C Drew - Street Artist Adventures

ARTISTS BATTLE ON IN ST AUGUSTINE FLORIDA

The battle for artists’ speech rights in St. Augustine, Florida continues. I posted the case of Celli vs the City of St. Augustine, Florida on my blog and in e-mails on this list. A Chicago artist back from St. Augustine reported early last year that that winning case had been reversed by the City simply by passing an amended law again denying artists their rights. His tone was depressed and hopeless. I claimed the case still set a good precedent and that artists need to continually fight for their rights. Well, the artists in St. Augustine are doing just that and the blog linked above lists their actions, their successes and their high level discussions of related First Amendment issues.

Two women abandon their car and dance in the street during the Chicago Critical Mass bike ride Friday, 5/29/09.

Riding down Milwaukee Avenue and she is out of her car dancing photo one

Remember we are organizing at the monthly Critical Mass ride. The May Critical Mass ride was fun. How many of you went on it? The photos I took are on my website.

We will be organizing to find more volunteers to help us put our free speech message in front of June’s Critical Mass riders. If you can help for one hour from 5:00-6:00 on Friday, June 26th please e-mail me at umcac@art-teez.org and put “volunteer” in the subject. Include your phone number in the body of the letter so we can contact you with more info.

Child smiles at bike riders as the Critical Mass rides through the Pilsen neighborhood.

Riding through Pilsen a child watching perched on a car smiles.

We are discussing how and when to initiate legal proceedings against the City for violating our rights to sell our art in Chicago. I set out our case against the City in my blog in my most recent post

“ Artropolis and the Street Art Fight in Chicago “ If you want to be able to argue well on the issue of artists’ rights to sell speech in public this blog post will help you out. Read this and talk up this vital issue.

Volunteers Needed

We need volunteers to collect the names and e-mail addresses of artists you meet in art fairs and neighborhood festivals to be added to this mailing list. When you go out this summer on weekends take a pencil or pen and collect artists info and e-mail it to us.

We need help on Sundays 3-6pm at 1630 W. Wilson Avenue, 773/561-7676 or umcac@art-teez.org, to print art-patches.

Help us - submit a design to the Art Patch Project.
We need help distributing fliers for our T-shirt Art Harvest Festival this September 25-27th where we will feature all the art-patches submitted by that date. Get involved even if it is only one hour a month. You can do this. Do it to fight for freedom here at home for at least one hour a month. Just one hour. One hour … umcac@art-teez.org

Enjoy
chris d