This event is not happening

This event is not happening. Why? Well, according to yesterday’s New York Times:

The city has revoked a permit awarded to organizers of a block party celebrating graffiti, saying it will not grant another one unless the group scraps plans to have graffiti writers spray paint murals onto models of New York City subway trains...

"Look, there is a fine line here between freedom of expression and going out and encouraging people to hurt this city," [Mayor Michael] Bloomberg said during a visit to a senior citizens center in Queens yesterday. "Defacing subway cars is hardly a joke; encouraging people, kids in particular to do that after all the money we’ve spent, all the time we’ve spent removing graffiti"…

"We have talked to them and asked them to not have a subway car motif to write graffiti," Mr. Bloomberg said, "This is not really art of expression, this is, let’s be honest about what it is: It’s trying to encourage people to do something that’s not in anybody’s interest."

OK, first of all, it’s absurd that at this late date we’re still talking about whether graffiti is art. It is. Now let’s be fair: it can be vandalism or crime, too. But that doesn’t mean it’s not art. In fact, I’ve heard writers argue that the vandalism and crime aspects are an integral part of the form. But that still doesn’t mean it’s not art. This whole argument is about nothing but casting graf writers as losers and miscreants. This is an old, old argument and we already won it, like, twenty years ago when art historians started to write books about the graffiti aesthetic. So please shut up now.

The bigger issue, though, is that people are increasingly being asked (nicely!) to accept ideas about freedom of speech that are very, very dangerous. Nobody is claiming that this event was illegal in any way. What they said was that it would create a positive impression of an illegal activity.

That is not – nor should it be - illegal.

If it was, here is a short list of other things that would also be illegal:

1. the writing of The U.S. Declaration of Independence,
2. the publishing of Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau,
3. any movie about bank robbers,
4. any speech by Martin Luther King, Jr.,
5. the movie Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner? (interracial marriage was still illegal in many states when it was filmed),
6. all novels and movies about the wild west
7. you get the idea.

I remember during the Republican National Convention, when the protests were going on, Bloomberg made a statement that "Freedom of speech does not give you the right to inconvenience other people."

Yes it most certainly does.

I’m not saying that you should inconvenience people, but is that really going to be our litmus test? "America is a society based on every citizen’s absolute right to express any opinion they wish, as long as it doesn’t inconvenience anyone?"

I have to believe that people just aren’t thinking about the implications of this. To me, it’s simple: that’s the price you pay for living in a free society. If the choice is being late to work once every four years because protesters are blocking traffic vs. living in a repressive dictatorship, then you know what? I’m willing to suffer that inconvenience. Because that really is the choice. And it absolutely does not matter whether I agree or disagree with whatever it is the demonstrators are demonstrating about.