ACT UP demonstration for access to clean needles, seventeen years ago
After yesterday’s post, which was totally connected to current political activism, I’m going to turn back and examine what the territory looked like in the 80’s and 90’s.
Although many of us are still busy working on some of the very same issues which engaged New York activists, writers, artists, and residents in the previous two decades, it would make no sense at all if we were to ignore a radical activist history which can still inform what we do today.
On Tuesday, June 26, the New York Book Club at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum and the Gotham Center for New York City History at CUNY are hosting a panel discussion in the Museum. Called “Resistance: A Radical History of the Lower East Side”, the event’s participants will be Jay Blotcher, Al Orensanz and Michael Rosen. The moderator will be Clayton Patterson.
I think all of these people (with very interesting but quite different backgrounds in the same neighborhood) are contributors to a new book with the same title, a collection of writings and images. Okay, it sounds like it’s also a book signing, but on Tuesday it seems both oral and written history will be shared with those who stop by.
I know Jay well, originally through ACT UP, where he directed media relations, but in addition to his AIDS activism he has also worked as a collage artist, documentary filmmaker, journalist and publicist. If he’s involved in something like this, it’s likely to be at least worth a detour.
The address is 108 Orchard Street, near Delancey, and the time is from 6 to 8 pm.
[image from the film “Clean Needles Save Lives: Drug Users Doing It For Ourselves” via Creative Time]
Category: NYC
Radical Homosexual Agenda zaps Quinn on police authority
outside
balcony left
balcony center
and balcony right
Tonight The Radical Homosexual Agenda struck once again, dramatically zapping Chris Quinn deep inside City Hall during her presentation at the the “Celebration of LGBT Pride” hosted annually by the City Council Speaker.
Why did these homosexuals interrupt the homosexual Speaker while she was addressing her core homosexual constituency in this historic room, the Council Chamber on the second floor of our two-hundred-year-old seat of government? Because Quinn was the civilian agent for a secretly-negotiated agreement (there were no public hearings) with the NYPD which gives the police full authority to restrict public assembly and public speech (if more than 49 people get together anywhere, under any circumstances, they are all subject to arrest – unless they have applied to the police for a permit ahead of time and have received the department’s approval). This policy was never submitted to the Council for consideration; no statute supports this agreement and practice; it is the creation of the Speaker herself.
Why did they do so in the midst of what was planned as a celebration of LGBT accomplishments and not incidentally also an evening honoring Quinn’s personal and political success? Because she has made herself inaccessible to those who have sought to meet with her on this issue.
Is she the only proper target for those outraged by the permit rule? Certainly not, but she is at once the one with the greatest power to do something about this abomination and, because of a background which included street activism, the one who should have been the least likely politician to endorse it in the first place.
Incidentally, the parade permit “law” which Quinn has approved trusts the police to do the right thing, even in our clear memory of the appalling history of the department so often demonstrating the contrary and continuing to do so up to the present moment. It’s a record which screams to the powerless and to all minorities of the danger and absurdity of such misplaced faith. Tonight even the Speaker herself couldn’t prevent the police protection assigned to the her own hosted reception from ousting in front of her eyes the guests who wanted to address her on this issue, and this was after she had said they should be allowed to speak.
I think it’s important to note that in her remarks after they were removed from the balcony she did not deny that the so-called “Parade Laws” were very much her doing, her own policy, and she has said as much when she has been asked about them before. She is the right target.
After her critics had been summarily removed from the Chambers, Quinn told the remaining invitees that she was willing to meet with anyone who disagreed with her on the question of Police rules for assembly. For the record, I have been assured several times by those who know groups that have tried to engage her that she has repeatedly refused to do this in the past.
The fundamental issue remains that in New York City the NYPD totally controls what we used to call the Constitutional (First Amendment) right of assembly and speech, and our first woman, first lesbian, and first [former] activist Council Speaker thinks that’s just fine.
As usual, Barry was able to cut through all the muck with a comment which defines the issue perfectly: “This development, along with what we have seen happening over at least the last six years, seems to make it clear that New York has given up even on the principle of civilian control of the police.”
sad ending for Brooklyn College MFA suit
still
I was stunned when I first heard about the “settlement” of the Brooklyn College MFA students‘ cases against the City of New York, the NYC Parks Department and Brooklyn College, cases which had cited First Amendment violations and property damages. I haven’t even been able to bring myself to write about it until now, more than ten days later.
The eighteen students whose Master of Fine Arts thesis show was summarily shut down on May 4, 2006 by a Parks official, had their work removed from the gallery and damaged by their own College shortly thereafter.
After a full year of spent filing complex suits and presenting arguments, including negotiations between the students’ lawyers and lawyers representing New York City the entire affair has ended with something like a squeak or a whimper.
The students (and one professor) each received $750 from the City, and the head of the Brooklyn Parks Department, the self-appointed public censor, issued a written statement which some have described as an “apology”. Neither Brooklyn College itself nor any official connected with the school has had to do anything. In fact no one has lost her or his position in the City or the College. Oh yes, the settlement also required the City to pay the fees of the students’ lawyers the amount of $42,500.
The students had decided not to file a separate suit against Brooklyn College after being told that they would have to secure other lawyers, and after being persuaded that a suit against the school which asked for compensation for the physical damage to their art works would have been ugly. In any event they weren’t interested as a group in the cost and distraction of pursuing any further suit; they also don’t appear to have ever regarded their case as simply a matter of compensation for material damages.
Of course it was never about money, so it seems to me that makes the piddling $750 figure ridiculous on the face of it.
I’m concerned about the fact that there really is no apology in the Parks chief’s statement (it’s more like the familiar “if anyone was offended . . .”), and that no institution has had to admit error, no official has been sacked, and none has fallen on his or her sword.
No principle has been upheld except that of the authority of the authorities.
Oh, yes, the “apology”, issued on city of New York Parks & Recreation letterhead, reads as follows:
Statement of defendant Julius Spiegel, Brooklyn Borough commissioner of New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, in connection with the Settlement of Cohen, et. al. v. City of New York, et. al., 06-cv-2975 (CBA) (SMG).
“While I had no role in the removal and subsequent damage to Plaintiffs’ artwork by others, I acknowledge my responsibility for ordering the closing of the Plaintiffs’ art exhibit at the Brooklyn War Memorial, and for thereby setting in motion actions that led to the damage of Plaintiffs’ artwork, which a reviewing court might find constituted a violation of the student-exhibitors’ First amendment rights. Whatever the outcome in court might have been, I apologize to the Brooklyn College art students who spent long hours and considerable effort in creating their artwork and in mounting their exhibition at the Brooklyn Memorial site.”
Now I know I wasn’t one of the victims in this case (except in the sense we are all victims of censorship and the violation of intellectual and artistic property), and I wasn’t privy to the discussions which preceded the announced settlement, but I mourn what has happened, or what has not happened, and I want to make a very few more general observations:
* A city which thinks of itself as cultured and sophisticated doesn’t let its functionaries shut down art exhibitions because of personal hang-ups about their nasty bits.
* No art school is worthy of the name if it fails to defend its students’ rights of expression and in fact callously destroys the creative work they produce in its shelter.
* Constant artists, and constant art institutions, artists and institutions with real integrity, do no look the other way when their colleagues or those they serve are attacked or humiliated for their art.*
*
Of the entire local and national arts community, aside from some good words from a few bloggers, these students received written or vocal support only from their own College faculty, the CUNY faculty, the College Art Association and the President of the School of Visual Arts. The Brooklyn Museum was approached directly, because of its own struggle with censorship (when it had received an enormous amount of outside support), and its reply was something to the effect that the institution would no longer be getting involved in anything of this sort.
[image from timesonline]
Bicycle Fetish Day in Williamsburg
I’ve always loved bikes and bikers, perhaps almost obsessively (excepting the fiends who ride on sidewalks or yelp at pedestrians), and so on a recent Saturday afternoon I was determined to investigate the 3rd Annual “Bicycle Fetish Day“, an all-day bike fair on Havemeyer Street in Williamsburg, sponsored by the City Reliquary Brooklyn Civic Riders B.C., in loose association with the esteemed Board members and fans of the City Reliquary Museum.
I was not disappointed with the photo opportunities. I was sorry that I hadn’t ridden over the bridge on my own two wheels, and sorry also that our gallery-visiting schedule kept Barry and I from hanging out longer with these beautiful mounts and riders.
follow the arrow
untitled (arrows) 2007
Most people were looking at the big hole (the site of the once and future World Trade Center) when we walked through the World Financial Center Winter Garden yesterday afternoon with visiting family members, but this is a quirky view of a part of the construction site below the east windows at the top of the stairs.
hot afternoon in Greenpoint and Williamsburg
raw NYPD brutality, spawned by Kelly, Bloomberg and Quinn
stills captured from video on NYCindymedia site
On Thursday I wrote about a demonstration in which I had participated (put together by The Radical Homosexual Agenda [RHA], Assemble for Rights NYC, and other groups and individuals), which was directed against Council Speaker Quinn’s support of newly-adopted NYPD regulations restricting the right of assembly. I included in that entry a dozen or so still pictures I had taken.
They weren’t enough to tell me about the full measure and shape of the violence I witnessed that afternoon. Last night I saw this footage of the Glass Bead Collective and Time’s Up! Video Collective documenting the most violent images of Police aggression I’ve witnessed in almost twenty years of street activism.
Go to this NYC indymedia page and click onto the link under the heading, “Video Footage showing aggressive arrests by NYPD during the peacefull parade”. Note that the video is composed of segments from several cameras, so there is more than a single presentation of some scenes.
It was already clear to anyone who hasn’t tried to avoid thinking about the quality of civic life in New York that this city’s police ranks and leadership are both out of control and a physical and Constitutional threat to its citizens, and not just those seen by “the finest” as “the other”, so this footage should not come as a revelation to any of us. But the problem neither begins nor ends with the failures of the uniforms on the street. Our appointed and elected representatives and municipal executives, far from fulfilling their responsibility to police the police, continue to aid and abet their crimes and outrages. Officials are content with a ritual mourning of the dead and arranging photo opportunities with the survivors, visiting the homes and attending the funerals of their prey – while paying tens of millions of dollars of our public treasury in court awards to the growing number of victims of police and government brutality.
Chief of Police Kelly is dead wrong about his so-called “parade rules”, the Mayor Bloomberg knows it and the best I can say about the Speaker of the City Council on this issue (she is also my local representative) is that Chris Quinn appears to have a tin ear on First Amendment issues. Our rights and freedoms to speak and assemble are not subject to political negotiation, the convenience of our law enforcement officials (or their macho “control” neuroses), the swift traffic (and free street storage) of private automobiles, or our politicians’ ambitions for higher office.
For a long time I lulled myself into thinking I could continue to distinguish between what has been happening in the country at large and what is going down here in the land I call home, but today I realize I can only be thankful that New York doesn’t have a foreign policy and weapons of mass destruction.
[images from Glass Bead Collective and Time’s Up! Video Collective via NYCindymedia]
police “control” un-permitted parade protesting Quinn
I survived this afternoon’s “Parade Without a Permit” more or less unscathed, although I was pushed to the ground while photographing the police exercising their “control” of our right to free speech.
At the start of the parade in City Hall Park there were, by Norm Siegel‘s semi-official count, 54 demonstrators (plus a large contingent of members of the alternative media, and various support people and legal observers), making the assemblage an official “un-permitted parade” according to new NYPD rules, which allow only up to 49 people if no police permit has been granted.
At no time was there a crime in progress; we presented no threat to anyone. There was not even a hint of a misdemeanor, yet the Department, our servants, not content with a melodramatic presence made up of officers and inspectors, many in plainclothes, a scooter contingent and several police vans, decided to do some pushing around.
The pushing began with repeated orders, rude shouts in fact, to keep our feet on the sidewalk at all times, even when it was narrowed or blocked by subway entrances and construction sheds. In the end it appeared to be problems with the obstruction and tunnel darkness of a large shed on the west side of Church Street, complicated by the many bags of debris stacked underneath, which elevated the pushing to the physical level. The police seemed to be unhappy with the speed with which we were clearing the street for the important people who use cars.
I assume that any attempt to point out to the officers that their own combined body mass and the bulk of their own vehicles added up to a much bigger traffic obstruction than did the presence of our little band would have fallen on deaf ears.
One verbal exchange led to another, and then the pushing began (from them on us) without any further warning. Before I could get away from the center of the melee I found myself on the pavement. I snapped a few (not very interesting) pictures from that dramatic vantage point and when I scrambled back to my feet I saw that at least two people had been taken into the middle of the street where they were on the ground. Surrounded by their banners, flags and leaflets, they were handcuffed and carried away.
The struggle for New York City’s recognition of the First Amendment will certainly continue, but for tonight we have these beautiful battle ribbons:
related sites:
The Radical Homosexual Agenda
Assemble for Rights NYC
NYC indymedia
Transportation Alternatives
TIME’S UP!
Association of the Bar of the City of New York
Critical Mass
Five Borough Bicycle Club
boarder
untitled (boarder) 2007
dusk, on our Chelsea corner
Radical Homosexual Agenda [RHA] “un-permitted parade”
“keeping control” (wire and flesh, inside a holding pen during the 2004 RNC)
No, Chris, in America the police are not supposed to write the laws and “control” demonstrations.
Yesterday morning on the Brian Lehrer show NY City Council Speaker Christine Quinn responded to a question from the host about her support of new NYPD regulations on “parade permitting”. The regulations dramatically restrict the public’s Constitutional rights of speech and assembly.
The NYPD will now require a permit for any public gathering, or “parade”, of 50 people or more. Section 1A of the city ruling defines a parade as “any march, motorcade, caravan, promenade, foot, or bicycle race, or similar event of any kind, procession or race which consists of a recognizable group of 50 or more pedestrians, vehicles, bicycles, or other devices move by human power, or ridden or herded animals proceeding together upon any public street or roadway.”
On the Lehrer show Quinn stated emphatically that she believes the new regulations are “fair and appropriate” and “allow people to express their First Amendment rights”, but it is clear to anyone concerned with exercising these rights that the police get to decide how and when and with whom they may do it.
I was shocked to hear the Speaker’s concluding expression of support for our uniformed enforcers: She stated that the police must have the ability to “keep control of situations” [my emphasis].
I’ve known Quinn for many years and I have spoken and written highly of her in the past, and I expect to be able to do so in the future, but it is clear to me that on this extremely important issue Quinn is just wrong. She really has “turned her back on civil rights”, in the words of The Radical Homosexual Agenda [RHA], the organizers of a demonstration at City Hall tomorrow afternoon at 4 o’clock.
Of course this is not about queers alone; political activists and alternative transportation advocates have been impacted by NYC police attitudes in the most dramatic manner in recent years, but the issue belongs to everyone who wishes to breathe free. The Council Speaker is an out lesbian with a background of community oranization and a family history of activism who has participated in demonstrations herself; she should know better.
The demonstration is certain to include more than 50 people. Not surprisingly, there will be no permit.
Almost certainly the most important event in New York this week, the “Parade Without a Permit”, will take place at City Hall tomorrow, Thursday, at 4 pm.
[images from indymedia, by anonymous, and included in my September 3, 2004 entry]