Chris views Chicago’s policy on the public selling of art as a matter of free speech. I won’t make his arguments for him — you can read up on his campaign on his blog. I will say that I find his argument compelling, and that our city would be better if these policies were overturned.

Recently Chris was ticketed for his activity of selling art without a vendor license, within the Loop area. On another occasion he was arrested and charged with a felony for taping his encounter with the police. There is a recent article in the Sun Times with a plethora of comments from supporters of the Free Speech campaign and decrying the misapplication of the eavesdropping law. I urge you to add your comments to the article, and to spread the word on this valiant campaign.

Here’s the comment I posted.

Mr. Drew is undertaking a heroic effort to make our city better – not just for Artists, but for all of us. I want my city to be a vibrant cultural center, with artistic endeavor at every scale. The art he offers for sale is of the most humble and accessible form.

Art indeed is speech, and if Mr. Drew’s account of Supreme Court opinion on Commercial Speech is correct, then it is clear that the city’s peddler law is overly broad and therefore unconstitutional.

If the law were really about public convenience (i.e. for pedestrian traffic, etc.) why would seeking donations rather than a sale exchange make a difference? I’m not up to speed on the legal distinctions or constraints against regulating these other activities, so I’d love to be informed. Perhaps the Sun Times could do a bigger story, exploring the irony of the eavesdropping charge, along with the contrasts of civil rights and free speech pertaining to different classes of behavior and different public spaces.

This of course brings to mind the absurdity of specially designated “Free Speech Zones” established during large scale events. That’s something else that needs to be challenged.

I do hope that local media will take up the broader issues, and do us a public service informing us on this important topic. Spread the word, for Free Speech, whether you agree with Chris or not, this deserves public consideration.

Just last night I watched him on PBS (my alma mater) on a Dublin pub crawl.

He was my English teacher at Stuyvesant. It’s probably the proudest thing I mention about H.S. I’ve been so pleased with his successful second act career and the honor he received as a result. But I have greater honor for his role as a teacher. We were so lucky to have him as our teacher – and we knew it. I was in his creative writing class, and was so glad I got in the class. I don’t know how I heard or how I lucked out.

I do know that my deeper awakening to writing can in part be credited to him and his teaching manner.

I’m interested in more public dialogue, so I only provide my reaction here, and leave the others in that email exchange to speak for themselves and to audiences of their choosing – but as I have something to get off my chest, here I go…

(Wow, well, glad interest has been sparked…) my read is that real (as opposed to who?) people are affected in so many cross-cutting ways by media policies that they can’t even see it (or if and to the extent they do they are seeing so many things at once, and potentially different things from each other, with different languages to interpret or speak about them).

We’re embedded in the results/effects of media policy. Another factor to consider is the manner in which policy obscures itself. To the extent that those shaping policy are often angling for particular perks, obscurity is a strategy and an advantage … to those passing legislation/policy and serving narrow interests. The contrast between narrow interest vs. general interest in any policy (media or other policy) is the big puzzle. We’ve tended to accept the exigency of acceding to the narrow interest to get things done, or to get the uncomfortable questions off the table. We tend to steer away from the real work that would build enduring, generative capacity.

None of this is terribly helpful, I am sure.

Thom Clark makes excellent points in that capacity is policy … i.e. local capacity is both a (variably effective) policy maker and the result of policy. If we are to collectively “grow ours” (in contrast with “get mine”) then we have to invest in meaningful capacity building that seeds the local and builds lateral connections over these localities (not necessarliy spatial/geographic nearness) – in multiple dimensions – capacity in fields of interest, of professions, of other “community” of various stripes.

That is, every sector of life is touched by this.

In our work on Digital Excellence this was perhaps our central point. (We blend the concepts of Digital Literacy and Media Literacy at this point, at a very deep level, so they maybe synonymous or united at a higher level.)

Every sector, every aspect of our individual and collective lives is touched by media/technology processes. It’s important to pair these terms – individual and collective – it’s not just individual lives here, it’s how we live together that is affected, and our own awareness of our role and freedom to shape this. So it’s groups and communities and families, and organizations that have to be part of the story, too. Each of these flavor and shape the quality of my individual life and I have to take time to care for these aspects of my/our selves.

My gut is to flip the question on it’s head… show me any story or any aspect of life not affected by media policy. I recognize that that’s probably not compelling for the audience.

FWIW, (and to state the banal) I’m an individual… I engage in media activism, and media policy, and I buy into the importance of “being the media”. I endeavored to get others to some state of awareness on several interrelated topics (and to build my own awareness and understanding thereby), not to mention awareness of their interrelatedness, and I employ multiple strategies to do so. I have perhaps a very different notion of “policy work” than what may be commonly understood, but there’s the rub — all sorts of work are being re-imagined and restructured. (That’s nothin’ new, but perhaps only more so now..)

“Be the media” as sentiment and strategy is an expression of this transformation of work and life, and a recognition that practice and policy are one. Policy may otherwise be regarded as something that happens above, or elsewhere, or happens to you … but in this model, policy is what we contest and what we make and how we practice. If you’ve the motivation and I haven’t worn out my welcome take a look at the entry for Grassroots Public Policy Development in the Public Sphere Pattern Language project spearheaded by Doug Schuler.

Getting to this practice of “being the media” and being with (and for) each other in community, talking about and reforming our practice and our communities at the same time gives us something fairly exciting to talk about. Trying to be clear: talking about or sharing any of the strategies we’ve employed feels like a success story to me in that we’ve been building community and community capacity.

I’m tempted to enumerate tools, devices, strategies – ranging from the pattern language process itself to open space and other civic focused gatherings to new models of philanthropic or educational/research engagement to positive media to open data commons models – but any list would be partial, and would not honor the plethora of ongoing efforts and approaches to living together in a new way. So many things tied together … we’re enmeshed in good and bad ways. And as the story goes – each interpretation of the moment is subject to revision. Perhaps.

Any of you are welcome to tell your story here – or anywhere. How does media policy affect you, personally, or the things you care about?

THE TIME, it is to be hoped, is gone by, when any defence would be necessary of the “liberty of the press” as one of the securities against corrupt or tyrannical government. No argument, we may suppose, can now be needed, against permitting a legislature or an executive, not identified in interest with the people, to prescribe opinions to them, and determine what doctrines or what arguments they shall be allowed to hear.

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873). On Liberty. 1869.

The State is neither the sole nor the principle threat to the Liberty of Thought and Discussion.

Is it unlikely that corporate media, focused on profit, often owned by or in ownership of conflicting economic interests will serve this function? What must change? The media must serve a public duty untainted by impulse to self-censor when truth must be spoken. Report. Let the people judge.

The people must show some spine if we are to be free.

The story of the weekend was Obama’s supposed flip-flop on public campaign finance. I think we use the phrase too loosely. Changing your mind, or reversing direction/decision isn’t an adequate definition. Necessary, but not sufficient.

Fish flip flop when they are out of their element, politicians when they’re spineless – not when their decision is grounded in a position of strength and consistent with their higher values. So, I’d like to upgrade the definition to a reversal followed by subsequent reversal(s), or a reversal mainly employed by “leaders” to keep supporters or to keep one’s self in place when it was clear one’s position wasn’t grounded to begin with.

A strategic choice can not be a flip flop. It’s a clear decision.

Further: You’re going to have to go a little deeper to decide if something is hypocritical. It’s absurd to label someone hypocritical when their values are consistent. How much more must be said?

Obama has eschewed PAC money and has a tremendously broad base of financial support from none other than the public. This is the campaign that has drawn a bright red line between big money and the public. If Obama’s people change their mind and accept big money contributions or unleash 527s … then I’ll be disappointed, angry and feel betrayed as will millions of others. That would be hypocrisy and would undercut the values this campaign has established. That wouldn’t be a flip flop either, that would be a blunder, plain and stupid. Flip flops are about not knowing which way the wind was blowing ahead of time, not how strong the wind would be.

I’ll say it again, I’m not into hero worship or idolatry, but I also am not going to accept false logic. I’m not an apologist for the campaign but rabid punditry deserves a flogging.

Lastly, this strategic decision is not an attack on public campaign finance. I feel clear that Obama supports the principle of public campaign finance. It doesn’t mean one has to take it. It doesn’t mean he isn’t right to state bluntly that it is broken. It clearly is broken when the other candidate can illegally flip flop – i.e. reverse himself and reverse himself again – and the laws remain unenforced. McCain’s campaign is breaking the law and the law and order types are nowhere to be found, the media is fairly silent and worse offering us some red hering and it appears democrats are not pressing the issue, or meekly at best.

So, yes, it’s broken and it makes sense to opt out if the other candidate won’t be held accountable to the rules and you can effectively run a campaign grounded in your principles . It needs to be fixed, and it needs to be there for future candidates as an option.

Strategy and grounded campaigning are not opportunistic or hypocritical, and it’s not a flip flop.

Apply logic before speaking. Do a double dose before pontificating. Check some facts. Prioritize facts.

The people have to make up their mind whether the character of the campaign matters. I think it does. The character of the campaign reflects the character of the candidate. We’re deciding the character of discourse we’ll settle for, and the character of governance that we want.

Making little of nothing isn’t a sign of character.

The path towards excellence starts with purpose, and not with technology. Be clear in your purpose, be strong in resolve, be prepared to fall and rise again. Digital is a word that often gets in the way: Strive first and always for human excellence and towards our higher individual and collective purposes. Excellence is a matter of character.

The Chicago Digital Access Alliance put this vision before our City, a vision of great ambition. We echo the historic Chicago mantra: Make no small plans. Has Chicago missed an opportunity? No. We have not. Not if we yet take up the challenge and establish what has been called for: A Digital Excellence Trust.

The wind left our sails when the Chicago wireless plans were put on hold. It was fortuitous that the vendor-driven segmented-technology model fell through, but the call for Digital Excellence didn’t have to stop there. We’re the windy city and our model was never tied to wireless technology. We have Olympic aspirations and Greenest-city-in-the-world goals. We know that these are deeply tied to a vision of excellence.

Excellence is our noble human calling. We’re not one of the Knight communities. How will we rise here and now to the challenge of digital excellence? Will we stir the soul of the city? Will we stir the soul of the nation?

Did any member of the press ask Nader which he meant? (I assumed the former, myself.) They were probably too sure about what they heard and what they understood.

I enjoy polysemy, and find that both terms actually work. What did you hear? assent? ascent? a scent? a cent?

Join us, so Chicago can grow more technology savvy social change organizations that benefit our local communities.

Staff and volunteers of non-profits, web innovators, and any individuals pushing for change are encouraged to attend. Come tell us about your effort, your concerns, and what you need and want from a collective of like-minded individuals and organizations.

“Net Tuesday” meetings are a program of NetSquared whose mission is to spur responsible adoption of social web tools by social benefit organizations.

NetSquared is a project of TechSoup (http://www.techsoup.org) the technology place for nonprofits.

RSVP to Aaron With at The Point, please, so we can be sure to have adequate refreshments for your enjoyment: aaron@thepoint.com or call 312.676.4535.

Public Transportation: 600 W. Chicago is a 4 block walk west from the Chicago stop on the Brown Line. The Chicago Avenue (#66) bus drops you off directly in front of the building at Larabee.

Parking Information: There is some limited free parking 1-2 blocks North on Larabee. Metered parking on Chicago 1-3 blocks East, though this is often taken. Paid parking across the street from our building costs $6 for under 2 hours and $8 for 2-4 hours..

Call Aaron at 312.676.4535, if you need information about getting to The Point.

Our first meeting will be hosted and sponsored by The Point, a new group action network that helps people congregate around the issues they care about and combine forces to make things happen.

Organizers:

Demetrio Maguigad, New Media Manager with Community Media Workshop at Columbia College, manages online new media projects, and also conducts community-based popular education workshops.

Michael Maranda – promoting digital excellence, media & social justice through purposive community.

David Marques is an IT Coordinator with the Southwest Youth Collaborative, a community-based youth services and activist agency.

Justin Massa is executive director of MoveSmart.org, a startup non-profit organization that promotes racial and economic integration through technology.

Jean Russell nurtures nonprofit leaders and weaves networks for social change (nurture.biz).

Aaron With is a Community Organizer for The Point and has a background working with Chicago non-profits.

Date: Tuesday, March 11th, 2008

Time: 6pm-7:30pm

Location: The Point

600 W. Chicago Ave, Suite 830

(entrance is North on Larabee)

Chicago, IL 60610

Co-convene with us.

UPDATE: We have a Meetup group (and a Facebook group)!

Wikileaks Press Release from: 
http://wikileaks.be/wiki/Wikileaks.org_under_injunction

WIKILEAKS.ORG DOWN AFTER EX-PARTE LEGAL ATTACK BY CAYMAN ISLANDS BANK

http://wikileaks.be/wiki/Wikileaks.org_under_injunction

Contacts: http://wikileaks.be/wiki/Contact

Mon Feb 18 00:00:00 GMT 2008

The following release has not been proofed due to time constraints.

Transparency group Wikileaks forcibly censored at ex-parte Californian hearing — ordered to print blank pages — ‘wikileaks.org’ name forcibly deleted from Californian domain registrar — the best justice Cayman Islands money launderers can buy?

When the transparency group Wikileaks was censored in China last year, no-one was too surprised. After all, the Chinese government also censors the Paris based Reporters Sans Frontiers and New York
Based Human Rights Watch. And when Wikileaks published the secret censorship lists of Thailand’s military Junta, no-one was too surprised when people in that country had to go to extra lengths
to read the site. But on Friday the 15th, February 2008, in the home of the free and the land of the brave, and a constitution which states “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press”, the Wikileaks.org press was shutdown:

                    BANK JULIUS BAER & CO. LTD, a
                    Swiss entity; and JULIUS BAER BANK
                    AND TRUST CO. LTD, a Cayman Island                 ORDER GRANTING
                    entity,                                            PERMANENT INJUNCTION

                    WIKILEAKS, an entity of unknown form;
                    WIKILEAKS.ORG, an entity of unknown
                    form; DYNADOT, LLC, a California
                    limited liability company; and DOES 1
                    through 10, inclusive,

[..]

                             IT IS HEREBY ORDERED:

[..]

       Dynadot shall immediately clear and remove all DNS hosting
       records for the wikileaks.org domain name and prevent the
       domain name from resolving to the wikileaks.org website or
       any other website or server other than a blank park page,
       until further order of this Court.

The Cayman Islands is located between Cuba and Honduras. In July 2000, the United States Department of the Treasure Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued an advisory states stating that there
were “serious deficiencies in the counter-money laundering systems of the Cayman Islands”, “Cayman Islands law makes it impossible for the supervisory and regulatory authority to obtain information held by financial institutions regarding their client’s identity”, “Failure of financial institutions in the Cayman Islands to report suspicious transactions is not subject to penalty” and that “These deficiencies, among others, have caused the Cayman Islands to be identified by the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (The ‘FATF’) as non-cooperative in the fight against money laundering”. As of 2006 the U.S. State Department listed the Cayman Islands in its money laundering “Countries of Primary Concern”.

The Cayman’s case is not the first time Wikileaks has tackled bad banks. In the second half of last year Wikileaks exposed over $4,500,000,000’s worth of money laundering including by the former president of Kenya, Daniel Arap Moi (see http://wikileaks.be/wiki/The_looting_of_Kenya_under_President_moi which became the Guardian’s front page story in September 2007 and swung the Kenyan vote by 10% leading into the December 2007 election and http://wikileaks.be/wiki/A_Charter_House_of_horrors reported in the Nairobi paper The Standard and now the subject of a High Court Case in Kenya).

To find an injunction similar to the Cayman’s case, we need to go back to Monday June 15, 1971 when the New York Times published excepts of of Daniel Ellsberg’s leaked “Pentagon Papers” and found itself enjoined the following day. The Wikileaks injunction is the equivalent of forcing the Times’ printers to print blank pages and its power company to turn off press power. The supreme court found the Times censorship injunction unconstitutional in a 6-3 decision.

The Wikileaks.org injunction is ex-parte, engages in prior restraint and is clearly unconstitutional. It was granted on Thursday afternoon by California district court judge White, Bush appointee and former prosecutor.

The order was written by Cayman Island’s Bank Julius Baer lawyers and was accepted by judge White without amendment, or representations by Wikileaks or amicus. The case is over several Wikileaks articles, public commentary and documents dating prior to 2003. The documents allegedly reveal secret Julius Baer trust structures used for asset hiding, money laundering and tax evasion.
The bank alleges the documents were disclosed to Wikileaks by offshore banking whistleblower and former Vice President the Cayman Island’s operation, Rudolf Elmer. Unable to lawfully attack Wikileaks servers which are based in several countries, the order was served on the intermediary Wikileaks purchased the ‘Wikileaks.org’ name through — California registrar Dynadot, who then used its access to the internet website name registration system to delete the records for ‘Wikileaks.org’.
The order also enjoins every person who has heard about the order from from even linking to the documents.

In order to deal with Chinese censorship, Wikileaks has many backup sites such as wikileaks.be (Belgium) and wikileaks.de (Germany) which remain active. Wikileaks never expected to be using the alternative servers to deal with censorship attacks, from, of all places, the United States.

The order is clearly unconstitutional and exceeds its jurisdiction.

Wikileaks will keep on publishing, in-fact, given the level of suppression involved in this case, Wikileaks will step up publication of documents pertaining to illegal or unethical banking practices.

Wikileaks has six pro-bono attorney’s in S.F on roster to deal with a legal assault, however Wikileaks was given only hours notice “by email” prior to the hearing. Wikileaks was NOT represented. Wikileaks pre-litigation California council Julie Turner attended the start of hearing in a personal capacity but was then asked to leave the court room.

White signed the order, drafted by the Cayman Islands bank’s lawyers without a single amendment.

The injunction claims to be permanent, although the case is only preliminary.

Wikileaks remains available publishing from non-US, non-Chinese jurisdictions including http://wikileaks.cx/ and http://wikileaks.be/.

See http://wikileaks.cx/wiki/Wikileaks:Cover_Names for more.

http://wikileaks.cx/wiki/Bank_Julius_Baer_vs._Wikileaks

http://wikileaks.cx/wiki/images/Dynadot-injunction.pdf

http://wikileaks.cx/wiki/Die_Akten_des_Hurricane_Man

http://wikileaks.cx/wiki/Clouds_on_the_Cayman_tax_heaven

Billy & Marnie explain the MashUp Challenge concept. Challenge Deadline: March 14, 5 PM – Pacific.

Gore has taken on the most important issues of the day: the environment, the politics of media, public life. These are grounded in the big questions of living together on this planet. His tone is measured. Had the Supreme Court handled the 2000 elections other than they did, would Gore be the Statesman he is now?

WHEREAS, freedom of the press is a right of the readers of news and a responsibility upon the producers of news; and is not a privilege for owners of news channels to exploit; and

WHEREAS, reporting is a high calling which has fallen into disrepute because news writers have been too often degraded as hirelings compelled by their employers to serve the purposes of politicians, monopolists, speculators in the necessaries of life, exploiters of labor, and fomentors of war; therefore be it

RESOLVED, that the American Newspaper Guild strive tirelessly for integrity of news columns and opportunity for its members to discharge their social responsibility; not stopping until the men and women who write, graphically portray, or edit news have achieved freedom of conscience to report faithfully, when they occur, and refuse by distortion and suppression, to create political, economic, industrial and military wars.