Who's behind the assault on street vendors?
The CIA found Saddam hiding in a rat hole, Jacko's been indicted for child molestation and at least one of the DC snipers is facing the death penalty. Now if only we can rid New York City streets of vendors, Western civilization will be safe again, just in time for President Bush to address the 2004 Republican convention in Madison Square Garden.
Sound ridiculous? Mayor Bloomberg, state legislators, the City Council and much of New York's media aren't laughing.
All are furiously promoting the creation of new vending laws that would severely restrict the rights of street artists, newspaper publishers and disabled veteran vendors. The past month alone has seen more than 30 editorials and articles in the New York media with headlines like "Vendor Villainy" (New York Post, Dec. 8).
The vendors are being demonized like never before. One recent editorial cartoon depicted three turbaned men in Times Square selling counterfeit CDs, fake watches and that old standby of the holiday shopping season, Weapons of Mass Destruction. According to these articles, vendors are destroying business, congesting the streets and threatening public safety. The Bloomberg administration agrees, and has joined the holy war with gusto.
At stake are public spaces and the right to freedom of speech. If the city succeeds in passing the new vending laws, it won't just affect vendors; the media may also lose its time-honored right to sell newspapers on public property free from censorship or control. The federal courts have ruled that New York's street artists are as protected by free speech as newspaper publishers. The new vending laws would criminalize the handing out of free political leaflets while standing on a public sidewalk.
Unless, of course, you are part of a BID.
It's impossible to understand the war against vendors without examining the role of BIDs, or Business Improvement Districts, and the closely-related issue of "street furniture" advertising. BIDs claim they were created to improve business. Their non-governmental predecessors go back to the early 1900s, when the Fifth Avenue Association was formed to keep Jewish merchants from moving up to 5th Ave. from the Lower East Side. Local Law 2 was passed in 1982, authorizing the creation of local BIDs throughout the city. Through this law, the city council gave BIDs a charter, allowing them to assess taxes on all commercial property within their districts. BID membership is not voluntary. All commercial tenants and landlords within their local BID territory are automatically members.
Aside from street artists and disabled vets, other key targets of the BIDs have been homeless people and newspaper vending boxes, in an assault that has more to do with territory than public safety. The BIDs plan to eliminate all other legitimate claims to the use of public property-which they now claim to be their semi-private property.
There's no question that BIDs perform some useful services for their member businesses. But these services-primarily sanitation and security-are the same ones for which their member businesses are already paying New York City taxes. As the BIDs have grown in power, they've changed their focus from keeping public spaces clean to taking them over completely.
BIDs claim that sidewalk congestion is their main problem with vendors, yet city officials and the BIDs are preparing to permanently install thousands of large metal, cement and glass kiosks covered with corporate advertising on the city's sidewalks and in its parks. Most of it will be located within the BIDs in the very places where independent vending is now legal.
These brightly lit sidewalk obstructions will be state-of-the-art, visual distractions-much like the video signage now covering every inch of wall space in Times Square. Like the new digital billboards at high-profile subway entrances around the city, they will offer video advertisements, 24 hours a day-in short, turning the sidewalks of NYC into the biggest ad market in the world, with all of New York City becoming one continuous extension of Times Square.
After a decade of opposition from community boards and allegations of corruption, the "Street Furniture Initiative" was recently passed by the City Council-but only after a lot of money was passed out by the company that will own all these ad kiosks, Clear Channel Communications. The bill was sponsored by Mayor Bloomberg and had the full approval of Manhattan's BIDs, which are already installing thousands of pieces of their own street furniture covered with ads on sidewalks in their districts. The BIDs will get a share of this ad revenue.
The new vending laws are specifically aimed at legal First Amendment-protected street artists and disabled veteran vendors, not illegal vendors or those selling counterfeit merchandise. Why would the city persecute these two legal groups of vendors while turning a blind eye to illegal vendors? In June 1994, Robert Loutitt, security director of the Fifth Avenue BID and former first commanding officer of the NYPD's Peddler Task Force, explained his BID's strategy: "We know that if we can get rid of the First Amendment-protected vendors we can get rid of all the vendors."
Roust out your strongest enemy, and the weaker ones will run.
Likewise, the BIDs want to eliminate sidewalk newspaper vending boxes not because they cause congestion, but because they want to install their own BID-controlled newspaper boxes covered with advertising on every street corner. This process of displacing independently owned newsboxes with BID-controlled newsboxes has already begun in the territories of the Fifth Avenue BID, Grand Central Partnership BID and 34th Street Partnership BID.
By only allowing BID-controlled newsboxes, the BID director gets to decide which papers can be sold or given away. Is there a clearer violation of free speech and freedom of the press than to let BID directors decide which newspapers can be given away or sold on public property within their districts?
And who is overseeing this attack on First Amendment-protected street artists, newsboxes and disabled war veteran vendors on behalf of the BIDs? None other than multibillionaire media mogul Mayor Bloomberg, a man whose entire fortune was derived from exercising his own First Amendment rights. Mayor Giuliani earned a reputation as an enemy of vendors, especially street artists, and of the First Amendment, but Mayor Bloomberg has gone to even greater lengths to destroy independent vendors.
Legislators in Albany have yet to pass the proposed new vending laws. That's because these former lawyers understand that the lawsuits street artists won from 1994 through 2003 guaranteed vendors full First Amendment protection-thus rendering the proposed vending laws unconstitutional. Frustrated in its efforts to get the new laws passed, the city has upped the ante, demonizing vendors by alleging that food vendors are poisoning the public. Recent articles describe such horrors as green hot dogs and cream cheese laced with cockroaches. Ignored is the fact that even the best restaurants in New York are cited for health-code violations-and they're inspected less often than their vendor cousins. This latest campaign is not about protecting public health; it's about smearing all vendors as "toxic" in the mind of the public.
As if that weren't enough, another red herring has been thrown into the mix: vendors as copyright infringers. In a rare public appearance last Thursday, the mayor proudly posed with a pile of confiscated counterfeit ladies handbags. Copyright infringement and counterfeiting are legitimate problems, but does Mayor Bloomberg have nothing better to do than to protect the profits of Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Coach and Chanel-all of whom just happen to be members of the powerful Fifth Avenue BID?
Two weeks ago, Mayor Bloomberg made a statement in relation to his vetoing of the lead paint law that perfectly describes his position on the vending issue:
"This would be a big step backwards, and it's done under the guise of pandering to a handful of people. Who knows what their political motives are?"