C Drew - Street Artist Adventures

Jenaba, Poala and Will at Critical Mass April 2009

The Free Speech Artists’ Movement hit the streets during Critical Mass for the April 24th ride with volunteers performing the Patch Art Project to organize region-wide awareness that artists do not have their full speech rights to sell their art in Chicago.

*Florida law suit won by artist* - Celli v. City of St. Augustine, Florida - decided 2000. Since this time artists in St. Augustine have allowed the City to pass new restrictive laws without response and have lost some of their First Amendment rights. However, the court case Celli won is still a valid precedent for us to use as needed. Eternal vigilance is needed to maintain your speech rights because powerful interests are ever ready to pass new local laws that impact your rights. You need only read into the many messages of the second link below to learn how New York City artists have resisted the attempts to take their rights and, thereby, their livelihoods away. The same tricks may be used by our opposition.

Weinberg v. City of Chicago (when all the National Sports Leagues joined with the City to appeal and lost when the Supreme Court refused to hear their appeal.) Weinberg - the Chicago author - won.
http://www.ahcuah.com/lawsuit/federal/weinberg1.htm

*NY Artist and Organizer* - Robert Lederman, president of A.R.T.I.S.T.,
or Artists’ Response to Illegal State Tactics – This Yahoo Groups page links to ten years of messages about all the New York City actions and court cases over the years.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NYCStreetArtists/

NYC Street Artist Freedom Videos
Check out these videos about how NYC artists won our rights in NYC see:
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=artistpres