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Interview with
Giuliani Decency Commission

(Giuliani's Art Police Are At It Again!)

by Robert Lederman

robert.lederman@worldnet.att.net
April 20, 2001

He's at it again. New York City's self-proclaimed Decency Commissioner, Rudolph Giuliani, is attacking yet another art venue for daring to express a viewpoint he doesn't agree with.

Now it's the Bronx Museum of the Arts that is feeling the Wrath of Giuliani. This time it has nothing to do with the Catholic Church, the Madonna or the Last Supper. Criticizing the police has been added to Giuliani's list of forbidden subjects for artists and museums.

The great thing about Giuliani is that he never stops giving you evidence of where he's coming from or the utter hypocrisy behind it. Last week I had an opportunity to debate the Decency Commission on live radio (1050AM WEVD, the Alan Colmes Show) with one of its' members, the Mayor's divorce attorney, Raoul Felder.

Felder kept insisting that the Commission had nothing to do with censorship but only with the use of tax dollars to finance art. Then he volunteered that in 1998 he had tried to have a show of my Giuliani portraits closed because it was located in a Madison Avenue office building where his office is located. The show was on private property and needless to say received no tax dollars. When Felder came into the show he looked horrified by the paintings of Giuliani as a dictator and asked me, "Is it legal to show these pictures?"

I asked Felder why the Brooklyn Museum couldn't show art that some people mistakenly thought was anti-Catholic yet the Museum of Modern Art - which recieves far more NY City tax dollars than the Brooklyn Museum and all other NYC museums combined - could show blatantly anti-Catholic works by Salvador Dali. Felder's response was that Dali was a famous artist. Such is the commission's legal expertise on First Amendment issues.

Felder isn't the only member of the Decency Commission with a history of trying to censor art on Giuliani's behalf.

Daniel Connolly, the Decency Commission's executive director, was Mayor Giuliani's NYC corporation Counsel lawyer in charge of all the street artist arrest cases in NYC from 1994 until we won our first lawsuit in 1997. Out of more than 700 artist arrests not one was ever brought to trial and not more than a handful of artists ever got their art back. Tens of thousands of works of fine art were confiscated and illegally destroyed as part of the policy.

In a series of memos written at the very start of the policy (which are part of the legal record) the corporation counsel and the Manhattan District Attorney's office wrote that the artist arrest policy was unconstitutional and that no case could be prosecuted. No case ever was prosecuted yet the artist arrests continued on a daily basis for four years.

Giuliani went all the way to the
U.S. Supreme Court to try and stop
myself and other artists from
showing art that criticized his policies.

In his appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Giuliani wrote:
"An exhibition of paintings is not as communicative as speech, literature or live entertainment, and the artists' constitutional interest is thus minimal." -Giuliani appeal brief against street artists having First Amendment protection, Giuliani v Lederman et al and Giuliani v Bery et al, filed with the U.S. Supreme Court 2/24/97.

Losing that case didn't stop the Mayor from trying to keep artists from showing political art he dissproves of.

Right after losing it Giuliani and his most loyal henchman, Parks Commissioner Henry Stern, created an artist permit policy that directly violated the ruling in the previous case. The 2nd circuit ruling gave artists the exact same full First Amendment right as newspaper publishers and book vendors to distribute, sell or display on New York City streets without a license or permit.

Aside from the hundreds of book vendors selling within 350 feet of NYC Parks (which the agency claims as their jurisdiction) you may have noticed the thousands of metal and plastic distribution boxes located throughout the City. In these boxes copies of the NY Times, NY Post, Wall Street Journal and other papers are sold and the Village Voice and NY Press among others are distributed for free.

Not one of these boxes has a permit, pays any fee or needs any permission. Many are chained to City property - lightpoles, stops signs etc - or are located next to fire hydrants and other so-called street furniture that artists are prohibited from being next to.

In our current lawsuit we have documented hundreds of instances where the Parks Department allows book and newspaper vendors to sell on Parks property without a permit while arresting artists for doing the exact same thing same in the exact same location.

The artist permit system for Parks now has it's own decency panel appointed by the Mayor and Commissioner Stern, which decides which artists are suitable to show their work. The permit system is the subject of an ongoing lawsuit, Lederman et al v Giuliani, which is currently in Federal court.

When one of the Manhattan Criminal court's
best judges, Lucy Billings,
overturned the artist permit in 1999
because it blatantly violated the
NY State Constitution and New York City law,
Giuliani had her removed
from the criminal court.

Recently the Mayor had me arrested for the 41st time outside City Hall for selling a postcard with his portrait on it based on this same overturned law. Supervising the arrest was his Deputy Mayor Rudy Washington, officers from the NYPD intelligence division, a lawyer for the NYPD and more than 25 uniformed officers.

This past week I attempted to get Parks Commissioner Stern and various of his aides, including Deputy Commissioner in charge of enforcement Jack Linn and Parks legal counsel Alexander Oliveri, to state what their current policy was concerning artists and bookvendors. All refused to go on the record as to what their own legal policy was.

Linn told me, "You'll have to test us to find out." If they actually believe their policy is legal and constitutional, why keep it a secret? Why do citizens of New York City have to "test" law enforcement to determine what the laws are?

Nevertheless, a Sgt. in the Parks Enforcement Police (PEP) was far more forthcoming. "Artists need a permit. Book vendors don't. We never issue summonses to book vendors." In the early stages of the lawsuit about this the Mayor's lawyers were actually lying to the judge, claiming there was a book vendor permit.

In fact, it was then City Council member Henry Stern himself who had helped eliminate the book vendor license requirement decades previously based on it being a violation of the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.

Times change and so did onetime liberal Henry Stern. The Department of Parks is now a hotbed of racial profiling, corruption and violations of free speech. Stern is being investigated for shaking down charities for exhorbitant "donations" and is being sued by members of his own agency for racial predjudice.

Long before the Mayor began picking on museums (other than the ones his contributors own like the Museum of Modern Art) he was actively censoring political art. This had nothing whatsoever to do with tax dollars and everything to do with his fear of allowing New Yorkers to see art that he finds embarrassing.

As a futher example of the absurdity of this Decency Commission being based on the use of tax dollars consider this. When it comes to tax dollars being used to subsidize political speech in New York City we need look no further than the City's mainstream newspapers. Between them they've recieved hundreds of millions of dollars in tax subsidies from Rudy Giuliani.

The only thing a Decency Commission
needs to look into in New York
is the Giuliani Administration itself.

Street artist lawsuits involving Giuliani Lederman et al v Giuliani (The ongoing Parks Department lawsuit and related matters of censorship and false arrest) 98 Civ. 2024 (LMM) (Click Here) titled New legal complaint filed in Federal Court against Mayor Giuliani. Details the charges of constitutional violations (9/5/98)

The earlier case we already won is at the same site under Street artists are legal: Entire text of the Bery decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (Argued: April 26, 1996 Decided: October 10, 1996) Lederman at al v City of NY; Bery et al v City of NY UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT Nos. 1620, 1621, 1782 August Term 1995 (Argued: April 26, 1996 Decided: October 10, 1996) Docket Nos. 95-9089 (L), 95-9131, 96-7137

The Federal case regarding leafleting on the steps of the US Capitol that I won last year and that the Feds lost on appeal this year (I was arrested giving out leaflets about Giuliani persecuting artists) Lederman v United States of America et al 99-3359 [1] is here NYC Artist Wins Federal Suit Against U.S. Gov't (3/15/2000) and updated at under the title Artist wins latest round in DC Federal Court (3-07-01)

To a Directory of Mr.Lederman's Essays

Robert Lederman is an artist, writer and activist and is also the President of the street artist advocacy group, A.R.T.I.S.T.
Click here for an archive of A.R.T.I.S.T. related news articles on the Freedom Forum website

His essays and Op-Eds have appeared in hundreds of alternative publications as well as the Daily News, Penthouse, Africa Sun Times, Street News and The Shadow.
Lederman was falsely arrested 41 times for his anti-Giuliani activities and was never convicted of any of the charges. As a result of the arrests, he's won four Federal lawsuits and overturned three laws.
He is best known for having created hundreds of paintings of Mayor Giuliani as a Hitler like dictator which were carried in demonstrations throughout the eight years of the Giuliani administration. Images of his paintings and articles about his arrests and lawsuits have appeared on all of the major television networks hundreds of times as well as frequently appearing in the NY Times, Daily News, NY Post, Newsday, Newsweek, People, The Washington Post, LA Times and NY Magazine.

Robert Lederman,
President of A.R.T.I.S.T.
(Artists' Response To Illegal State Tactics)
robert.lederman@worldnet.att.net

For a detailed exposition on the West Nile issue
http://www.nospray.org/
For an article on the Manhattan Institute go to
http://www.konformist.com/2000/rudyg.htm

If you would like to help oppose the spraying,
please write to the
No Spray Coalition
PO Box 334
Peck Slip Station
NYC, NY 10272-0334
or call the No Spray hotline at (718) 670-7110.

Any funds you can send to help continue the lawsuit
and this work are greatly appreciated.

Important Note:
Mr. Lederman has explained that his articles posted here are not to be taken as official statements by the No-Spray Coalition of which he is a member or of the "No-Spray" lawsuit in which he is a plaintiff.

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