Street artist Robert Lederman makes his case to Mayor Michael Bloomberg outside City Hall on May 5. Photos by Annie Lubin.

By ANNIE LUBIN

It’s a rainy Tuesday morning and 30 or so street artists are standing in front of City Hall, carrying yellow signs, cups of coffee and raincoats. The weather won’t stop them from protesting what they paint as one more effort by the city to put them out of business – a proposed law that would be “the most extreme change to vending laws in 100 years ” if passed, as one street artist declares.

Intro 846 would allow a business improvement district in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park section to determine who can sell on the street and where the vendors can set up shop. Almost all of the vendors who protested at the May 5 hearing at City Hall have never sold their wares in Brooklyn. But, ever vigilant in their fight with City Hall, they showed up to prevent a model they feared would spread to other neighborhoods.

On one of the steps street artist and activist Robert Lederman speaks to Joel Kupferman, a lawyer and supporter of the street vendors. They notice Council member Letitia James (D-Brooklyn) walk into the building and rush to talk to her.

“Are you seriously supporting this bill?” Lederman asks. “We like you, we see you as a potential mayor,” he adds.

“I like you too,” she replies. And then, in almost perfect unison, Lederman and Kupferman reply, “So take your name off this bill.”

It has been a long struggle for street artists, who are beset by proposed legislation, the ire of local businesses and by city government crackdowns. Yet they manage to persist, relying on the First Amendment rights that protect their sale of art and books. It hasn’t been easy.

“The first time the police took my artwork,” says Lederman, “I was homeless at the time and they took every piece of art I owned.”

Lederman has been selling art on the streets of New York City since he was 12, and for the first 28 years of his career he had no run-ins with the law. That all changed about 15 years ago when Lederman, president and founder of Artists Reactions To Illegal State Tactics, or ARTIST, was arrested by police for selling art without a license.

At that point, said Lederman, “I and many other artists had the choice – give up the streets or get busy fighting what Mayor Giuliani was up to. Little did they know it would cause me to spend the next 15 years fighting the city. It’s certainly not what I expected to happen.”

Lederman, whose 800-plus member group fights for the legal and political protection of street artists, has been arrested more than 40 times from charges ranging from unlicensed vending to disorderly conduct to obstruction of government administration. He has never been convicted, but has lost thousands of pieces of art that were confiscated during his arrests. He has won six major lawsuits, which helped advance and define the rights of First Amendment vendors.

A First Amendment vendor is any vendor who sells written material such as newspapers, magazines, and books and has recently come to include artwork. The city cannot require a vendor license for these goods because that would violate the right to freedom of speech and expression. A 1996 ruling by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan found that artists should be included in this category, and ruled that requiring a vendor’s license for street artists is “an unconstitutional infringement on their First Amendment rights.”

The court saw the work of street artists as a potent form of expression that must be protected. “Displaying art on the street has a different expressive purpose than gallery or museum shows; it reaches people who might not choose to go into a gallery or museum or who might feel excluded or alienated from these forums,” the judges wrote. “The public display and sale of artwork is a form of communication between the artist and the public.”

Although the city can’t require a license, it can still regulate where vendors can place their merchandise. This often leads to summonses and arrests.

Mathew Courtney, a street artist who is toothless “from years of neglect,” violates these rules by selling art on the cellar steps just outside the J. Crew clothing store on Prince Street. This, he said, has led to his “dartboard full of summonses.”

Mathew Courtney sells his “recyclable” art outside J.Crew.

Businesses and city government have cracked down on street vendors for more than 100 years, but the biggest clashes were during Rudy Giuliani’s eight years as mayor of New York City.

Giuliani’s administration made hundreds of arrests and argued that the First Amendment does not protect the work of street artists. Robin Binder, Giuliani’s attorney in a lawsuit filed by ARTIST, contended that selling a painting was about as expressive as selling a shirt or belt.

The 1996 court ruling was ARTIST’s first victory, which the Giuliani administration unsuccessfully appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1997. To street artists, Giuliani was public enemy No. 1; although Mayor Michael Bloomberg has also taken steps to limit the rights of street vendors, Lederman respects him. He says that unlike Giuliani, Bloomberg will stop and talk to him and give him respect as well. He described his brief conversation with Bloomberg outside of City Hall at the rally against Intro 846 as “the icing on the cake.”

One YouTube video features Lederman being interviewed, sitting in front of posters he made, depicting Giuliani as Adolf Hitler, with the words “Rudy `Gestapo‘ Giuliani” printed on the bottom, alongside a speech bubble that said, “Freedom is about authority,” based on a quote from a Giuliani speech.

The street artists have recently gone to YouTube to garner public support and to inform other artists about their rights, posting videos that feature montages of arrests, clips of the police seizing and then selling artwork in auction, protests, court hearings and evidence of police harassment.

The battle is often waged in affluent SoHo, where most street artists make their living. Lea Garrett, who works for Not For Tourists, “the ultimate guide for the savvy city-dweller,” said that sometimes vendors are a nuisance, especially in SoHo. They are “more of a tourist attraction,” she said, and locals try to steer clear of them.

She did add that the street artists are a part of the culture and atmosphere of the neighborhood, saying that for many people, “it’s part of the expectation of their day.”

Garrett adds, “It really gets annoying on the narrower side streets like Lafayette and Spring Street, where there’s no escaping the vendors and it’s not as easy to maneuver around them when you’re in a rush.”

Such views led to the City Council’s controversial banning, in April 2000, of all vendor activity on the narrow and crowded Prince and Spring streets on Saturdays and Sundays.

SoHo, short for south of Houston, has been an artists’ Mecca since the 1960’s. Artists such as Phillip Glass, Chuck Close, Frank Stella and many others helped to make SoHo the nexus of creativity, leading to an avant-garde scene enhanced by the neighborhood’s cast iron buildings and cobblestone streets. Today, SoHo is a mixture of trendy stores, world-class art galleries, high-priced real estate and street vendors of all kinds. The tourism website Sohonyc.com lists the art stands on the street as one of the many draws to the neighborhood.

Erin McGill is an artist who sells her own paintings and handmade T-shirts on the streets of SoHo. Upon graduating from Pratt School of Design, she quit her job at a textile company, eventually realizing she “didn’t want to design someone else’s project that was going to be made in some factory in China.”

McGill’s T-shirts seem innocent enough, but take a closer look and you’ll find the words “Make Love Not War” written with black marker on the tag. Peace advocate or not, McGill would not be able to sell her shirts if they did not have some kind of political message, which puts her under the protection of the First Amendment right to free speech.

Erin McGill, a SoHo street artist who sells her paintings and handmade T-shirts on Prince Street.

The 2nd Circuit Court ruled in 2006 that if a work of art has functional purpose – items such as T-shirts, jewelry, knitwear and the like – the city could require a license. The one exception is if it has a political message.

This means McGill must send a message or get a license, the latter being a near impossibility because the waiting list for vendor licenses is so long that new names are not being added.

The number of vendor licenses citywide is limited to 853, an extremely low number considering there are an estimated 10,000 vendors in this city. This limit was established in 1979 and has not increased since.

Council member Charles Barron (D-Brooklyn) is pushing for Intro 324A, a bill that would increase the number of vendor permits from 835 to 15,000. He says that New York is, at its core, a city of immigrants and a city of opportunities, and everyone should have an opportunity at success.

Council member Alan Gerson (D-Manhattan) disagrees, saying the number of licenses should increase to 1,023, an increase of only 20 percent, a low number considering that there are over 1,000 vendors on the waiting list.

Gerson, among others, is pushing five other pieces of legislation in relation to street artists. These bills include proposals concerning where vendors can place their merchandise, what constitutes obstruction and a controversial measure, Intro 830, which would limit vendors to two per block on congested streets.

Paul Nagle, a spokesman for Gerson, said in a telephone interview that this is necessary because some narrow, congested streets in SoHo “are truly hard enough for healthy adults to pass through.” He said there are a lot of complaints from residents and businesses in the neighborhood that say the area is “overrun” by street vendors.

Nagle said that these bills would clarify the rules concerning street vendors. Although Lederman says these rules are perfectly clear the way they are, Nagle said they confuse some police.

“What constitutes First Amendment?” Nagle said. “If you put a picture on a wallet is that First Amendment? Also measuring how far a vendor is from a doorway – which part of the doorway are you supposed to be measuring?”

New legislation is not the only thing threatening street artists these days. Business improvement districts, organizations created by city government and local businesses to better neighborhoods, are trying to get rid of vendors in an effort to clean up streets, eliminate congestion and help local companies to profit as well. Lederman says the BIDs are trying to get vendors off of the streets so they can create space on the sidewalk to sell advertisements.

Rance Huff, director of communications for Council member Leroy Comrie (D-Queens), a proponent of Intro 846, views the bill differently, saying it would “allow vendors to have an opportunity to set up in a legal space and do business in the community in cooperation with the Sunset Park BID. This is an opportunity where the BID is best equipped to deal with issues at local level.”

He said there have been many complaints by local businesses in Sunset Park concerning the vendors, which “led to hostility between street vendors and local merchants.” He said if the bill were passed it would be an “opportunity to mitigate the problem and have the vendors and business leaders work together.”

Lederman disagrees. “It’s putting businesses in charge of our First Amendment rights,” says Lederman. “We’re not going to let it happen.”

Lederman is so adamant about getting this bill axed that he promised to make the doorway of the Sunset Park’s BID his permanent office and protest site until this happens.

“They picked the most obscure neighborhood in New York City and thought we wouldn’t even care about this,” says Lederman. Most of the vendors who showed up for the May 5 protest sell in SoHo or other areas of Manhattan, but as Lederman told them, the proponents see this bill as a “pilot program” that, if successful, would eventually spread citywide.

Bill Temple, a First Amendment-protected vendor who sells on the streets of SoHo, was at the rally, protesting alongside his fellow vendors. If this is passed, Temple said, “My freedom of speech would be delegated to private corporations. I don’t think that will fly in any court.”

One controversial step the BIDs have recently taken is to place giant planters along the curbs of many city streets.

In 2004, Police Lt. Robert D’Onofrio, commanding officer of the Manhattan South Peddler Task Force, testified in federal court that the planters were put up to obstruct the vendors.

“My understanding is so the street vendors will not put their carts or their tables on the sidewalk because they have to be at curb side,” he said.

The SoHo Alliance, an organization that works with residents and businesses in SoHo on quality-of-life issues, opposes street artists. In 1994, the Alliance joined with five of the city’s most powerful BIDs, filing a brief in federal court declaring visual art to be unworthy of First Amendment protection.

The 30-page brief argued: “The sale of paintings and other artwork does not reach this high level of expression” guaranteeing First Amendment protection.

Sean Sweeney, director of the SoHo Alliance, has given up the fight, calling it a “dead issue.” In a telephone interview, he called the vendors “peddlers” and said, “What they’re doing is illegal.”

In a Nov. 14 hearing concerning the new proposed vending laws, Jill Stasium, a street artist who sells in SoHo, testified against the bills, emphasizing what a huge part street artists play in the SoHo community. “People from all over the world have told me they’re thrilled that there are so many independent artists displaying their art freely,” said Stasium. “People come to SoHo because they hear that’s where you can see so many different people selling so many different kinds of affordable art.”

She also spoke about the consumers street artists draw, saying, “The people who work in the stores I sell in front of tell me that when artists are out on the street business is better for them.” As McGill put it, “Business feeds business. A lot of stores do like us.”

McGill is frustrated by the city’s efforts to limit the rights of First Amendment vendors. “Do you really want to see a pashmina for sale on every corner?” she asks, frustrated that artists, who bring creativity and culture to a city filled with bootleg and generic merchandise for sale, are facing more and more restrictions.

The Street Vendor Project, a part of the Urban Justice Center, a legal service group, notes that many vendors, and many of the group’s members, are immigrants. A 2006 survey found that over 80 percent of Lower Manhattan street vendors are immigrants with English being the first language of only 20 percent of vendors. The work ethic of immigrant vendors that helped shape the city in the 1900s is still alive today.

Ironically, there were fewer street artists 15 years ago, when Giuliani’s crackdown started, than today. Lederman estimates there were about 100 artists selling on the streets 15 years ago, whereas today he estimates the number is closer to 1,500. The impact of seeing friends arrested and peers banding together against the government has turned street artists into a tight knit community. “If the city left us alone there might still be 100 street artists,” says Lederman.

“Most artists believed it would damage their career to sell on the street,” he adds. “There are close to 100,000 artists in New York City, but most never try to sell on the street.” This is another contrasting anomaly in the streets of SoHo – galleries selling high-end artwork alongside artists selling their work in the streets, some for tens of dollars and other for hundreds.

Ethan Karp, director of OK Harris, a SoHo art gallery, says he has never heard of any SoHo gallery featuring the works of street artists. “We don’t care where an artist is from,” says Karp, “but the work of street artists isn’t up to gallery standards – that’s why they sell on the streets. Many artists feel it under dignifies your work to sell on the street.”

Karp does say that both high end and street art brings a certain cultural aspect to SoHo. “If art is subjective,” says Karp, “there’s no difference between the fine art that galleries sell and the decorative or commercial art the street artists sell.”

The recession has affected artists in various ways. Some have noticed an increase in street artists. More people are leaving the office and turning to non-conventional ways of earning money.

McGill says that in these times of globalization and corporate abuse, “People want to support independent businesses and not big corporations. People are enthusiastic about buying stuff not made in China.”

Mathew Courtney is a street artist who works with “the garbage of New York City,” mainly newspapers (“The Wall Street Journal never looked so good”), interesting posters he finds, and the occasional subway poster he tears off the wall in frustration when the Q train is delayed.

The streets of SoHo are his gallery walls, a perfect place to interact with pedestrians, something he loves. He brings a playfulness to his business, assuring passers-bys, “I’m not a hustler,” and that, “If you leave without a piece of me it’s your loss. I’m the next Van Gogh; you’ll miss me when I’m dead.”

He says Americans have lost interest in art, preferring to spend money on their cars and lawns, and he is quick to tell people the value of good artwork. “Art saves lives – it’s cheaper than therapy.”

Like McGill, Courtney has been arrested for illegal vending. He described the experience as traumatic, saying the experience of being in a holding cell with “hard” criminals is one he will never forget.

He said a judge dismissed his case within 17 hours of arrest.

This is not unusual. Arrested over 40 times and given 60 summonses, Lederman was never found guilty. “I don’t know any street artist that was ever found guilty, and there are thousands of these arrests,” says Lederman.

So why does the Police Department spend its time and the courts’ time if almost all of these cases are dismissed immediately? “Illegal state tactics,” says Lederman. “It’s harassment…and it has proven quite successful…I know hundreds of the best street artists who were arrested once and never came back…they couldn’t take that friction and tension with the police. They gave up.”

The Police Department could not be reached for comment, but has said that allegations of police-vendor tension are untrue.

Nevertheless, the experience of being arrested and having your artwork hauled away can be shocking and haunting. “I was in tears the first time the police took my stuff,” says Lederman. And for a lot of artists, it’s an experience they do not want to repeat, which keeps them from coming back to the streets.

Fear of arrest may not be the only thing keeping artists off the streets these days. The soft-spoken but passionate Lederman adds that what the city government could not do, might be done by the economy.

Lederman says that when it comes to street artists in the recession, “A lot of them are hurting. In my 43 years there is nothing like it I’ve ever seen… I don’t care if you’ve got the greatest art ever made, if you can sell it you’re lucky … People don’t want to spend money … A painting is not high on the list of priorities. This financial meltdown may accomplish what the city couldn’t accomplish from all this legislation.”

As the street vendors stand outside of City Hall, waiting for the hearing on Intro 846 to begin, there is confusion and no one is sure exactly what is going on.

“They canceled the vote,” one vendor shouts. “They were hoping for heavier rain so we wouldn’t show,” another vendor replies.

But they did show, and for now vendors’ rights remain unchanged and it is business as usual. They say New York City has some of the toughest streets in the country. These vendors, who interact with the pedestrians of New York every day, wouldn’t have it any other way.