I sent the following letter to Mayor Reilly this morning:

Emily,

Surely there are better ways of encouraging merchants and reassuring folks anxious about the real problems downtown than curtailing civil liberties and scapegoating innocent people and innocent behavior. In these times we must be particularly cautious before giving police more power.
Rather than these kneejerk “politically reassuring” bad laws, wouldn’t it be better to develope positive reassurance for business downtown (commercial rent control, pushing for a Downtown Plaza by experimental street closings, encouraging more regular street performing as a stimulus to business). Last June, I gave you data on how politicians, homeless advocates and merchants worked together in Olympia, Washington to find better solutions than new anti-homeless laws.
Don’t you want to encourage the long-term process that began with the successful Voluntary Street Performers Guidelines? The VSPG are not to be discarded because some anxious merchants prefer a more privatized mall, a new law for every season, and a more conservative milileu generally. Don’t they need to shoulder their share by using
existing laws against disturbing the peace, blocking the sidewalk, assault, theft, abusive panhandling that have existed for years to deal with real problems?
Sure, they have to make citizen’s arrests for real bad behavior or take the time to walk up to a performer and ask respectuful for movement under the VSPG--but are they even trying to use that process? Do you have solid stats here? Last summer the SCAN Steering Committee in protesting the rush, told you that without a good process there can't be good laws. Hasn't the last six months proved them right?
If the merchants are not even trying to use the VSPG and the Hosts are not distributing them, doesn’t your responsibility of Mayor of all the people require you to put a hold on further criminalization measures, which are increasingly viewed as counter-productive merchant “special interest” laws that don’t address real problems
anyway. The only alternative you give opponents is to protest or go to court, and it doesn’t bring the downtown community any closer.
The Downtown Commission has spent nearly six months trying to deal with one tiny “unintended consequence” of the laws--the discouraging overregulation of street performers. Instead of addressing the many other concerns you brought to it, it’s had to
essentially waste time in trying to patch up laws that simply were a mistake. After all that, their minority recommendations are sidelined with no real discussion. Isn’t it time to acknowledge that a better way needs to be found to (a) reassure merchants, and (b)address real problems downtown?
You began that process well with the MacPherson Center meetings of your Downtown Problems Committee. You saw that it was a difficult process, but there’s a difficult series of problems downtown, by the very nature of the many folks there. We were all talking. Then you removed any incentive for further discussion by passing these
draconian laws in those 4 meetings in 15 days. This was not well-considered.
Excluding one group to please another under the cover of “behavior” ordinances when the behavior is fundamentally innocent (sitting, peaceful sparechanging, performing, tabling) is not a good way to go. Instead there is will and energy to proceed via the
Downtown Commission and the Street Performers group--provided you return the incentive for these groups to work out their problems by holding back on the final Xmas dessert that the merchants are seeking --the move-along ordinance and the expanded cordan sanitaire for tabling and performing.
When you ran for office, you were supporting David Silva’s Sleeping Ban Repeal Initaitive, expanded public restroom faciliities, and a progressive agenda. What happened? It’s never too late to return to listen to the voices of need and compassion. We need you
to lead on this issue. It’s a lonely role and you may ultimately be in a minority position. You would still be doing a great service. Someone needs to cut through political gestures and speak candidly about realities, even if it doesn’t please some conservative staff, police officials and anxious merchants.
In Santa Monica, progressive politicians are in a lonely position too as they fight laws that criminalize feeding the homeless. That struggle may shortly appear here. There are 1000-2000 homeless people outside tonight with 160 spaces, in an Armory that may
be closed when Bush moves into Iraq.
Meanwhile, your laws are making life more difficult for poor people downtown and driving street performers away or into hostile confrontation. Performers who were never militant before are becoming so. Please consider these issues; postpone all further criminalization; give your own process a chance to work.
Don’t buy the Rotkin-Kennedy line that “leaving it up to the police” is some kind of solution. Don’t wait for “things to die down.” Once the laws are in the hands of the police, they will be used; they have been used. Once the performers are gone, they will
not return.
We are seeing the consequences of such a “power to the police” policy nationally and internationally. These are times when we need to be standing together to stop a disastrous war and deal with a disaster of a governor. Thanks for your time. Call me if you want to talk further about this.

Robert Norse