said. "Hats off to you." That seemed to be that. A few days later, however, upon reading newspaper accounts of the protest art at the Guggenheim and the Met, Mr. Lederman called a reporter and told her Mr. Robins's story. The reporter and the artist met at a cafe in Greenwich Village, where they sat outdoors. Shortly into the conversation, which Mr. Robins recorded on tape, a blue sedan pulled up next to them, with two men in the front seat. Mr. Robins and one of the men - he had a mustache - stared at each other briefly and then looked away. Mr. Robins said he felt he knew the man but couldn't place him. The reporter looked at the man with the mustache. "Are you cops?" she asked. He laughed. "No, we're from CBS News." A few minutes later the blue sedan began to pull away from the curb. The man with the mustache called out, "You're looking good, Arthur." Mr. Robins remembered who the man was. "That's McCabe!" he said. "He was one of the men who came to my apartment." Sure enough, the two men with mustaches - on film and in real life - matched. But how did he know where Mr. Robins was meeting the reporter? He couldn't have followed Mr. Robins from Queens, because the artist had traveled by subway. Had he somehow overheard the two making arrangements by telephone? The reporter called the Joint Terrorist Task Force and reached Detective Rich McCabe. He laughed at the suggestion that Mr. Robins's phone had been tapped. "I know you're not going to believe this in a million years, but it was a fluke," he said. "We were coming from a case going down to our office and we saw you. You're not writing this down are you? You're going to jam me up." (A nice "N.Y.P.D. Blue" touch.) Paul J. Browne, the Police Department's deputy commissioner of public information, said that Mr. Robins was no longer considered a suspect. Mr. Browne also said that it was ridiculous to mention that Detective McCabe said he was from CBS News. "He was just joking with you," Mr. Browne said. "The guy is a 20-year homicide detective and now with the Joint Terrorist Task Force. He happened to be on his way back to their offices and he happened to spot the guy. That's all there is to it." The reporter didn't want to jam up Detective McCabe. But then, the post-9/11 world is a risky place. --------------------- Robert Lederman, President of A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics) [EMAIL PROTECTED] (201) 896-1686 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
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