Sentencing of the four remaining M26 defendents, until now scheduled for November 18, this Thursday, has been stayed pending the New York State Court of Appeals decision on whether or not it will review the unsealing of their older dismissed cases. This means that unless there is a last minute change there will not be any significant activity in court this week other than an announcement of the rescheduled date.
The defendents will know in four to eight weeks whether the Appeals Court will consider their petition. If the Court of Appeals agrees to review the petition, the defendents expect that sentencing will continue to be stayed in the interim. The review decision itself would not come until next string at the earliest.
If it decides not to review the petition, there will be no higher recourse and the D.A.’s sentencing memorandum will stand. They will be sentenced as Judge Stolz sees fit, which could mean anywhere from zero to 365 days in jail. If it decides in their favor, it will be, as Steve Quester writes, a great victory for the entire civil rights community in New York, and these defendents could be sentenced only with jail time effectively off the table altogether.
I will post more developments as they happen, including of course any and all future court dates.
Ah, how the sledge of justice does plod on.
Category: NYC
running through Chelsea
seen on the south side of West 24th Street, Saturday at 6 pm
We hit a number of Chelsea galleries this afternoon, but we were both more more relaxed, and better dressed for the weather, than this gentleman.
Reno knows
We spotted this wonderful, much-used Toyota last night while walking to the E train Spring Street stop. I had already taken this shot before I walked around the side of the car and saw the door emblazoned with a large “Citizen Reno” sign. Of course!
Inside on the dashboard was a small stack of her DVD, “Rebel Without a Pause.” Is our hero tempting the culturally and politically savvy thief, or just advertising?
Queens International 2004
Troy Richards, This Light You Speak Of (2004) installation view of site-specific installation: Jolly-Ranchers, Plexiglas and resin 108″ x 51″ [QMA reception revelers faintly visible below]
We absolutely did get out to the Queens Museum of Art (QMA) last Sunday for the opening of the Queens International 2004. It was almost five when we got there, so we were pretty busy for the next hour. Most everyone in the very interesting crowd was pretty laid back, so we must have looked pretty intense as we made our way through galleries showing the art of some 50 or more Queens-based artists. Even so we managed to talk to a number of them while they hung out near their work.
There is nothing of the provinces, the “outer boroughs,” about this show – except maybe for the incredible ethnic diversity of the artists included – a heterogeneity which frequently shows up even in the compound heritage of one individual. The name of the show, “Queens International,” is a salute to that diversity. Any city in the country would be proud of the quality of the art represented. It’s a first-rate show, a first-rate New York show.
Some of my favorites:
Haeri Yoo‘s wall of childlike drawings which almost mask her sophisticated humanism
Cui Fei‘s enormous, but so delicate, sculptural evocation of Chinese caligraphy employing grape vine tendrils
Chris Dorland‘s use of World’s Fair pavilions to comment in his paintings on our utopian dreams – and follies
Aissa Deebi‘s photographic documentary of exile, using a shisha cafe in Astoria as his canvas
Matt Ducklo‘s sort-of-photojounalist suburban grotesques (especially the Kentucky shopping center/cemetary/mountain range combo)
Pascal Jalabert’s heroic paper-tape bridges in electric colors
Kurt Lightner‘s magical mylar cut-out collages (and ink drawing)
Nava Lubelski‘s abstract canvases, which she stains and then adorns with needlepoint to almost electric effect
Troy Richards‘s bold candy windows (see above)
Earl Howard‘s sound sculpture installed in the Whitney-size elevator
Shin Il Kim‘s animated video whimsical profundities
Minshik shin’s totally wonderful and sincere “American Dream” video
Because of the crowds and because of our limited time, we missed our chance to see most of the video art, so the list above is even more imperfect than usual.
[link to Haeri Yoo images was added June 6, 2005]
slain on the altar of our national suicide
I don’t know what to say about this story, but it has moved me more than I thought possible.
November 6, 2004, 4:39 PM EST
A 25-year-old university worker from Georgia shot and killed himself at ground zero Saturday morning, authorities said.
The man, Andrew Veal, of Athens, Ga., was found atop the structure housing the 1 and 9 subway lines after a hotel worker spotted what he believed was somebody sleeping inside the site around 8 a.m., said Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
A shotgun was found near the body, Coleman said. No suicide note was found, he said.
Police were investigating how Veal entered the former World Trade Center site, which is protected by high fences and owned by the Port Authority.
Veal worked in a computer lab and was planning to marry, friends said Saturday.
I used to live just blocks away from the Trade Center and for over six months even here on 23rd Street I lived with the acrid smell of the fires which destroyed it on September 11. I watched out the front windows and I heard hundreds of police motorcycle-escorted ambulances speed down the street to a temporary morgue on the East Side which is still there. For a dozen years I worked at the Trade Center, each day entering and leaving the 1/9 subway line through the concrete structure on top of which Veal took his life; it’s the only part of the original complex remaining above ground today. I made repeated heartbreaking trips to the site beginning two days after its destruction. The neighborhood was my first home in New York.
I’m still in New York today and I’ve grown to love it even more than I did when its wonders first brought me here. This also means, strictly speaking, that I’m still in the country where I was born, but I no longer feel that I am. If this was true before the election on Tuesday, the results which were announced have confirmed my exile.
Andrew Veal felt that dispossession more deeply than most. His despair brought him to the site which is still cynically being used to feed the agony in which so many of us share, and there Veal at least was able to end it.
“Haroun and the Sea of Stories”
Wednesday, the stage at the New York State Theater, before the lights darkened
We went to New York City Opera Wednesday night to see Charles Wuorinen’s new opera based on a short novel by Salmon Rushdie, “Haroun and the Sea of Stories.”
Almost totally bummed because of the national disasters reported over the previous 24 hours, we really weren’t expecting to be greatly amused. According to the reviews we had read we would find a delightful story seriously handicapped by its dependence upon the composer’s complex 12-tone techniques.
We both loved it on every level, for each of its elements.
We knew the story and it really is delightful. It’s definitely not simply a children’s story, although there were plenty of smart New York kids there with their parents. It was written while Rushdie was forced to hide from the mortal threat of the fatwa directed against him because of his writings. The book is a fable about free expression. It’s as fresh as tomorrow morning’s bread. In Act II the evil Khattam-Shud complains about the limits of his dark authority, singing,
Inside every single story
There lies a world, a story world,
That I cannot rule ar all.
It is beyond my control . . .
It spoils everything!
The libretto by the poet James Fenton, necessarily more condensed than the book, did so with great success, tightly playing with the pleasure of words both real and imagined, in delightful groups strung together and wound around or threaded through each other.
I admit that serial music holds no terrors for me and under normal circumstances I would have been delighted to be looking forward to a live performance of an entire opera using its forms. We have a large wall cabinet stacked with the sadness of 12-tone opera sound-only recordings, their visuals unfulfilled. I was surprised and delighted to find that Wuorinen’s score was a perfect foil for the story, the singers and the glorious sights unfolding on the stage.
And what sights they were! In their totally uninhibited color and movement, and with imagination not bound to any reality or even to the usual conventions of fantasy, the sets and costumes fulfilled the promise of the story. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything more delightful on a stage, opera or otherwise. I’m not normally sighted shrieking in glee from a seat in Linclon Center.
Election? What election?
There are still three more performances, one tomorrow afternoon and one in the evening on Tuesday and on Thursday.
“undecided” about the “anyone”
Thomas Nast cartoon, featuring Boss Tweed ( referencing the 1876 disputed election)
The caption:
Boss. “You have the liberty of Voting for any one you please; but we have
the Liberty of Counting in any one we please.”
“Do your Duty as Citizens, and leave the rest to take its course.” – New York Times.
My overwhelmed friends in Washington, Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania and elsewhere will find it difficult to believe, but I’ve barely seen a single political campaign ad, TV or print, all year long. (I’m not complaining, of course, especially since no real information is ever conveyed by this stuff.)
Yeah, so I don’t even watch TV (except Jon Stewart and SNL) and somehow I’ve always been able to turn a blind eye to print advertising of any kind (except for those which include particularly sexy men). Actually however my relative isolation from the campaign (it’s always war metaphors in America) has more to do with the perverse wonders of the Electoral College and the fact that everyone long ago agreed that New York belongs to the Democrats.
So where do I leave my teeny tiny vote for president tomorrow? Not for the Republican candidate of course, but I’m also not going to check the Democratic column. As I’ve said often before, both clubs are Rightwing parties and while only one of the two standard-bearers has a mind, he’s used it to argue, among other things, that the Iraq war must be expanded, that Americans can’t have single-payer universal health care, that he might nominate anti-choice candidates for federal courts, that the WTO is a good thing, that lesbians and gays should not be permitted to marry and that we need the Patriot Act.
But do I have an alternative? Like most of the United States, New York makes it very difficult for parties or candidates to get onto the ballot, the result being this abysmal selection (taken directly from the New York State Board of Elections site).
[REP] REPUBLICAN: George W. Bush
[DEM] DEMOCRATIC: John F. Kerry
[IND] INDEPENDENCE: Ralph Nader
[CON] CONSERVATIVE: George W. Bush
[WOR] WORKING FAMILIES: John F. Kerry
[PJP] PEACE AND JUSTICE: Ralph Nader
[SWP] SOCIALIST WORKERS: Roger Calero
[LBT] LIBERTARIAN: Michael Badnarik
New Yorkers can choose among only five people (all men). There are probably twice as many kinds of premium brands of butter available at each of the two food stores a block away from where I’ll be voting tomorrow!
The Democrats and the Republicans are clearly part of the problem and are both responsible for our current crisis, the Conservatives think the Republicans are too Lefty and the Libertarians would eliminate government from all regulation and welfare responsibilities.
I don’t know whether to admire or ridicule the fact that the only socialist party on the ballot has advanced a candidate who, regardless of his merits, could not Constitutionally become President of the U.S. and who in fact is not even a U.S. citizen. I do think this tells us a lot about support in the U.S. for the kind of social contract other industrial societies take for granted, even the parties on the Right.
Aside from his own heroic history of social contributions which have benefitted the entire world, Ralph Nader once again represents an almost perfect platform, and I will not condemn his campaign for accepting funds from sources to whom he could never be beholden. The money is well-spent. Nader is one of the few true democrats in American politics.
There is still the possibility of pulling the lever for Kerry on the Working Families line, but while that excellent party is worthy of the attention and support of any progressive, that is still a vote for a seriously flawed candidate. Besides, it’s totally unnecessary to keep every one of New York Electoral votes away from Bush.
Whoa, wait a minute. Where are the Greens? What does it say about our fake democracy that so important a party (okay, make that any party) is not permitted on the ballot? But I think we are still allowed a write-in candidate, so in very good conscience we could make it David Cobb, the Green Party candidate for President.
But back to the discussion of the least of many available evils, or at least a resolution of the current dilemma. Even now I can’t say for sure if I’m going to vote for Nader on the Independent Party line, Kerry on the Working families Party line or Cobb as a write-in. Wow! I guess this means that technically I could be labelled as one of those reviled “Undecideds,” even if my indecision does not relate to anything having to do with Bush or the Republicans. At least I don’t have to agonize about deciding between someone who has already demonstrated he’s a bungling idiot and someone without Bush’s extraordinary record.
Anyone but Bush? I don’t think so.
The only point I wanted to make with this post is the fact that in New York and a large number of other states voters with consciences and minds should be able to see that “anyone but Bush” could still mean that there is a choice, even on Election day itself. We don’t have to feel totally powerless when we walk into a polling place. The anti-democratic system we have to work with allows at least some of us to balk at ratifying a slate or a platform not established democraticaly.
Many of us do have some choice tomorrow, and our numbers will be recorded. We have to think ahead – now.
[image from HarpWeek]
Critical Mass on 23rd Street
Okay, next time I’ll be on my own bike. The perineum probably could have managed it this time, but I hadn’t gotten the bike ready. Also, last night when at least part of an especially colorful and joyous Critical Mass flowed East on 23rd Street I was in the back of the apartment and first thought it was a political demonstration and I wondered how I had missed hearing about it (actually, after the events of the past months, it really was necessarily political). Although I raced to a front window, I was in the midst of cooking and couldn’t even get down to the street for a picture.
Actually I’m pretty happy with this one.
I love bikes, and I love bike people. It’s so simple: We belong in the streets. Some day everyone will understand that.
time-sensitive art alert
I’d call it an art zap. Ephemeral by design, the success of Joe Ovelman‘s street images depends upon our seeing them – quickly, almost necessarily today. This time he’s spread the work throughout Chelsea, and there’s something like a star map at each stop to help locate the next piece.
Bloggy has the details.
election night gatherings
“Sooo . . . What do you wear to a civil war anyway?”
A week ago I wrote that I would probably post a list of progressive spaces which are encouraging visitors to hang out next Tuesday evening, on the [first?] day of our federal election agony.
I ended up contributing to a list which Barry assembled and has now posted on his own site. We haven’t yet decided what we’re going to do that night ourselves. The only thing I’ve done so far in the way of preparation is to get half way through a good apartment cleaning, the remainder to be completed tomorrow. I just knew I wouldn’t feel like doing anything once the street fighting began.
Having also done tons of laundry this week, I’m now free to think about the balloon in the last box of the latest “get your war on.”
[image from “get your war on”]