C Drew - Street Artist Adventures

High noon under the clock at Macys on State (photo by Ron Grenko)

What others would call bad luck, is my lucky day. This Friday the 13th I hoped for some good luck in the form of bad luck. I hoped to get busted. My location was under the clock at Randolph and State Street in the vicinity of Macy’s front door.

Art for sale - local Chicago artists - 1 dollar art patches (photo by Ron Grenko)

I went right to work. Unfolding my red poncho, I ducked into it and emerged the “Art-for-Sale Man.” I waved my poncho wings and barked, “Art for sale!” This caught people’s eyes and ears. I continued, “One dozen local artists, Robert Wapahi, Monica Brown, Chris Drew and many more – Art for sale. One dollar…” Who could easily ignore me? I bounced up and down as I chanted or leaned into people to share my images without blocking their forward motions. My twirls and poses played with the traffic for maximum exposure and minimum interference with those walking by. I looked for eye contact.

Buy local Chicago artists work, Monica Brown, Robert Wapahi, Marcellous Lovelace, ... (photo by Ron Grenko)

“You can’t sell – you can give it away for donations but it is prohibited to sell anything downtown here.” the second officer chimed in. I held to my claim that is was my First Amendment right to sell. In a moment two more female officers came over to join our discussion. I pondered how likely it is that four officers, all female, could meet up at once on State Street by chance. They began to grill me.

Display method proves sensitive to the ebb and flow of foot traffic (photo by Ron Grenko)

Nancy moved in to get the conversation and the officer nearest her scowled at her ordering her to back away. Obviously, the extreme nature of my crime called for crowd control or is it that we are discouraged from documenting our police at work? Nancy stepped back. “You are permitted to video public servants while they are on duty in public.” I said loud enough for the officer and Nancy to hear. Nancy continued to record the event. Her friends were shooting photos documenting the actions of the police, as well.

First encounter with the Art-for-Sale-Man (photo by Ron Grenko)

“Thank you.” I returned.

I have the First Amendment right to sell art in public. (photo by Ron Grenko)

The First Amendment case law only allows the City to write a law limiting our speech if the City can cite a “compelling” need of society. When the City has gone to court for a challenge to the peddlers license it cites traffic control as the compelling need. That is never why the laws in Chicago that prevent us from selling our art are written. They are written to keep artists out of commercial districts where real estate and business interests do not want competition and distraction from their presence on the streets around their concerns. Politicians also appreciate these laws because they prevent activists and artists critical of their governance from making a living reaching a wide audience in high traffic areas. Neither of these real reasons hold water in court so traffic is the best argument the City can come up with when they censor their citizens.

Back-up needed - the Art-for-Sale Man - big problem (photo by Ron Grenko)

Another officer explained again that if I had only avoided asking for a dollar but invited donations this would not be happening to me. “Really, you are free to ask for donations but not to set a price on your art.”

Art-for-Sale Man - great BIG problem (photo by Ron Grenko)

“Are you going to continue.” Nancy asked. I nodded with a smile.

Write him a ticket - for peddling in a prohibited district (photo by Ron Grenko)

This same public for the most part passed by with glazed gazes marching with tunnel vision to assorted purposes while I barked out my invitation to break out of their routine and glance at some local artists’ work. The few who did were reassuring to my spirit. Chicago does not have a culture of art on the street anymore after over a decade of prohibition on art sales in the Loop and other viable locations citywide.

A ticket for peddling without a license is 50-200 dollars (photo by Ron Grenko)

Youth are the most likely to stop and look at our art patches. Two ladies who knew me stopped to look. “Aren’t you the artists who screen prints at the Crossroad Fund’s annual fund-raiser and gives his art away?” one of the pair asked. I stopped selling and talked with them for a moment. They each bought an art patch for a dollar.

They told me asking for donations is legal but putting a price on my art is illegal (photo by Ron Grenko)

Two of the officers said they liked the artwork. (photo by Ron Grenko)

The paddy wagon reappeared facing us on State Street between north and south bound traffic parked on the yellow cross-hatched center lane poised to enter the left turn lane to arc smoothly toward the southeast corner of Randolph and State Street. They could turn left in a moment and load me at the corner in an eye-blink. One moment you would see me. You turn around for 30 seconds and look back, I would be cuffed and gone. Beamed-up gone.

I put my ticket away like it was a $100 bill. (photo by Ron Grenko)

Hermann pointed out, there was a uniformed male officer standing on the other side of the crosswalk. The light turned green for him and he remained standing as the public eddied around him to cross toward us. “Move closer to the corner under the clock, “ Hermann urged me. I did. This put me within arms reach of an activated patty wagon.

This is our ticket into Federal Court. It is proof our rights have been violated. (photo by Ron Grenko)

Sometime well after one o’clock the paddy wagon turned at a green light and drove away. The officer across in the crossing at NE corner on Randolph disappeared.

Back to work - sharing art with the public (photo by Ron Grenko)

I told Ron, “I love working next to the puppet bike.” I worked next to it at the Merchandise Mart during Artropolis several years. I worked next to it earlier this year when Oprah did her shows annual awards ceremony in public on Michigan Avenue. I was giving the art away that day and the police still ran me off. Not today. Finally, I am standing my ground. For years the police have run me off of spots or hassled me for selling or even giving art away. Today the running from unjust laws is over.

Guarding the crosswalk across from the Art-for-Sale-Man (photo by Ron Grenko)

The mood was infectious. This is what I mean about an art scene. Multiply this times 3-4 times and 5-10 artists can make an instant tourist attraction based on First Amendment protected activities. Its our right and our duty to make Chicago friendly to artists and to its visitor who are looking to find the character of Chicago. It is our right to be paid for our speech. This is how Shakespeare got started.

Dancing to the blues played by the puppet bike (photo by Ron Grenko)

The puppets tease the money away from the public with laughter and song. Watching the public having fun I remember to always be eager to explain the details of First Amendment case law for those new to it at every opportunity. Whenever the government, Federal, state or city hall, passes a law that limits First Amendment rights (speech rights) there must be a compelling reason, then they must write a narrow law like “no selling 20 feet from a crosswalk or ten feet from a doorway”. Broad laws like “No selling anywhere in the Loop” are prohibited. Finally, if a narrow law is written for a good reason that limits the time, place or manner of speech the government must make available an “ample alternative” - one that is viewed from the speakers perspective as suitable for the speakers use.

Showing and selling in a festive mood bathed in the blues music of the puppet bike. (photo by Ron Grenko)

We were jamming now. Mothers were giving their toddlers dollars to feed the puppets. The puppets were dancing, snatching people’s dollars. Kids came away squealing, little fists pressed to their mouths, giggling. I was dancing and selling at patches. The paddy wagon was gone. We almost felt free.

A glimmer of freedom - dancing the day away (photo by Ron Grenko)

In the Blog spot below a “concerned artist” wrote me with advice. I sent her four questions and then wrote a response to her letter. When I received her answers I added my rebuttal. I had to do this. She had slandered my purpose and offered up misinformation. I blog it because it contains arguments for common misconceptions about our struggle for our rights and the laws that bind us.

LETTER FROM CONCERNED ARTIST
C, maybe I am on the side of The Establishment right now, but don’t you think your life would be a lot easier if you just got the vendor’s license? Yeah. Getting a vendor’s license sucks. It’s expensive, it’s time consuming, and it’s money in the pockets for the city and the state.

I am just as much a liberal as the next person, free spirit, laid back and so on.
But if the rule is there, it’s there for a reason. This isn’t a Jim Crow law where blacks and whites are required to be in separate bathrooms, busses and movie theaters.

Look at it this way: If you get your vendor’s license, the police leave you alone, you have credibility for your work, you get a tax number and the ability to purchase wholesale, and maybe even the chance to open a store, so people can buy your artwork all year round. You could open your store in Bucktown. I take the North Avenue bus every day, and I see storefront vacancies all the time, including one where they give you four months for free.

I am all for what you’re doing. You are a talented artist. I saw it when you were showing off your t-shirt art last summer. If the price for the license is too high for you to pay for, ask for help. Run a benefit. You’ll be using your energy in a much more constructive manner than constantly running from the cops.

MY RESPONSE
She begins by asking herself if she is siding with the “Establishment” and and soon stresses she is a liberal and a free spirit. I begin to sense she is about to violate her own identity in her coming rant. I will clear up the confusion that follows.

Her first statement attempts to trivialize our struggle. “It isn’t Jim Crow…” she says. She suggests I should just buy a peddlers license and then leap into opening my own store in Bucktown – a trendy gentrifying area near northwest of the Loop. Finally she accuses me of “constantly running from the cops.” Ha-ha-ha-ha.

Has she been reading my e-mails? She knows I am not running from the police but seeking to test an unconstitutional law. She is craftily characterizing me as a criminal just as the peddlers license does when I exercise my right to sell art in public according to my First Amendment rights. In the past I had a peddlers license. I had a speech permit. The first day I went out to introduce myself to the audience that frequented my speech corner during the high traffic lunch hour, I was greeted by a bank security guard who called a policeman and he called his supervisor. I had to argue my rights for the entire lunch period while my new audience passed by watching as the Chicago Police Department made me look like a criminal. I can talk about how this system limits our speech from experience.

To those it affects, it is similar to Jim Crow. It is a national problem. The First Amendment giveth and the local governments take away. That is the way Jim Crow worked. The scope may differ but both are civil rights violations. The freedom that the First Amendment promises artists is that they can sell their art to the public in public spaces. This right makes it possible to live by their art as they build an audience which one day might enable them to have a storefront if they so chose. That is how much speech/art is valued by the constitution and the case law evolving around it. Local laws limit the ability of artists to make the leap in their careers from beginner to a storefront. Their speech and their ability to survive by their speech is limited significantly. In Chicago there is not one single open-air art scene where artists can sell their art with or without a license. This weakens our creative social structure and that diminishes our cultural treasure. To put it bluntly, many more artists die on the vine – giving up on surviving by their art and their speech is lost. To this critic – that doesn’t matter much – to me it is a calamity. It makes Chicago into a generic city on the world stage. Let’s keep our eye on the real crime. It is not me testing the law, it’s our (your) rights being violated. Don’t pretend you are supporting artists when you are not. Where is your fight for our rights?

If you have no comparison with what could be, there is no way for you to see what is lost by local laws that limit art activity. Maybe this writer is lost due to lack of comparisons. Perhaps she is reflecting the same type of fear as those who opposed the Civil Rights Movement when it attacked Jim Crow, fearful of the threat of a backlash for challenging the establishment. I ask you to support that first step up that this freedom to sell art represents for artists so we might help support our local economies and live that dream of an expensive storefront in Bucktown one day. However, if we decide that our delight is being out in in public, without excessive overhead, with an ever changing audience, let that be as well. Such is freedom.

FOUR QUESTIONS
After reading and thinking about her letter I fired off these four simple questions before responding to get a better idea of where she was coming from. Her answers with my rebuttals follow.

1 What is the reason the peddlers license is there?
2 Do you think the our First Amendment rights to free speech including the right to sell our speech in public are trivial rights?
3 Do you think what I am doing is running from or running toward the cops?
4 Do you think what I am doing has a negative effect on Chicago (ie is not constructive)?

SECOND LETTER WITH HER ANSWERS

CONCERNED ARTIST
1) What is the reason the peddlers license is there?
I don’t fully know, but it’s there for yours and the public’s protection, making sure you are selling your products legally. Otherwise you look like you’re panhandling, and that in and of itself is illegal. If you were selling apples or some other kind of food, for example, you would have to follow the laws of the Pure Food and Drug Act. You couldn’t sell bad meat or fruit, and the license proves you’re not selling tainted food. If you did you would be making people sick.

MY RESPONSE
Apples and speech are different under the law in the United States because speech is protected by the First Amendment and apples are not. The peddlers license was originally designed to license non-speech vendors (sellers of apples, umbrellas, etc) before 1994. Before 1994 speech vendors were unlicensed and allowed to sell their speech in public without a license. Daley and his council added speech vendors to the peddlers license requirement a year after New York City passed a similar law. When that happened, the artists in New York City fought tooth and nail and won important court precedents for artists around the country. In Chicago there was no organized fight like in New York City but two lawsuits did challenge the peddlers license and demonstrated its unconstitutionality.

It is a privilege to sell food in this nation but it is your right to sell your art. In this nation we make a huge legal distinction between a right and a privilege. The State should not be the one to decide whose art is better by a license as you suggest when you compare the peddlers license to that required for selling meat. Speech is not meat. The public should decide what art is rotten, not the state.

You say that panhandling is illegal. Have you been down to the Loop lately? FACT: Panhandlers have won their First Amendment rights to ask you for a dollar. That is all you can see downtown on the street is panhandlers, not artists, and panhandlers deserve their rights. I’m just asking for artists to have the same First Amendment rights as panhandlers have won in Chicago. Have a heart for the homeless artist who, in Chicago, is allowed to beg but is a criminal if he sells you his art. I’ve written about that again and again which leads me to wonder if you are really reading my dispatches or, if you are, as you seem to be, unaware of the facts I present.

CONCERNED ARTIST
2) Do you think the our First Amendment rights to free speech including the right to sell our speech in public are trivial rights? No. I don’t think First Amendment Rights are trivial. But they have always been open to inappropriate interpretation.

MY RESPONSE
I am glad you admit that artists’ First Amendment rights are not trivial. However, aside from insinuating I might be misinterpreting the First Amendment you do not offer any analysis or quote any cases. Innuendo is so much easier to use than solid logical arguments based on case law. In my writing and on my blog I supply artists and the public with the case law and logical legal arguments for them to consider for themselves what their rights are in America. Check out Bery v The City of New York, or Weinberg v the City of Chicago or Ayres v the City of Chicago. Check the right hand column for those cases. Absorb those three cases and let’s talk some more. Ha-ha! After that we can debate what is “inappropriate”.

CONCERNED ARTIST
3) Do you think what I am doing is running from or running toward the cops?
Depending on the situation, I think you’re doing both. When you run away from the cops, you know you’re doing something you shouldn’t be doing, and when you run toward them, you’re copping an attitude. Either way, they’re just doing their jobs. I think you’re playing with them.

MY RESPONSE
I discussed this in my comments on her first letter. It is an interesting phrase “copping an attitude” and “playing with them (the cops).”

The police are not the problem. I have no animosity toward the police I meet. I am interacting with the police. I am recording and reporting the police response. The police are the messengers for the managers. The managers are the problem. I am simply playing by the rules our society has laid out for any citizen to contribute to society by making improvements to our legal system through the courts. The City managers understand that. The police are in between. I only hope the police will give me fair treatment and not overreact. I come in peace with intelligent discussion of my rights and not with verbal abuse or insult. I am not playing a game. The fight for our rights is serious business. That said, we can make fighting for our rights as fun as possible.

CONCERNED ARTIST
4a) Do you think what I am doing is have a negative effect on Chicago (ie is not constructive)?
To be honest, yes, you are having a negative effect on Chicago. You spoil it for the artists and musicians and photographers who have a right to be there, because they DO have their license. You want to be an exception to all the other street peddlers, street musicians included, who have enough trouble promoting their work in public as it is. You don’t get special treatment thinking you don’t need a peddler’s license. You get in trouble.

MY RESPONSE
Artists, musicians and photographers – artists, musicians and photographers – super-cala-fragalistic-expi-ala-do-sous – what a fantasy. Where are the artists in public? The musicians are greatly marginalized and the artists are absent on the streets in Chicago. The peddlers license bans us from selling anywhere we can make a living and next to nobody uses it to sell art in Chicago because it is useless for that purpose. You know I am not trying to undercut other artists on the street by working without a peddlers license. My intent is on suing the City for our full speech rights so artists can sell their work in public without a license. Even more important – I want artists to be able to create lively art scenes that attract people by their collective activity in public locations of artists choice. I dare you to find five artists with a peddlers license making a living in Chicago. I’ve paid my dues. You have not been on these streets as an artist as I have for the past five years. Good luck in your search.

CONCERNED ARTIST
4b) If everyone just set up wherever they felt like it, that could be a very unsafe situation for walking on the sidewalk, you could be selling something that has not been properly inspected, and an epidemic could take place, if a musician doesn’t use their street license properly, they could get arrested due to a noise complaint. The cops won’t think you’re there legally, you’re being vagrant and you’re loitering.

MY RESPONSE
First Amendment case law demands the City of Chicago write narrow laws when speech is limited to control sidewalk traffic congestion. You support the City’s broad laws that are unconstitutional. The broad law of the peddlers license says no selling art in the Loop. An example of a narrow law would be no selling 20 feet from a doorway, 10 feet from an intersection and there must be 7 feet clear for pedestrian traffic on any sidewalk. The City said homeless panhandlers would block the sidewalks asking for change before they sued and won their right to ask you for a dollar. You can still walk downtown. Amazing!

You are right that without a license I could sell art that has not been inspected. You are right again when you say there could be an epidemic of art in Chicago if a license were not required to sell speech. Maybe a pandemic! Why does that not scare me? Because the City can still write narrow laws to guarantee your ability to walk safely. You will just see art all along your walk. What a catastrophe!

CONCERNED ARTIST
4c) Especially in the Loop. The Loop is crowded enough as it is. The cops have enough trouble making sure the automobile and pedestrian traffic is moving smoothly. If you think you don’t need a license, the City of Chicago will decide the visual artists, photographers, actors, and musicians who have licenses shouldn’t have them either, and no form of street sale will take place. You’ll ruin it for the musicians and artists that DO follow the rules.

MY RESPONSE
Here comes the fear part, if we fight for our rights, the City will clamp down like Nazis and make all speech illegal. Why bother – that is already the case for artists. I still dare you to find those five artists with peddlers licenses making a living in Chicago. You do not get or maintain speech rights by not fighting for them. You only lose rights by not fighting for them as you advocate here. In America you still must fight for the rights promised by the Bill of Rights or others with a dictatorial agenda will use the democratic system to take your rights away. History proves this to be true. Study Chicago.

CONCERNED ARTIST
4d) I have friends who are street musicians who are very talented. I also see artists along Michigan Avenue selling their drawings and making money sketching, and they’re good too, but the license proves they have a right to be there. They have their own hassles with City Hall. They have had to fight endlessly to have the right to play their music and do their dances and their artwork on the streets, because this is their livelihood. That was the compromise for performing and selling visual art.

MY RESPONSE
You do NOT see artists selling drawings and making money sketching along Michigan Avenue with a peddlers license because the peddlers license does NOT allow this activity on Michigan Avenue. Maybe you ought to read the peddlers license law. I have it posted on my blog at c-drew.com, see the column on the right for its link.

The City hangs musicians and artists separately by different laws, one dysfunctional license for artists (peddlers license) and another for musicians and performing artists(performers license). I tell the musicians I talk to that once we organize to fight our battle as visual artists, we are going to build an organization to defend the rights of all creative workers protected by the First Amendment.

CONCERNED ARTIST
4e) A license means you are willing to comply with safety rules. You look like you used to do sports when you were younger. Didn’t you learn that rules are your friends, and you don’t talk back to the coach?

MY RESPONSE
We live in a democracy not a dictatorship. I allow you to talk back to me, I get to talk back to you and we get to talk back to our elected officials. Also, there are three branches of government under our system, the executive, the legislative and the courts. The legislature passes laws and the courts determine if the laws passed are constitutional. Citizens may sue in court to allow the courts to determine what is constitutional. That is one tool citizens have in this society. I am playing by the rules.

In summary you did the best job you were able to in presenting the Establishment position and it is very weak. I hope you will open your mind and not be so fearful of the consequences of artists’ fight for their full speech rights. I believe you have the fire of freedom hidden within you heart. Let it out.