I appreciate the time and energy Bobby has put into his analysis, though I disagree with him on some points.

I didn't agree with everything in the Downtown Commission, but felt its recommendations represented a good-faith effort to involve a lot of people in meeting what seemed to be a lot of spurious objections to the Voluntary Guidelines. Since there was never any real data presented about real street performer problems, it seemed more than gracious for street performers and downtown commissioners to be spending so much time making graceful attempts to respond to these phantom paranoias, unsubstantiated by police, merchant, or performer data.

In the process of addressing those so-called problems, Councilmember Porter and Reilly would be allowed to save face; Councilmembers Rotkin, Kennedy, and Mathews could
claim "victory" with the return of the 1994 ordinance (which I oppose); there would be a victory for all.

I see several factors potentially operating:
(1) the "get tough on the weak" mentality seems to be in full bloom. Council doesn't want or need to be bothered with street performers. There's a new conservative majority here which can simply steamroll ahead with the ugly Mathews resolution, backed up in part by Porter's "make the voluntary involuntary" preference, the Bernal staff report, and the minority Commission report;
(2) a possible "resign if you don't like it" broom sweeping through the Downtown Commission, which essentially told them to stop doing independent determinations but
simply follow the will of the unreasonable Council resolutions;
(3) a "we can do whatever the hell we want--we're the city council" attitude which capriciously rejects the many many hours of work of the Downtown Commission (to say
nothing of the Street Performers), without any serious examination of the proposals, other than an airy "'voluntary' means unenforceable and that's unacceptable" mantra.

Missing from any of this analysis is a proper understanding of the role and reality of the police in this situation. It was the police who began the crackdown. Merchants
heightened it with the scapegoat-heavy Jackson petition. Council joined the gangbang with its "enforce all laws" and its obscene rush to pass irrelevant and abusive ordinances
last summer.

But the behavior of the police is a real key to what is going on. Officialdom has always had its own conservative agenda and priorities. As well as its Sentinel, merchant, and Council allies.

The point of the Downtown Commission's call for data keeping was to address the fact that the real saboteurs of the Voluntary Guidelines have been the police. It echoed a similar request by folks opposing the Downtown Ordinances more broadly this summer from the SCAN Steering Committee.

The point was to protect street performers from further sabotage, selective enforcement, harassment, false complaints, and a fascistic falsification of the situation that leads to further repression. Data collection would clarify what was really going on and hopefully exert some kind of check on the police force and its O'Neill's-style expeditions.

Also needed, as it was last summer, is data that throws light on whether (a) any of these laws are necessary, (b) any of these laws serve the purposes alleged, (c) any of the older Downtown Ordinances have worked in the past.

The "mess" was the absurd ordinances that City Council gave to the Downtown Commission to "patch up". Exemption zones didn't work. Permits didn't work. The ordinances don't work. The problem is to save the faces of Council, cops, and staff here.

Their solution was to put forward some minor concessions (10' setbacks doubles the amount of forbidden space on sidewalks for tablers and performers) while casually gutting the guidelines and then in a macabre fashion, slicing off the skin, slipping out the spinal column, and dressing it up as a "move every hour" ordinance.

This Totally destroys the original point of the guidelines and leaves performers with little recourse other than to turn to the courts as Robert Lederman of NYC, the L.A. Alliance for Survival, and other groups have done.

Fitzmaurice's supposed concern for "the process" didn't go so far as to get him to vote against any of this mess. He just wants to keep street performers hanging on. I saw this
same kind of spurious concern he verbalized about civil rights this summer. Then, he expressed all kinds
of objections to the ordinances, which magically dissolved when he voted for all of them but the "leaning" ordinance.

The 14' "option" was never an option. Political tablers and street performers would have united against it, with its 95% prohibition. Even Reilly and Porter knew it wouldn't work, which was why they sent it back to the Downtown Commission. It is no victory to have that reduced to 10'forbidden zones from buildings, benches, phones, etc. when the current law is 6' (from a building) and 4' from a bench or phone. It is doubly abusive in having no legitimate purpose other than currying favor with nervous merchants.

I do agree with the final paragraph or two of the writer about the importance of the Voluntary Guidelines. The setbacks are simply a way of giving the merchants more buffer from any non-commercial activity whatsoever (a homeless removal zone, in fact). The road to restoring the street performers guidelines lies in reaching out--not to the Council and recalcitrant merchants, but to other performers, legal resources, activists in other cities, and the broader supportive community here.

This Council is willing to casually abort its own Commission's work rather than face the reality that it has made bad choices. In a time of repression, they have chosen more repression. Well, at least, we can sing and strum as we go.

Robert Norse