{"id":4253,"date":"2014-08-19T19:27:52","date_gmt":"2014-08-19T19:27:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.artinfo.com\/blunotes\/?p=4253"},"modified":"2014-08-19T19:27:52","modified_gmt":"2014-08-19T19:27:52","slug":"when-culture-runs-into-trouble-in-ny-and-nola","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/2014\/08\/19\/when-culture-runs-into-trouble-in-ny-and-nola\/","title":{"rendered":"When Culture Runs Into Trouble in NY and NOLA"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I suspected\u2014wrongly\u2014that I was the only one drawing connections between the ordinances and enforcment measures that inhibit culture in New Orleans with those of New York and other cities.
\nI was wrong.
\nThere’s an interesting piece by Alexis Stephens on the Next City website titled “Policing Sound: Lessons From the Crackdowns on Performers in New Orleans and New York City<\/a>.”
\nIn it, Hannah Kreiger-Benson of the Music and Culture Coalition of New Orleans (MACCNO) points out that sometimes a dispute about noise is not always jsut a dispute about noise:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe ways these issues are presented is residents versus musicians or businesses versus neighbors rather than talking about space that is shared and sounds that are audible and sounds that travel in different ways,\u201d Kreiger-Benson continues. \u201cSometimes it\u2019s really something entirely different. Sometimes it\u2019s people who really don\u2019t like each other or some issue dating back years. Sound can become a low-hanging fruit to get people in trouble for.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And Stephens alerted my attention to some tensions surrounding the current wave of acrobatic dancers on New York City subways:<\/p>\n

In New York, acrobatic subway dancers have become the target of a well-publicized campaign<\/a> against subterranean disorder. Arrests of subway performers have quadrupled this year. With social control tactics like \u201cbroken windows policing\u201d and stop-and-frisk being hotly contested this summer, the crackdowns on subway dancers feels especially poignant \u2014 unwieldy limbs confined and pushed even farther underground.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s sad because dancers are starving artists just like anyone else trying to make money off their talent,\u201d says Chrybaby Cozie, founder of Lite Feet Nation, a youth outreach initiative that organizes young dancers into what he calls an \u201carmy of harmony.\u201d Lite Feet is a style of dancing that was cultivated in New York hip-hop circles in the mid-2000s after the popularity of the \u201cChicken Noodle Soup,\u201d \u201cToe Wop,\u201d and the (original) \u201cHarlem Shake.\u201d Many Lite Feet dancers perform in the New York City subway system to earn an income for doing what they love. Cozie comments, \u201cWe aren\u2019t all able to study or perform at Peridance or Broadway Dance Center. There are over 1,000 of us who have nowhere to go and there needs to be a safe haven for us.\u201d
\nBuskNY, an advocacy group for subway performers, held a press conference on the steps of New York\u2019s City Hall on August 12th to protest for their rights to perform under the Rules of Conduct under the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA). Zenon Laguerre, a subway performer for more than 20 years, was quoted<\/a> at the rally as saying, \u201cWe dance because we love doing it \u2014 it pays the bills and keeps us out of trouble. We dance. We sing. We\u2019re not criminals.\u201d
\n(AP Photo\/Bebeto Matthews, File)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I suspected\u2014wrongly\u2014that I was the only one drawing connections between the ordinances and enforcment measures that inhibit culture in New Orleans with those of New York and other cities. I was wrong. There’s an interesting piece by Alexis Stephens on the Next City website titled “Policing Sound: Lessons From the Crackdowns on Performers in New … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “When Culture Runs Into Trouble in NY and NOLA”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4255,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4253"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/larryblumenfeld.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}