STOP THE NEW VENDOR LAW

Below is a revised version of our statement on the new law. You can download a WORD formatted 2 page version of it for handing out by going to our website and clicking on FILE. It's under the breastle, AAA leaflet for protest. PLEASE HELP GET THE WORD OUT ON THE STREET!

STOP THE NEW VENDOR LAW! ALL VENDORS and STREET ARTISTS WILL PROTEST MONDAY 4-18-05 11:30 AM #250 Broadway, rain or shine (Across the street from City Hall take N,R to City Hall Station (contact # 201 896-1686 Robert Lederman)

A license for artists and written matter vendors, fingerprinting all vendors and limiting all vendors to three per block are aspects of a controversial new 36 page vending law proposed by Councilmember Phillip Reed. A public hearing during which vendors can testify for or against the law will be held on 4-18-05 right after our protest. Please be at #250 Broadway by 11:30 AM!

A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics) strongly opposes this law. We believe it grossly violates all vendors rights. It also directly violates both the First Amendment and the rulings from a series of successful lawsuits artists brought against the City between 1994 and 2001. The rulings in these lawsuits established full Consbreastutional protection for NYC street artists, exactly equivalent to that of someone selling a newspaper or book. Bery-Lederman et al v City of NY; Lederman v Giuliani-Bach et al v City of NY. For the full 36 page text of the new law and the rulings on street artists rights see: license would even be required to hand out leaflets or distribute political materials.

We completely reject any proposal to subject artists to a license on the street and in Parks. A license requirement for artists' free speech is in blatant disregard of seven different Federal and State courts having previously ruled such a license or permit to be unconsbreastutional.

Reed's plan of limiting all First Amendment-protected vendors to one per block while reducing such vendors to the same legal status as someone selling packages of batteries violates countless precedents on freedom of speech and artistic expression. Under this unprecendented law if you get four summonses in one year, you lose your license - and your free speech rights. First Amendment protected vendors include all vendors selling art, books, CDs, DVDs, newspapers and political or religious materials.

Many of the other proposals in Councilmember Reed's vending law are equally troubling. If Reed's bill pbuttes it will completely destroy the livelihood of the City's 10,000 legal food vendors, disabled veteran vendors, street artists, book vendors and general vendors.

This law claims it will improve public safety by reducing sidewalk congestion allegedly caused by there being too many vendors, yet, a key feature of the proposed law is to remove the existing limit on the total number of vending licenses. This will create thousands of newly licensed general merchandise and food vendors. If one believes that NY City's current population of 10,000 vendors is congesting the sidewalks (a theory not actually born out by the facts), how could increasing the number of vendors by thousands reduce congestion? This law is a manipulative bait and switch con game intended to destroy vending.

The Councilmember also claims that the present vending laws are too confusing for the NYPD but that his new law would be much easier for them to enforce. This makes no sense.

Reed's proposal creates a system of priority whereby a vendor holding a more favorable priority number can force a vendor with a less favorable number to leave any vending spot. Imagine thousands of vendors wandering the streets looking for a vendor with a less favorable number to bounce out of their spot. This system will cause thousands of confrontations each day requiring constant police intervention. Imagine a similar priority system being applied to parking spots and you'll get an idea of the violence this proposal would create.

If we are to believe that the NYPD can't even enforce the relatively simple laws now on the books about how large a vending stand can be and the distance it must be from a door, how will they enforce a much more complex set of laws involving priority numbers? How could the same number of police officers enforce the new law against ten times as many legal vendors?

A.R.T.I.S.T. has expressed to Councilmember Reed that his plan is not only unworkable but our belief that it is cynically intended to serve as PART I of an even worse system where all vending spots are sold to the highest bidder each year.

In PART I planned chaos is created by issuing thousands of vending licenses to new vendors who will all use their priority numbers to evict other vendors out of one of the three per block legal vending spots. This planned chaos will then be used by City officials as the justification for PART II - buttigning all vending locations by selling them to the highest bidder. Corporations will end up owning every desirable vending spot in NYC - which is the real purpose of this law.

Selling vending spots to corporations has long been the practice in all NYC Parks, where all vendors except artists protected by the 2001 ruling in Lederman et al v Giuliani must compete in a highest bidder gets the spot system. Some individual food and tee shirt vending spots in NYC Parks have bid out for as much as one million dollars per year and corporations now own every vending location. If such a system is applied to the streets, none of the vendors now working - nor any of the vendors Reed's bill proposes to issue new licenses to - will ever be able to afford a vending spot.

Councilmember Reed calls this cynical game of musical chairs, social justice. We call it corruption.

The real problem with vending in NYC is not so much in the laws but in a misguided and often politically-motivated enforcement policy - a fact Councilmember Reed has publicly acknowledged. Rather than evenly and objectively enforcing the actual vending laws the City chooses to enforce fanciful interpretations of the laws based on whatever the most influential Business Improvement Districts or BIDs want them to do. It's an organized system of illegal enforcement.

Most BIDs have former high-ranking NYPD officials on their payrolls who are in charge of vending enforcement. Exactly who they work for at any given moment, the City or a BID, is often unclear. In some cases groups like the Downtown Alliance BID actually built and paid for the police precinct local NYPD vendor enforcement officers are stationed in. For chronically underpaid NYPD officers, working for the BIDs while off-duty earns them an excellent second income. Hundreds plan to have a second career with one or another BID after retirement. This creates an interdependency that borders on the NYPD becoming a privatized police force - a concept that perfectly fits with the Mayor's ideas about the future of NYC.

A good vending law cannot be made by combining the worst ideas of the BIDs with the privatization agenda of City officials like DCA Commissioner and former BID president, Gretchen Dykstra - who helped formulate Reed's proposed vending law. It's a mockery of social justice and equality to suggest these values can be achieved by taking away everyone's rights.

After losing ten years worth of lawsuits brought by street artists and vendors, one would hope NYC officials might greet such one-sided proposals with a skeptical eye.

If the City's vending laws need to be revised at all, this is not the way to do it. Stand united with all of the City's vendors on Monday April 18th at 11:30 AM outside #250 Broadway to express our outrage over this proposed new law.

Robert Lederman, President of A.R.T.I.S.T. (Artists' Response To Illegal