C Drew - Street Artist Adventures

Sundance II by Monica Brown

I had fun printing Monica Brown’s design entitled Sundance II at our Workshop Sunday.

Volunteers will be wearing Free Speech Artists’ Movement t-shirts and skirts (for the ladies) at the Critical Mass ride on Friday, 4/24. They are passing out patch-art and collecting contact info from those expressing support for artists’ speech rights in Chicago. This is our push to encourage new volunteers to join us. We have lots of work to do from printing patch-art to passing out free patch-art. Our screens of patch-art are growing in number. The volunteers we sign up from this event will be needed to print them for future events. The artists we meet will be invited to submit their art for patch-art designs.

We expect to get a sizable list of petition signatures and will need a volunteer to put input their names and contact information into a spreadsheet file.

The next weekend Artropolis and May Day activities will be exploding around us. As the weather permits I will be printing patches all weekend outside Artropolis. Do you want to help? Volunteers to print in public at Artropolis and other events are requested. We have kits for volunteers who have studied at our workshop and new comers can help support them. This Sunday, 4/26, from 3-6pm we will be planning those art-actions. Get in on the excitement of making change in Chicago using the art as our method. Email me at umcac@art-teez.org with “Volunteer” in the subject line if you can help.

*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