Spearheaded by New York City Councilman Peter Vallone, the City of New York passed an anti-graffiti law late last year. The law became effective at the beginning of this year.
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Marc Ecko meets the press after arguing in federal court that the city "went too far".
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This new law, which banned the sale and/ or possession of spray can paint and wide-tip markers to anyone under the age of twenty-one, immediately came under fire from several quarters. Their common-cause objection to this law was that it was in direct violation of rights guaranteed in the First Ammendment to the Constitution of the United States. Or to say it more simply, the law was unconstitutional.
Opposition to the law continued to grow - and get organized. Last month, seven young artists sued New York City over the anti-graffiti law, saying it violated their constitutional right to free speech. The group of seven was backed by popular New York personality and fashion designer Marc Ecko. The suit names Vallone and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, saying they have "waged a personal war against graffiti art and graffiti artists, fueled by their personal, subjective distaste for the art form."
The issue was taken up, not in a Municipal Court, but a Federal Court. Councilman Vallone attempted to discredit the plaintiff's efforts by attacking Marc Ecko's motives - saying he was only trying to grab headlines to help promote his new video game - his claim: Ecko "...is hiding behind free speech rights...". -Perhaps this is the appropriate time to remind the obviously Stalinist New York Councilman that if something is a Constitutional Right, a US citizen exercising that right is not "hiding behind" a goddam thing.
Marc Ecko, in testimony, stated, "An 18-year-old can buy cigarettes, vote, and go into the army, but he can't buy a can of spray paint in
Manhattan..."
But
New York City's legal representative in the
Federal Court hearing,
Gabriel Taussig, countered, saying the law "strikes a proper constitutional balance between the
First Amendment rights (to free speech) and the need to control the long-standing plague of graffiti." -Perhaps this is the appropriate time to remind the obviously
Stalinist lawyer,
Taussig, that in
America, we don't draft laws which are 'balances' or compromises between
Constitutionally guaranteed rights and crackdown policies which
deny those rights. That just doesn't make sense, does it,
Mr Taussig? For a lawyer to say anything that patently stupid, one has to wonder if he wasn't in fact acting for the plaintiff.
A few days ago the case was resolved in favor of the
seven artists, and against
New York City. The
federal judge ordered
New York City to stop enforcing its ban on the purchase and possession of spray paint and broad-tipped markers, saying the law unfairly singled out a narrow age group. In other words, it was
unconstitutional.
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