Jim Baird
----- Original Message ----- From: "Doug Henwood" <dhenwood at panix.com> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com> Sent: Friday, February 25, 2000 7:18 AM Subject: freedom of assembly, Rudy style
> X-From_: ARTISTpres at aol.com Fri Feb 25 10:02:41 2000
> From: ARTISTpres at aol.com
> Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2000 09:55:42 EST
> Subject: Giuliani's 20 Person Parks Rule Selec
> tively Enforced
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> To: undisclosed-recipients: ;
>
> Giuliani's 20 Person Parks Rule Selectively Enforced
> by Robert Lederman
>
> When street artists and vendors held a protest this past
> Wednesday 2/23/2000 at City Hall Park we got a first-hand
> experience of exactly what the Giuliani administration intends to
> do with its 20 person permit limitation on freedom of assembly.
>
> My co-organizer for this protest, Hyun Lee of CAAAV
> (Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence 212 473-6485 xt 100)
> a group which advocates for Chinatown vendors, spent a week
> applying for a permit to hold what we knew would be a small
> rally in City Hall Park. She met and talked with numerous police
> officials, respectfully filled out all of their forms and answered
> all of their questions. Parks Department and NYPD Intelligence
> officials also called her office with additional questions. One
> that they seemed especially keen on getting answered was, "Will
> Robert Lederman be there?"
>
> The officials strung her along with a promise of a permit to
> assemble and a separate sound permit right up until 10 AM on
> Wednesday morning when the rally was scheduled to begin. As
> the vendors and artists began to arrive at the fountain in City Hall
> Park in the belief that this would be a "legal" protest without
> police threats we were approached by a group of police officials
> and informed we'd been denied a permit. No reason was given.
>
> We then moved the protesters, most of whom spoke no English,
> to the very wide and virtually empty public sidewalk outside the
> south corner of the Park where thousands of demonstrations have
> been held, generally without a permit, since NYC was first
> incorporated. The police followed and informed us that based on
> the 20 person rule we were still violating Parks Department law
> and would either have to move the protest across the street to a
> much narrower and far more congested sidewalk or face arrest.
> They explained that Parks claims 500 feet in any direction from a
> park and that we were therefore still under their jurisdiction even
> though we were standing on a public sidewalk outside a park.
> Giuliani has not as yet created a 20 person limit rule on NYC
> streets.
>
> At that point I stepped in, did a head count (there were only 19
> demonstrators there at that point many of whom were female
> vendors and their children) and told the police we would not
> move the protest but would, to avoid arrest, send additional
> protesters across the street as they arrived. The police surrounded
> the protest and made a few further threats but by then there was a
> considerable media presence and I began addressing them on the
> 20 person rule and how it was being applied to silence the
> Mayor's critics. Due to the television cameras the police backed
> off and eventually fifty or sixty vendors participated in defiance
> of Giuliani's law.
>
> At last year's public hearing on this rule (9/22/99) Parks
> Commissioner Henry Stern and the Parks lead counsel Thomas
> Rozinski attempted to downplay the rule and how it would be
> enforced. Commissioner Stern told reporters who called him
> after receiving my press releases on the proposed rule that I was
> lying about how the rule would be used, about what it said and
> even about it being changed. At his press conference on 9/23
> Giuliani also lied to reporters claiming the 20 person rule didn't
> exist and that such a rule would never be enforced.
>
> Then on 12/8/99 34 members of an African American activist
> group, the Zulu Nation, were arrested in a park near their public
> high school on Staten Island at 3:45 in the afternoon and charged
> with, "unlawful assembly". Their crime?. They were holding a
> completely peaceful and quiet meeting for prospective members
> of their group in a park because they had no other facility in
> which to meet. While the City has called Zulu Nation a "street
> gang" they describe themselves as a community service and arts
> organization. One can reasonably assume they are not campaign
> contributors to or major supporters of Mayor Giuliani.
>
> On 1/19/2000 the City dropped all charges against the 34
> defendants. In a 1/20/2000 Staten Island Advance article the
> District Attorney's office explained that to get a conviction
> they'd of had to prove that someone had, "called a meeting and
> then gave a speech".
>
> In a 12/3/99 Daily News article the City further explained the
> law, making its purpose much clearer. "For an "impromptu
> gathering" of 20 or so people, "Don't worry about it,"
> [Parks Department Counsel] Rozinski said." The Cyberpark
> mailing list posted the final version of the rule on 12/3/99 which
> reads as follows:
>
> >>NOTICE OF ADOPTION OF FINAL RULE
> AMENDMENTS TO CHAPTER 1 OF TITLE 36 (56?) OF THE
> OFFICIAL COMPILATION OF THE RULES OF THE CITY
> OF NEW YORK.
> The final version of Special Event. "Special Event" means a
> group activity including, but not limited to a performance,
> meeting, assembly, contest, exhibit, ceremony, parade, athletic
> competition, reading or picnic involving more than 20 people or
> a group activity involving less than 20 people for which a
> specific space is requested to be reserved. Special Event shall
> not include casual park use by visitors or tourists.<<
>
> In other words the City won't enforce the rule against casual
> visitors or tourists but only against community activists who
> would dare to, "call a meeting and give a speech". Could one
> imagine a more blatant attempt to violate freedom of speech or
> freedom of assembly? Could one invent a more explicit example
> of selective enforcement? Again please note, the Parks
> Department and the NYPD Intelligence division both contacted
> Hyun Lee to determine if I, Robert Lederman, would be present
> while deciding on whether to issue a permit. One can be certain
> that if I was a noted Giuliani apologist rather than a Giuliani
> critic we would have gotten our permit or more likely, not have
> needed one at all.
>
> Those who are supporting Giuliani for Senate generally claim to
> love this country, the American way of life and the rule of law. I
> have no doubt that they are sincere, but unfortunately they are
> mistaken about the real views of their candidate. Behind his
> phony charts and false statistics, his ludicrous claims to want to
> put the Ten Commandments in schools and his pronouncements
> about improving "quality of life" Rudy Giuliani is an outright
> enemy of civil rights and is a chronic violator of freedom of
> speech. He uses his team of 680 lawyers in the NYC Corporation
> Counsel and hundreds of additional Giuliani appointed lawyers
> infesting every NYC City agency to fashion unconstitutional
> laws and then selectively enforce them against minorities, the
> poor and the Mayor's political opponents. When these lawyers
> are not occupied in deconstructing the Bill of Rights or
> obstructing justice they are kept busy arranging favors and
> special deals for Giuliani's wealthiest supporters.
>
> Giuliani is a criminal and his administration is a criminal
> enterprise. The Mayor likes to say, just look at my record of
> accomplishments. I agree that we should. However, if one looks
> at the Mayor's "accomplishments" the issuance of an arrest
> warrant rather than a campaign check would be the most
> appropriate response.
>
>
> Excerpted from: Daily News 12/3/99
> 'Casual' Groups Get Free Park Use
> "Retreating from a strict rule that would have required many
> picnickers and partyers to pay to use city parks, the Giuliani
> administration will allow casual park users and tourists to
> continue having their fun free. A controversial regulation that
> took effect this week requires any group of more than 20 people
> to get a $25 Parks Department permit for everything from poetry
> readings to parades to picnics held at city parks. It replaces a
> longstanding but erratically enforced parks guideline. Facing
> outrage that City Hall was slapping a price tag on the use of
> public parks, officials slipped new language into the final version
> exempting "casual park use by visitors and tourists" from the
> permit fee. The rule never defines casual use, but park officials
> said the change is intended to clear up ambiguity about who has
> to get a $25 permit, and who doesn't...For an "impromptu
> gathering" of 20 or so people, "Don't worry about it,"
> Rozinski said."
>
> Robert Lederman is an artist, a regular columnist for both the
> Grenwich Village Gazette [See: http://www.gvny.com/ ] and
> Street News, and is the author of hundreds of published essays
> concerning Mayor Rudolph Giuliani. His essays and letters have
> appeared in the NY Times, NY Post, Daily News, Newsday,
> Brooklyn Bridge, Park Slope Courier, The Daily Challenge,
> Amsterdam News, Sandbox, Penthouse, Our Town, NY Press
> and are available on hundreds of websites around the world.
> Lederman has been falsely arrested 41 times to date for his
> anti-Giuliani activities and has never been convicted of any of the
> charges. He is best known for creating hundreds of paintings of
> Mayor Giuliani as a Hitler like dictator.
>
> Robert Lederman, President of A.R.T.I.S.T.
> (Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics)
> ARTISTpres at aol.com (718) 743-3722
> http://www.openair.org/alerts/artist/nyc.html
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