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BY EVAN GREER

In print | March 18, 2004

March 7, Santa Fe, N.M. — “Show me your performing license and identification, please.”

“I need a license to play here?” I played dumb, as if I didn’t know that nearly every town and city in the country now requires citizens to run a bureaucratic gauntlet — and often pay a hefty registration fee — in order to obtain permission to exercise their First Amendment rights with an acoustic guitar and a street corner.

“That’s panhandling. I catch you again, I’ll throw you in jail.”

“Can I play without my case open? It’s not for the money, I’d really just like to make some music in the park here.”

“No. If we let you do it, then everyone will.”

Oh, the horror. Imagine the chaos and destruction that would result from weekly musical gatherings in a park where impromptu bands would provide free entertainment for anyone who wanted to listen. Surely the result would be the complete breakdown of law and order.

“There’s a Starbucks over there. Sometimes the owner lets people play out front. If he lets you, you can, because that’s private property.”

This is not fiction. The only place one can legally perform outside in Santa Fe is in front of a Starbucks, and then only if the owner of the Starbucks approves — and they have final veto power over what sort of music you can play, where you can stand and what instruments you can use.

“Thanks for your help, officer. I’ll just be on my way.”

Santa Fe is not the worst. Flagstaff, Ariz., has a law against standing in one place on the sidewalk for more than five minutes. These laws may seem nonsensical at first, but placed within the context of urban gentrification they gain a twisted and dystopian logic.

Since the beginning of urbanization, there has been a furious — and sometimes violent — battle for public space. The battle has been fought primarily between the elite, who seek to obtain public space for their own private interests and manufacture the appearance of public space for further levels of consumption, and the rest of the people, who naturally seek to use public space as a platform for social engagements.

The funny thing about these spaces is that their architecture is specifically designed to prevent social activities. Whereas once parks were graced with oak trees and grass that provided ample shade and sitting space, now they are hemmed in by unsittable wrought-iron fences and planted with primarily thorny shrubs that are specifically designed to prevent the homeless from taking shelter in the bushes.

Park benches now have bars in the center to make them impossible to sleep on. The problem of urban homelessness has not been solved, but it has been pushed out of sight. The social interactions of the homeless and their allies that once occurred in public spaces has been forced out to make downtown areas more tourist-friendly and to cleanse urban areas of anything that might interfere with the daily workings of consumerist America.

Jeff Ferrell, professor of sociology at Southern Methodist University, writes, “The police state implied in all of this might be described, with a certain degree of irony, as postmodern — that is, a police state designed to dominate a world of image, meaning and perception.”

Throughout the history of resistance to authority, the primary battles have occurred over the control of public space. From the “Free Speech Fights” of the Industrial Workers of the World (the Wobblies) to the situationists in Paris to Martin Luther King and his marches, those seeking social change have started their struggle by attempting to reclaim the public spaces where social engagements could occur.

As our public space swiftly disappears into an urban consumer jungle, we must seek new and innovative ways to reclaim it as our own and create the social ties that make change possible.

Evan Greer is a first-year. You can reach him at egreer1@swarthmore.edu.

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