As many people may know, the CTA during the Daley Administration has continually harassed the musicians and other performers on CTA platforms. The original ordinance passed to "legalize" *street* performers was finally passed under the Harold Washington Administration in 1983. Despite a number of efforts by Alderman Burton Natarus to ban or restrict these performances, the street performances are only restricted to the degree that they block traffic--and the police are only instructed to disperse crowds if the crowd blocks traffic.

For background, I will include an article from Chicago INK summarizing my experience of playing on CTA platforms up until 1998. Let it suffice that Daniel Messina, who was Daley's original henchman at CTA was liberal compared to Frank Kreusi, who has actually shown up in court to prosecute peanut sellers on the CTA trains. Frank even tried to get someone arrested once for playing in one of their "designated areas"--but the cop refused!

In any event, what was a friendly relationship, for the most part, between the Securitas security people, the cops, and the CTA *working* personnel is now one in which the workers are being forced to stop people from performing, even though they know that the whole thing is nonsense, because the boy who made good by becoming Rich Daley's friend--and trying to steal a pension from the CTA based on his private consulting with "Da Mayor"--does not have the creative capacity to realize that most people on CTA platforms either enjoy the entertainment or are indifferent.

I personally will follow through with any legal procedure that can be put forth in this regard. WE NEED A LAWYER(unfortunately on a contingent basis at best). Calls need to be made immediately. I am damn tired of being told by this crybaby bully that I cannot have the same rights to "free speech" that performers on New York subways have (no licence required by Federal Court order). What's more, I am tired of the various agencies connected to the City making up rules as they go along only to harass the citizenry and find their rules unconstitutional several years later (panhandlers? or remember the "sweeps" of gang members that has been tried more than once!).

The following originally in Chicago INK 1998--still pertinent to the present with a couple updates made....

Outlaw Musician in the Chicago Subway
Dennis Dixon

Having spent several years in a notorious political cult, Dennis Dixon decided that he would return to something that he had enjoyed in his youth and for which he had a penchant--playing and writing songs. He had been trying to use a friend’s wife’s guitar when he came back from New York City--where he had worked in the cult’s printing factory, but he was still an extreme amateur and was not well versed at tuning the instrument (which he later found out is a common enough malady). He and his girlfriend at the time worked out a deal by which they would pool their money such that they could each achieve something that would help them to “self-actualize.” The relationship failed, but Dennis ended up with a guitar, tuner, and harmonicas to set him on his course. After leaving a job in Skokie in 1983, he decided it might be interesting to try to play in the subway. He had seen other people doing it at various times and it seemed like a good way to learn.

His first experiences were good. He and a few other people were plying this trade and they would trade off spots and visit and talk about the passers by. People seemed to enjoy the music and they would listen politely and throw various denominations of mostly U.S. currency into the boxes. Dennis made five dollars an hour or more and would turn in ten to twenty dollars in quarters to the Greek fellow who owned the fruit stand on Thorndale..

Nine out of ten policepersons would just walk by and pretend like they didn’t notice or wave in a neighborly fashion. (But, a few times people were arrested for some form of “disorderly conduct.”) Our hero was even approached one time by a Chicago Police Officer on his way home from court who showed him how to play the Phil Ochs song, *There But For Fortune.* That same cop was always very friendly after that as well.

Finally, the issue was taken up by the ACLU and several members of the City Council and “Street Musicians” were granted licenses by the Washington Administration. The fee for a license was a nominal ten dollars. However, legalization brought many people out suddenly. Burton Natarus, the Alderman of the 42nd Ward immediately got a restriction set on people playing on Rush Street (which was later overturned in court it’s believed). He later had a restriction placed on North Michigan Avenue--with only partial success over the long term (Apparently he got complaints from businesses and the poor people in the high-rises on Chestnut St.). After Harold Washington died suddenly, Eugene Sawyer’s administration seems to have taken no actions against the musicians, artists, and performers. It took the Daley Administration to raise the price of the license first 250% and finally a total of 500% (to $50).

There was also some rumbling from offices and businesses on State St. for noise control and the Daley Administration has used the police to restrict the musicians on the street as much as possible. Police act on ‘laws and rumors of laws’ to enforce directives in this area from the Mayor’s office.

(There are even some who will venture to speculate that part of the reason for widening State Street was to get the riff-raff off the street by removing places to sit and just generally limiting the space in which one might perform or practice one’s craft. One cannot park on State Street; traffic can only pass through. One can’t stop and shop on State Street. The merchants, obviously don’t need traffic on the street during the day--so widening the street is absurd--particularly since there is a giant "safety island" right down the middle.)

Through most of the late 1980s Dennis was working in the printing industry. During that time Harold Washington died and Eugene Sawyer was defeated for mayor by the King of Nepotism, “Richie” Daley. The Daley Administration immediate moved to restrict newspaper stands (Dennis’ mother recalled to him that the stand at Randolph and Michigan was there when she was a child in the 1930s). Daley also apparently immediately moved to restrict musicians because Nicholas Baron, a singer-songwriter who has gone on to other things, had organized an association of musicians in the subway to fight ejection.

The CTA, under Daley, attempted on the one hand to say that the musicians were “panhandlers.” Panhandling does not require any musical ability and this was dropped from their rhetorical repertoire. Daley’s scions also tried to say that the musicians were “soliciting.” Again, any dictionary will point out that soliciting requires asking for something. So again, this didn’t fit. The CTA finally had a few people complain that the musicians were blocking the platforms. Then, at a CTA public meeting in the Merchandise Mart in 1990, the Daley Administration sent its Liaison for the Disabled with several petitions filled out at The Lighthouse for the Blind which stated that the music was so loud that blind people could not hear the trains coming and that the noise prevented their special sensory canes from picking up the vibration.

For the most part the musicians attempted to hold back so as to not offend anyone--even though the derision that the last effort deserved was quite clear. The City brought in petitions signed by about one-hundred fifty people. Anyone who has spent any time in a subway tunnel will know that one will not see one-hundred fifty blind people in six months. Dennis, who grew up in South Chicago and whose father had been a patronage worker for the real Richard Daley, knew that this was a set up. Nonetheless he was asked not to say anything.

The musicians offered to pitch in to buy the police department instruments to measure the volume of sound put out by them; restricing themselves to 80 decibels. The train is said to run at about 115 decibels. Knowing that most cops didn’t really care that much, Dennis just wanted to leave it up to them to determine if someone was actually in peoples’ path and/or if a player was too loud for the venue. Of course, management could not let the peons make such determinations.

Being the bureaucrats that they are, the City and the CTA decided to set up “designated areas” where “performances” could take place. These were placed in areas at State and Washington, State and Dearborn, Jackson and State, and Jackson and Dearborn. The areas were placed (for safety) in places where there would be the least chance of someone coming near. Thus, they were set up in such a way as to prevent the performers from earning any money from their efforts or generally having any audience at all--particularly when the subways are least crowded. The "fair accomodation" legal doctrine does not fit simply because this is not a "fair accomodation" for several the reasons just stated. Besides, the volumes necessary in order to be heard by anyone also contradicts the CTA's effort to keep the volumes down.

Until the Democratic Convention and then the installment of Daley’s henchman, Daniel Messina, at the CTA in late 1996, the “designated area” regime was rarely enforced. There was a daytime restriction on amplification, but performers were not forced to stand in the “designated areas.”

So since Dennis does not use an amplifier and therefore does not try to play during rush hour, he was unable to make much money playing in the subway in order to tide him over between jobs this year. He has been in court twice for playing in areas that were not “designated.” But, he and others feel that this is a good use of the court system in Chicago because they would hate to put good judges out of work. He also realizes that the crime of playing an acoustic guitar, harmonica, and singing for a few dollars in a subway tunnel is serious enough that the ninety minutes spent by a police officer dragging him down to 11th and State, doing paper work and checking him out for outstanding warrants is well spent. Dennis found it particularly fitting when he heard that the CTA had a blind man and his dog arrested twice and that the police on one occasion attempted to impound the man’s dog. What better use of CTA money can there be than having a former cop (*some* of them are just plain stupid) named “Rich,” who identifies himself as a “traffic manager” spend hours every day traveling up and down the line insuring that no one is performing music anywhere where he or she might be able to make a few dollars (in the most recent case, the Securitas managers are performing "Rich's" duties. Dennis is wondering why he can’t meet one of Messina’s ten new executives in the subway--since it’s difficult to imagine what ten people could be doing to replace one Ed Belcaster. He figures they might as well come down and harass him. He’s a pretty good conversationalist and they might enjoy hearing about Daley’s problems passing the Bar and how he never tried a case as State’s Attorney. Daley can’t play guitar, either. And he certainly couldn’t remember the words to *The Ballad of Tom Joad.* He’d have to have read *Grapes of Wrath* to know the story.

Dennis finds it quite fitting that he has no address because the King of Nepotism (with his art loving wife) have cops chasing him around. He realizes that “Maggie’s (police) car” that is always in front of the St. James Hotel (part of the “affordable housing” stock that Dennis cannot afford because of constant police harassment) is protecting him from having the maniacs who live there attacking the city’s “chief executive.”

As Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, and many others have stated in various ways, ‘You steal a little and they throw you in jail. You steal a lot and they make you King.’ Dennis is glad that a person who never had to look for a job in his entire life is in control of the coffers of the City. We would not want anyone who has experienced any hardships handling the affairs of “the greatest city in the world” when it is necessary now to drive the poor out of town and hand over the land and treasury to real estate developers.

Epilogue--The St James Hotel as well as the Roosevelt Hotel nearby have been forced out of business by the Daley Administration in order to "yuppyize" the South Loop. We are glad to know, however, that Daley will end homelessness by 2010 or something.....