Return to the Speech Permit Corner
The street teaches me things. I talk with people and they give me clues to my next steps. Like today, after my job, I went to my old spot by the Bank at Wacker and State Streets.
This is one of the ten (only six are viable most days) speech sales spots available to Peddler’s License holders, if they qualify for a speech permit, after a review of everything they want to sell by an official in the Department of Business Affairs and Licensing. It becomes even more confusing when more than five people apply for the same spot. The City intends for it to be confusing. The permit you get is only for one month. Every month you must apply again. This is what the City requires of you for your speech rights. You must continuously re-apply for your speech rights. If this system is ever used by more than 30 artists it will quickly become an opportunity for the City to control who gets on the street to sell their speech by the fact that only a few positions exist.
Just for a good laugh read about the lottery system that applies if more than five people seek one of the six good spots available. The City claims this is adequate because the 30-50 possible artists/speech posts (6-10 corners X 5 artists/corner), which the City offers peddlers to sell at in the Loop, are never fully applied for. In fact only two speech peddlers applied in the last year. What the City doesn’t tell you is nobody uses it because the red tape, its limitations due to the chilling effect from the public’s perception that vendors are all illegal and the City’s secrecy about the speech permit. So there appears to be more than enough space because none of the spaces are used.
Few people know the speech permit option exists because the City likes it that way. When I applied I was told that I was one of two that year and not to tell anybody about it. When I told the official that in my capacity as a community arts administrator I should tell everybody, the man said, “Can’t you wait until I retire!”
However, the first reason that the speech permit spots are not viable is that the people who live and work in the Loop are accustomed to viewing an artist selling as suspect. This is because they see the police harassing vendors, with or without a peddlers license. The public doesn’t understand that the First Amendment protects speech even when the speaker is paid. Due to official discouragement, there is no place in the Loop or Chicago, where people are accustomed to seeing artists on the street regularly selling their art. There are no spots where people slow down, look, even stop and browse or talk with an artist at work in an impetuous moment, a spot where the public knows artists are known to congregate, to create and to sell their work. People do not expect to see artists on the street and distrust them when they do. This is an example of a “chilling effect on speech” that lawyers who defend free speech talk about. This is the reason we need to create art scenes which can counteract this negative cultural conditioning.
So, I did not expect much attention when I arrived at my old spot. I had a new screen to print and I wanted to print it in public. I was hoping to get a photo of a policeman or security guard asking me for my ID. I printed my latest “The Curse is Gone” patch for about an hour and a half. This patch refers to the popular belief at Wrigley Field that the Cubs are cursed by a man in the 1940’s whose goat was insulted by ball park officials. This is the 100th year since the Cubs last won a world series (1908). While I printed, only a few people stopped and took a patch. Several Cubs fans snatched two patches and dashed off happily. Two ladies stopped to ask what I was doing.
I explained screen-printing to them and pointed out the several patches I had available to give away. The outgoing lady of the two asked to have the “Yes we can” patch that says “Change the mind-set that starts mindless war.” She took two of them and pinned one to herself and one to her friends blouse as she told me about her nephew who was just assigned to ship-out to Afghanistan. Then, on a lighter note, seeing her Sox shirt, I offered her a “The Curse is Gone” patch.
“No!” she said with exaggerated offense. “Can’t you see the Sox on my shirt? Are you a Cubs fan?” she asked with a look of reproach.
“No – I’m neutral. I work both ball parks and have fun with all the fans. Baseball brings out a variety of people in Chicago to cheer on their teams. I enjoy the fans and love the work I do. So you don’t want the Cubs curse to end?” I asked laughing.
She replied with laugh also - “No thanks – the Cubs can go another hundred years without winning a World Series, as far as I am concerned.”
“Well then maybe I should come up with a patch for Sox fans.” I suggested.
“You should, of course you should . . .” she said. “Hey, give me one of those Cubs patches. I just remembered somebody I can give it to.” I knew it – she was a bigger fan of baseball at heart.
When they departed she waved and called back, “Remember that Sox patch.”
So it is – I must come up with a patch for the Sox.
The last time I printed here, facing a green traffic control box, located about five feet above the ground on a pole inset a bit from the corner, I noticed someone scrawled, “You are Free,” just after I first began using my speech permit. This was when I carried a peddlers license and had applied for and received a speech permit to sell here several years ago. Today that message is gone. I’m betting whoever put it there thought I was gone too. Ha-ha!
No security guard or police made their presence known to me in this short time. In previous years, it took about 15-20 minutes before I experienced the need to explain myself to a security guard and then a policeman who the guard had called. As you can see, I was not blocking traffic. Because I don’t have a peddlers license and can’t apply for a speech permit, I can’t sell my art. The City is blocking any potential income that would encourage and make it possible for me to print more often in public. The chilling effect of their laws and policies make selling my art overly difficult.
I am largely censored and forced to work at jobs unrelated to my art. Two hours, once or twice a week, is not likely to be very effective at raising an income or spreading my messages. This is the practical effect of the reduced freedom of speech under which artists are forced to live in Chicago. Consider the enjoyable experience these two ladies had in this chance encounter with an artist on the street. Multiply it by the hundreds of artists likely to be active daily in art scenes around Chicago by the thousands of people they would meet day in and day out. This is the cultural effect that is missing from our City on a regular basis. This reflects a lowering of our cultural standard of living, a shrinking of our market place of ideas, and a weakening of our democracy. This is worth fighting for.
So, show some concern for your rights. Review a court case link on the right or read more deeply into my blog. Consider some of the advantages of “freedom” - that word used so quickly by politicians, tyrants, and the defenders of our military-prison-industrial-complex. They have us singing that freedom song without any attempt to understanding its meaning. What is freedom to you? Does money, work, ability to build an audience, the right to your full speech rights including the right to be paid for your speech have anything to do with it? Does your tax money that is used to support the public way include support for your rights in the public way? You are the citizens. You decide.