From: ARTISTpres at aol.com Date: Mon, 20 Mar 2000 07:03:19 EST
Washington Post 3/20/2000 [<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42755-2000 Mar20.html> for this article. For the complete text of the ruling see Lederman v. the U. S of America 99-3359 <http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/district-court.html>]
[Note: Robert Lederman will be in front of the U.S. Capitol on 3/21 at 11 A.M. to hand out a leaflet about Mayor Giuliani's war against artistic freedom. The leaflet follows this article].
Speech Activist, 2 By Bill Miller Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, March 20, 2000; Page B03
W hen free speech advocate Robert Lederman passed out his leaflets outside the U.S. Capitol, he got a piece of paper in return--a citation from the Capitol Police for promoting a point of view too close to the building.
Lederman and his leaflets were in a "no demonstration" zone that extends around the Capitol and onto its adjacent sidewalks. U.S. Capitol Police suggested he take his materials to a grassy area that is far beyond the east side of the building. But Lederman said that would defeat his purpose.
"You could give leaflets to squirrels over there, but that's about it," Lederman recalled last week. "Nobody who's going into the building goes anywhere remotely near the spot where they were sending me."
Three years later, Lederman now is free to spread his message on the Capitol's sidewalks after first getting the charges against him, and then the regulation on which the charges were based, thrown out of court.
Lederman's first legal victory came in 1998 when a D.C. Superior Court judge threw out the citation. Then Lederman filed a federal suit challenging the anti-leafleting regulation. Last week, a federal judge ruled in his favor by declaring that the regulation violated his free speech rights.
"There is perhaps no more important a place than the Capitol, the epicenter of our nation's democracy, where debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust and wide-open," declared U.S. District Judge Richard W. Roberts, saying that leafleting was protected by the First Amendment.
Lederman, 49, a New York artist and activist, was arrested at the Capitol in March 1997 during an event marking "Arts Advocacy Day," a program attended by museum directors, curators, artists and other art aficionados. His leaflets advocated artists' rights of free expression.
Last week's ruling was hailed by the American Civil Liberties Union, which took up Lederman's cause as part of its campaign to preserve free speech rights in public places. According to the ACLU, the Capitol historically has been one of Washington's most restrictive venues. The Capitol barred demonstrations on its grounds from 1882 until 1972, when that prohibition was struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court in a case involving a Vietnam War protest.
Leafleting is permitted on sidewalks or in public areas outside the White House, Supreme Court, Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial and Jefferson Memorial, said Arthur B. Spitzer, legal director of the ACLU's local office.
"We thought this would be a clear case because this involved a sidewalk open to the public," said Spitzer, who worked with attorney Neal Goldfarb of Arlington on the suit. "We don't think that the small and peaceful exercise of free speech is going to interfere with Congress's ability to do its job."
The Capitol Police Board, which has the authority to regulate traffic within the Capitol grounds, ordered in 1995 that the area immediately surrounding the Capitol be off limits to most demonstration activity. The buffer extends roughly 250 feet from the House and Senate steps. Some demonstrations may take place on steps on the east side of the building, but only with permits. Groups of fewer than 20 can demonstrate without a permit but outside the zone.
The regulation has a section that restricts "parading, picketing, speechmaking, holding vigils, sit-ins" and similar activities. Roberts did not address the legality of the zone concerning that part of the law. The judge looked only at the section cited in Lederman's case, covering "other expressive conduct that conveys a message supporting or opposing a view."
Capitol Police contended that the regulation was designed to control traffic and promote public safety. Lederman's attorneys countered that a lone man with leaflets didn't disrupt traffic and noted that hundreds of tourists gather in the same area. Although Roberts said the police goals were reasonable, he found the rule was too broad and had "too high a cost."
Roberts said Capitol Police could try to create a new regulation that was more narrowly tailored. Officials with the U.S. attorney's office, which represents the Capitol Police, said they are considering that option.
Lederman's quarrel with Capitol Police was fairly mild compared with his ongoing spat with New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani (R). He fought Giuliani in the courts over the right of artists to sell their works on the streets without a license. He won that battle, but his criticism of Giuliani hasn't stopped, and Lederman frequently has been arrested at protests of the mayor's policies. He has painted portraits that depict Giuliani as Hitler or Satan.
© 2000 The Washington Post Company
[In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, the article above is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.] ------------------------------------------------ Giuliani, Enemy of Art An open letter to participants of Arts Advocacy Day 2000 by Robert Lederman
Dear Art Advocates, By now you are surely familiar with NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's attempt to censor the Brooklyn Museum show "Sensations" and his recent attacks on the Whitney Biennial's inclusion of a work by artist Hans Haacke entitled "Sanitation" which compares the Mayor to Adolf Hitler. What you may not know is that this Mayor's censorship of art didn't begin with these museums. Giuliani's attacks on artistic freedom started right after becoming Mayor in 1994 and are a key to understanding the policies behind his administration.
In the first of many Giuliani "crackdowns" he ordered the arrests of artists who were displaying and selling original paintings, sculptures, photographs and prints on the street. During six years of struggle more than 700 artists were arrested and thousands of works of fine art were systematically destroyed by the City, yet not one artists' case was ever brought to trial. We street artists formed a group, Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics (A.R.T.I.S.T.) and proceeded to fight for our rights.
In 1996 we won our consolidated Federal lawsuits [Bery et al v. City of New York and Lederman et al v City of New York 95-9089]. The 2nd circuit Federal Appeals Court found the City to be deliberately violating artists' First Amendment freedom. In confidential documents obtained as part of the lawsuit it was revealed that the Giuliani administration had decided before arresting the first artist never to prosecute any of the cases because artists were protected by the First Amendment. However, in the legal briefs he submitted to the appeals court and later to the U.S. Supreme Court Giuliani took the position that visual art was "unworthy of First Amendment protection" because it, "didn't communicate ideas". If the Mayor's unique views on art had prevailed every artist, museum and gallery in the U.S. might have lost their First Amendment protection.
Fortunately for America's artists we won our case. Unfortunately for New York City's street artists, Giuliani immediately put his 680 lawyers to work finding other ways to eliminate our rights. We were forced to sue him again in Federal Court in a case as yet undecided [Lederman et al v Giuliani 98 Civ. 2024]. Giuliani's persecution of artists continues today with daily arrests, confiscations of art and enforcement of laws passed not by the NY City Council but by his own appointees, illegally restricting the sale of books and art on hundreds of New York City streets.
Since 1994 I've been arrested 41 times, often under the Mayor's direct orders for painting him as a Hitler-like dictator, for making speeches about him or for handing out leaflets exposing his policies. Other than three criminal cases which were brought to trial and in which I was acquitted, every case was dismissed. The Mayor's reach extends far beyond the NY City limits. He's had me arrested here in Washington D.C. in front of the U.S. Capitol, which led to yet another lawsuit. That suit Lederman v. the U. S of America 99-3359 [see <http://www.dcd.uscourts.gov/district-court.html>] was decided last week in my favor, resulting in the overturning of a ban on expressive activity without a permit in front of the U.S. Capitol [see Wash. Post 3/20/2000 pg. B3].
If you don't happen to live in NYC or in D.C. you might wonder why you need to know or care about these issues. The reason is that the "ideas" of Mayor Giuliani will soon be coming to a City near you. He's running for the U.S. Senate and is considered a likely candidate for U.S. Attorney General if his pal "compassionate conservative" G.W. Bush wins the Presidency.
Where do Giuliani's "ideas" come from? The Mayor proudly admits to deriving virtually all his notions from The Manhattan Institute, a think tank founded by Reagan's CIA director William Casey. The Manhattan Institute sponsors "scientists" like Charles Murray author of The Bell Curve, a book which attempted to "prove" that Blacks are genetically, morally and intellectually inferior. They've also sponsored Fixing Broken Windows, a book which proposes the notion that crime by minorities is due to an excess of civil freedom the antidote for which is flooding minority areas with an occupation army of militarily-trained police who stop and frisk and arrest as many people as possible based on monthly arrest quotas. The recent rash of unarmed innocent Black males shot to death by the NYPD is just the most extreme example of where such policies are leading. What you see and hear on the evening news about tensions in NYC is the tip of a very ugly iceberg.
The Manhattan Institute is closely connected with and many of its authors are directly funded by extreme right wing organizations that believe Blacks are genetically inferior; with individuals, corporations and organizations like the Pioneer Fund with direct ties to Nazi Germany; with the military industrial complex; and with the increasing tendency to turn prisons into plantations. If one does a little research (check the websites listed below for a start) you will find that Mayor Giuliani's ideas on artistic freedom, race, DNA, education, privacy, police powers and societal freedom are disturbingly similar to Adolf Hitler's except that the Mayor is, so far, not being accused of anti-Semitism. If one substitutes the words Black and Latino for Jew, Giuliani is doing his best to recreate Nazi Germany in New York City. Of course that should come as no great surprise since many of those advancing the career of Giuliani like the Bush family, the Rockefeller family and Chase Bank, were financing Hitler himself just 70 years ago.
If Rudolph Giuliani is allowed to advance to higher office art advocates may have much more urgent concerns than cuts to the NEA budget. As you make your lobbying rounds to various Senators, Congressmen and Congresswomen I urge you to consider that lurking in New York's City Hall is a man who intends to do far more damage to freedom than Senator Jesse Helms ever dreamed of. Once you look beyond the press releases and media puffery extolling the Mayor's "miraculous" work in NYC you'll understand why the people of New York call him, Adolf Giuliani.
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> AND <http://www.gvny.com/>