The Dancing in the Streets Night Out was a great event. Tablers, dancers, musicians, an apparently sparse and relatively discreet police presence.

The Hosts at their "Downtown Information Center" next to the Del Mar Theater called the police to snitch out one activist who chalked "Downtown Surveillance Center" in English and Chinese on the sidewalk in front of the Hosts HQ. The two police officers just walked by doing nothing.

HUFF activists flung frisbees back and forth. Vice-Mayor Scott Kennedy--who authored and supported the Downtown Ordinances (bringing back the sitting-near-a-store ban in 1994 after it had been thrown out by the community and the courts) watched as twice-convicted chalkcriminal Becky Johnson chalked hopscotch patterns all over the street and distributed chalk to the kids.
(check out www.counterpunch.org for "The Hopscotch Rebellion" as well as starbulletin.com/2003/08/10/editorial/indexeditorials.html
www.phoenixanarchist.org/modules.php and www.phoenixanarchist.org/modules.php for three articles on chalkcrime in Arizona and Hawaii

Street performers were directed to Tom Noddy's to meet to plan the September 5th and 6th Louden Nelson Center Street Performer Showcase--a Celebration of Street Performers--those who have not already been driven away by the Reilly-Porter Downtown Ordinances. (If you are a performer and want to be in the show, call Tom at 423-1021)

As I understand it, the avowed purpose of closing the street is to coax the merchants into believing they can support a more permanent pedestrian-free Pacific Avenue (or a portion of it) on a regular and permanent basis.

Attempts to get a Downtown Plaza failed when Fitzmaurice, Krohn, Sugar, and Beiers refused to press the issue at City Council. Subsequent Councils refused to close Pacific Avenue for the community (though they were happy to do so for Downtown Association events).

So now organizers have dipped into their purses to buy the public space that should have been made available freely to us all years ago. In the hope of teasing out a little cooperation and allaying the drumbeat paranoia of the merchants--who have given us unconstitutional "Move Along Every Hour" ordinances, a "Street Performers Unwelcome" 10' forbidden zone, and a blank check to police to harass in force.

The merchants do not pick up the check for the multiple targeted police citations for jaywalking, poor person walking a dog, bicycle the wrong way, and sitting on the edge of a planter. The community does. Just as it was the police department budget that funded the $6600+ movement of the fence on the Walnut Ave. planter next to the Pacific Trading Company to drive away street performers and members of the public the Heinrichs don't like.

We pay routinely huge police costs so merchants can colonize the sidewalks and drive away selected poor, performers, politicos, and homeless. Adding insult to injury, when community members sponser an inclusive event, they get billed:
Street closure fee: $300
Parking meter reimbursement: $153
Street barricades: $225
Portapotties: $450
Sound permit: $99
Police: $2040

(for the 3-hour Aug 12, 19, and 26 events) according to a sign posted on the Coalition for a Community Commons table.

The generosity of the organizers is commendable, but it's the city bureaucracy that needs to be overcome. It may well require direct action to reclaim the public space that belongs to all of us--not a small cabal of merchants, politicians, and bureaucrats at city hall.

With the Downtown Association and the City Attorney's office scheming to remove or restrict Food Not Bombs from Pacific Avenue (they've already driven away Pastor Dennis Adams of the Potters Hand), with plans afoot to privatize the only large open plaza-like area downtown (across from Cinema 9 at O'Neill's), with the City attorney's office tightening the infamous Move Along Every Hour law behind closed doors--we face the same juggernaut that's destroyed the old Pacific Garden mall after the earthquake, removed or dispersed half the benches, and is busily fencing off sections of the sidewalk and patrolling it with Bachtyl busybodies. (CSO Pam Bachtyl is the stock cop in blue who stalks the sidewalk with smile and ticketbook--the love of her life being giving tickets to sidewalk sitters and other evildoers).

Hats off to the organizers. Now let's take back the sidewalks and streets the other 6 days of the week and the other 21 hours of the day.