Union Square Partnership Sues Leader of “Stop Shopping Church” Over Website Parody
NEW YORK, October 7th--Savitri Durkee, director of Reverend Billy and the Church of Stop Shopping, will defend a political parody website against a federal copyright infringement lawsuit filed by the Union Square Partnership (USP). USP, the Business Improvement District (BID) for the Union Square neighborhood in Manhattan, alleges the satirical website infringes on the "look and feel" of their own website.
Durkee has been actively campaigning against USP’s effort to turn the historic Union Square pavilion on the north end of the park into a “tablecloth restaurant” and, in particular, their brokering of a 7.1 million dollar anonymous donation that stipulates extensive renovations and reconstruction of the pavilion as a private, for-profit restaurant to be leased long-term to an as yet unnamed proprietor.
After learning of the privatization scheme, Durkee developed the parody website underlining community resistance to the plan. The website replaced pictures of happy shoppers with photos of the 80 year-old Elm trees that USP cut down in May, a portrait of a squirrel holding a “Keep Parks Public!” sign, documentation of an action in which a gigantic "NOT FOR SALE" sign was hung from the pavilion and an Onion-style article with the headline “Danny Meyer Apologizes to Reverend Billy”.
The headline referred to celebrity restaurateur Danny Meyer, co-chair of the USP board of directors and director of the Union Square Hospitality Group, a consortium of restaurants and foodservices. Meyer's professional interests and his position as co-chair of USP have raised suspicions in the community and some see the plan and its implementation as lacking transparency.
The single page website at the source of the lawsuit called attention to the confusing details of the restaurant plans. Its only outgoing hyperlinks led to a petition stating opposition to USP’s takeover of the pavilion. The petition is hosted on the website of Reverend Billy (revbilly.com), a widely known advocate of public space, who is also married to Savitri Durkee. As a result of USP's lawsuit, the website has been disabled since July 5th and was online for less than three weeks..
In other opposition to the land grab, Durkee, activists from the group Save Unions Square 2008 and Reverend Billy have led many theatrical demonstrations in Union Square. They have reenacted famous speeches from other eras, drawing attention to Union Square's historical significance; they ritually planted small pine trees and sod outside Danny Meyer's Union Square Café to illustrate the difference between a restaurant and a park. Most recently, Durkee and about one hundred community members demonstrated outside of USP's "Harvest In The Square" event, wearing chef hats and banging pots and pans while chanting "NYC is hungry for public space!"
In a statement on the lawsuit, Durkee outlined how this litigation is representative of USP's lack of respect for public spaces:
"The Union Square Partnership will go to any length to shut down opposition to its plans to privatize the park. This idea for a restaurant didn’t come from the community and it didn’t come from park users. It came from a development corporation called the Union Square Partnership, working hand-in-hand with City Council Member Rosie Mendez and the Parks Department to turn one of our most precious public resources -our public space- into a profit center in the heart of one of the most important free assembly areas in the nation. With this lawsuit, the USP is demonstrating they will limit First Amendment freedoms in virtual space as ruthlessly as they do in the park itself. Do all those mom and pop stores on 14th Street know the USP and Executive Director Jennifer Falk are using their hard-earned dues to hire corporate lawyers for frivolous lawsuits? Does the charter of a BID like Union Square include suppressing the voices of citizens who don’t agree with them?"
Durkee is represented in this lawsuit by a team of lawyers from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a renowned civil liberties group defending free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights in the digital world, and the law firms of Mayer Brown and Gross & Belsky, LLP. Durkee and her fellows are inspired by the legacy of Union Square, stating "we are emboldened by the incredible history of Union Square, where brave Americans have assembled peacefully for well over a century, where the labor movement was born, and where abolitionists, suffragettes, civil right activists and many others have fought for and exercised their First Amendment rights. Wealthy donors should not be allowed to dictate what happens to our public resources and agencies like the Union Square Partnership should not be in the business of bringing lawsuits against citizens engaged in political speech."
BACKGROUND:
- Currently, there is a court-ordered injunction preventing any construction on the pavilion, the result of a lawsuit filed by the Union Square Community Coalition (USCC) in April 2008.
- Union Square has the highest density of restaurants and the lowest density of public space in the entire city.
- The restaurant will decrease possible play space for children by 2500 square feet.
- No community group or member not directly related to the USP BID has ever gone on record in support of the planned restaurant.
- Manhattan Community Board 5 declined to make a ruling on the restaurant deal.
- Jennifer Falk, Executive Director of the Union Square Partnership was Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s press secretary for four years
Durkee has been actively campaigning against USP’s effort to turn the historic Union Square pavilion on the north end of the park into a “tablecloth restaurant” and, in particular, their brokering of a 7.1 million dollar anonymous donation that stipulates extensive renovations and reconstruction of the pavilion as a private, for-profit restaurant to be leased long-term to an as yet unnamed proprietor.
After learning of the privatization scheme, Durkee developed the parody website underlining community resistance to the plan. The website replaced pictures of happy shoppers with photos of the 80 year-old Elm trees that USP cut down in May, a portrait of a squirrel holding a “Keep Parks Public!” sign, documentation of an action in which a gigantic "NOT FOR SALE" sign was hung from the pavilion and an Onion-style article with the headline “Danny Meyer Apologizes to Reverend Billy”.
The headline referred to celebrity restaurateur Danny Meyer, co-chair of the USP board of directors and director of the Union Square Hospitality Group, a consortium of restaurants and foodservices. Meyer's professional interests and his position as co-chair of USP have raised suspicions in the community and some see the plan and its implementation as lacking transparency.
The single page website at the source of the lawsuit called attention to the confusing details of the restaurant plans. Its only outgoing hyperlinks led to a petition stating opposition to USP’s takeover of the pavilion. The petition is hosted on the website of Reverend Billy (revbilly.com), a widely known advocate of public space, who is also married to Savitri Durkee. As a result of USP's lawsuit, the website has been disabled since July 5th and was online for less than three weeks..
In other opposition to the land grab, Durkee, activists from the group Save Unions Square 2008 and Reverend Billy have led many theatrical demonstrations in Union Square. They have reenacted famous speeches from other eras, drawing attention to Union Square's historical significance; they ritually planted small pine trees and sod outside Danny Meyer's Union Square Café to illustrate the difference between a restaurant and a park. Most recently, Durkee and about one hundred community members demonstrated outside of USP's "Harvest In The Square" event, wearing chef hats and banging pots and pans while chanting "NYC is hungry for public space!"
In a statement on the lawsuit, Durkee outlined how this litigation is representative of USP's lack of respect for public spaces:
"The Union Square Partnership will go to any length to shut down opposition to its plans to privatize the park. This idea for a restaurant didn’t come from the community and it didn’t come from park users. It came from a development corporation called the Union Square Partnership, working hand-in-hand with City Council Member Rosie Mendez and the Parks Department to turn one of our most precious public resources -our public space- into a profit center in the heart of one of the most important free assembly areas in the nation. With this lawsuit, the USP is demonstrating they will limit First Amendment freedoms in virtual space as ruthlessly as they do in the park itself. Do all those mom and pop stores on 14th Street know the USP and Executive Director Jennifer Falk are using their hard-earned dues to hire corporate lawyers for frivolous lawsuits? Does the charter of a BID like Union Square include suppressing the voices of citizens who don’t agree with them?"
Durkee is represented in this lawsuit by a team of lawyers from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a renowned civil liberties group defending free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights in the digital world, and the law firms of Mayer Brown and Gross & Belsky, LLP. Durkee and her fellows are inspired by the legacy of Union Square, stating "we are emboldened by the incredible history of Union Square, where brave Americans have assembled peacefully for well over a century, where the labor movement was born, and where abolitionists, suffragettes, civil right activists and many others have fought for and exercised their First Amendment rights. Wealthy donors should not be allowed to dictate what happens to our public resources and agencies like the Union Square Partnership should not be in the business of bringing lawsuits against citizens engaged in political speech."
BACKGROUND:
- Currently, there is a court-ordered injunction preventing any construction on the pavilion, the result of a lawsuit filed by the Union Square Community Coalition (USCC) in April 2008.
- Union Square has the highest density of restaurants and the lowest density of public space in the entire city.
- The restaurant will decrease possible play space for children by 2500 square feet.
- No community group or member not directly related to the USP BID has ever gone on record in support of the planned restaurant.
- Manhattan Community Board 5 declined to make a ruling on the restaurant deal.
- Jennifer Falk, Executive Director of the Union Square Partnership was Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s press secretary for four years
Peggy on 10 Oct 2008 at 2:02 pm #
Union Square seems to have a block about acknowledging its populist heritage, both virtually and in RL. I interviewed Rev. Billy last year about, among other things, his arrest in Union Square for reading the First Amendment: http://www.othercinema.com/otherzine/?issueid=19&article_id=65