Birthday to Birthday – One Year of Resistance
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I’m writing this blog post to continue the journey I began one year ago when, on my birthday, I tried unsuccessfully to get arrested for selling art for $1. It was a cold Friday afternoon in front of the Arts Institute. Nancy Bechtol, Jenny Rotten and others were there to support me. I wrote it up on my blog. WBBM radio covered it. Later attempts morphed into a fight to also change the eavesdropping law. Today it is history. This, my 60th birthday is a great moment to review that history in a nut shell and to project it into the future for all to consider the nature of what we are accomplishing.
First – the law! The First Amendment case law says that whenever a government writes a law that limits speech it must have a very good reason, must write a narrow law tailored to effectively address that reason and to the extent that it limits speech it must provide an ample alternative to those whose speech is limited. There is no difference made whether the speaker is paid or not. If you can give the art away in a public location you should be able to sell it there, as well. These are your rights as an American.
The City of Chicago completely takes your right to sell your art away in every public park by a simple policy statement. The City outlaws your right to sell art completely in the areas of the City you are most likely to succeed by broadly defining “prohibited districts” in the peddlers license that it demands you buy to exercise your speech rights. It will deny you your First Amendment rights if you owe the City money for a parking ticket or anything else. If you do not have the fee for the license you can’t afford your inalienable rights as a citizen. For more details on this read my archived blog writings, the “FreeSAM Newsletter Archive (first link under Pages, right hand column) and the many legal cases linked to the right of this post.
My Arrest History
October 9th we attempted to test the peddlers license selling art for $1 in front of the Arts Institute. On Monday, October 19th, Nancy Bechtol armed with her video camera and two of her artists friends with still cameras accompanied me as I tried again along Michigan Avenue from the Watertower Place to Millennium Park to be arrested for selling art for $1. I had the opportunity to be arrested at Millennium Park but that would have been a test of park policy and we had targeted the peddlers license, so I declined this chance and crossed the street seeking arrest. We did not find a challenge from the City that day.
On November 13th the same crew again sought successfully to engage the City. On that lucky day I was written a ticket for selling art for $1 in front of Macy’s on State Street. The four female policewomen told me I would be arrested if I proceeded. After a huddle with my team, I proceeded but the City did not arrest me. This action is documented on Youtube by Nancy Bechtol. They had a paddy wagon waiting on me on State Street for over an hour and a half and uniformed and plainclothes officers standing at the corner, phone in hand, watching us but the order to arrest apparently never came. We gave up after 4:00 and went to dinner in Macy’s basement. Our team returned December 2nd to the same lucky spot. This day a Sargent, head of the elite Homeland Security crew patrolling Macy’s and its State Street beat, arrived with clear orders to arrest me. I was arrested peacefully in a documented action which we later uploaded to Youtube where it resides today for all to see.
Post Arrest History
After arresting me for selling art for $1, a misdemeanor, they cuffed me to a wall for five hours while they conspired with the State’s Attorney’s Office to later charge me additionally with a 1st class felony. They found an audio-recorder in my confiscated bag and listened to it. I spent a night fighting hypothermia in in the coldest cell at that police station on a very cold night in December. They decided I deserved a 1st class felony for audio-recording my own arrest and sent me for two more days in Cook County Jail until my wife found the two thousand dollars needed to meet my bond. The Office of Cook County State’s Attorney, Anita Alvarez, confirmed my 1st class felony charge, in severity one step below murder and made my bond $20,000. They proceeded with their intentions to prosecute me for this crime obviously because art and outspoken artists are very dangerous individuals.
At my first court hearing on December 9th, Judge Frank Deboni heard the arguments of Morgan Creppel, Assistant State’s Attorney, that I deserved the 1st class felony charge. The Arresting officer was there to whine about how I had violated his privacy rights and therefore deserved a 1st class felony, one step below murder. Judge Deboni agreed. Deboni, Creppel, ha-ha, I didn’t make these names up – they are on the court documents.
My lawyer, Mark Weinberg, argued my First Amendment right to gather information in public, as we had agreed, but Judge Deboni ruled Mark’s argument irrelevant. Creppel then asked Judge Deboni to dismiss the two misdemeanors leaving the State’s Attorney’s Office and Anita Alvarez only the 1st class felony to hang me with. Judge Deboni did so with a quick slam of his gavel and the next case was called. With no fanfare or remorse the State began to prosecute me along with rapists, armed robbers and attempted murders for a crime that harmed no one and which is legal in 47 of the 50 States as one of our basic rights, for gathering the information of what a police officer said to me in public while arresting me. This is Illinois.
Since that time my case has appeared before Judge Stanley Sacks at 26th and California in room 602 ten times, we have submitted a motion to dismiss based on my First Amendment rights which became the central argument by the ACLU in their subsequent law suit against Anita Alvarez for charging myself and others with this law. That motion was dismissed. I am still free on a $20,000 bond and Anita Alvarez, the Cook County State’s Attorney, is still trying to convict me of a 1st class felony for audio-recording my arrest.
We have through our public relations on my case helped to make this a national issue. A long list of local publications have told my story. The National Public Radio has covered us well but other national media have to date avoided this story. A congressman from New York has introduced H.Res.Con.298, a Sense of Congress Resolution stating that government should not prosecute citizens for video or audio-recording police on duty while they are in public. Time magazine wrote on a Maryland case where a motorcyclist was charged with a similar law in that State. The court has since dropped his case. On October 22nd we will appear in court again for a hearing on whether the court will suppress the audio-evidence found on my audio-recorder. If they decide to suppress it the States case will fall apart and I will likely be set free. If not, I will surely be headed toward a trial before a jury on this charge early in 2011.
The Future
When the State decided to prosecute me for felony eavesdropping they gave me a microphone to publicize our cases, the right of artists to sell art in public and the right for everyone to use their cell phones to protect themselves and others from out-of-pocket police in Chicago and Illinois. I have used that microphone effectively, without fear of the consequences.
They thought they would distract us from our mission to defend artists rights. However, the fight for artists rights is not a short battle. It is a long war. I knew that when I wrote about it in my blog for over three years before I moved to challenge it in 2009. This ridiculous 1st class felony charge has helped to educate thousands of people in the Chicago area to our issues.
The Chicago Tribune article after the ACLU sued Anita Alvarez and especially the Reader article by Deanna Isaacs has informed artists around Chicago of their rights and setup an environment where other artists are motivated to challenge the City for our rights.
Some think that by dropping the misdemeanor charges for selling art for $1 the State has avoided the legal issues in Federal Court. They have not. As soon as we defeat this felony charge we will be initiating law suits of our own. We will sue the City for artists rights and the State to create case law on the eavesdropping law that forces them to change these unconstitutional laws.
Most important, we will form a committee to do the difficult work of collecting the evidence we need to show just how much Chicago’s laws have undermined artists street culture and what the effects have been on the standard of living for citizens and artists. We must collect and tell the stories of Chicago’s many artists denied their rights! We must demonstrate the wholesale nature of this censorship. This is a job bigger than I am capable of by myself.
We must build a well supported Citywide initiative with the mighty actions of an artists’ collective behind it. Artists your voices are powerful. We will continue to build the Art Patch Project into a major exhibit and a popular community art give-away able to bring the public to our side. Submit art to the Art Patch Project. The future is ours to live and build. Talk it up. Re-post this. E-mail it to friends. Change your City. Change your State. Change your Nation – with your art.
