Free Speech Plaza

Edit: I feel bad, because three times as many people have read this rant as my better-thought-out one that followed shortly. Complaining helps the complainer but solutions would help more. http://divinetension.blogspot.com/2016/04/fsp-but-deeper.html

I've been having trouble writing this blog lately, but yesterday I read an article about the heart connection to the brain and it struck me that when I'm sitting here in this particular space, that connection for me is very open. That's one reason it's hard to write: I want to get the words right, to say what my heart is asking me to say, and not just for me, but for the people who read it. I think that is what they come looking for, and although that's often an oppressive responsibility, it's also compelling. If I can do this, I ought to keep practicing it.

There was a letter in the Weekly asking "what's going on with the people who set up their booths across the street from the Saturday Market in the Wayne Morse Free Speech Plaza?" I know what I think about it. I've been watching it grow for over a decade. First it was our information booth on the southwest corner, a space we rented from the County so that we could use the Park Blocks spaces for our members. The drum circle settled there after it grew too large and loud for the East Park Block. It's a great space for that, and most of us have some love for the drum circle. We are a community gathering place, after all.  It's convenient that there are seats built there, as if it were the intention that people would gather. And no one opposes free speech. We're proud to be neighbors of a space reserved for that.

Saturday Market is a nonprofit, a membership organization. You don't find many of those anymore, as they can be hard to run "like a business" with hundreds of owners trying to make good decisions together. Saturday Market has for almost fifty years learned to run like an extremely well-managed business. We sign contracts, we get permits, we pay for utilities and insurance and we have employees, health insurance for them, and we perform together all of the duties of a modern business, plus we do it all with our only income coming from our member fees. This is a rather astounding accomplishment that many take for granted as we make it look so fun and easy. Let me repeat, we members pay for it all with our fees. From our sales, that we depend on our customers for. That's why we try to hard to be family friendly, safe, and attractive. And fun! 

As an officer and someone who has been a member for a very long time (since 1975) I've seen times that were much worse and this time is a really good time. We have had some problems. One that has been particularly troublesome is the county property across the street. When our booth was there, we were required to buy $4 million dollars worth of liability insurance for our 10'x10' space. That and the rent we paid to the county bought us approximately nothing, as when a stabbing happened right in front of our info booth, traumatizing our staff, the only solution we could come up with to stop the violence to us was to move our booth to city property on a different corner.

This was after years and years of proposing solutions and promoting discussions with the county and the police and the city and the community leaders on what kind of support we could get for the lawless scene happening under the guise of free speech. We bought $2000 gates that we had to put up and take down every week to keep the upper areas off limits after we had documented prostitution, drug dealing. and many types of abuse and violence in those areas. We kept logs of just how many illegal actions and purchases were made over there every week, using volunteers from our organization to document what the county didn't want to see. We paid our site staff to clean the space every week, even though we didn't rent it, to be good neighbors. We absorbed the costs, spread them over our population of micro-businesses, some of the smallest businesses you can find anywhere. We still have members who drive 30-year-old cars and can't afford computers or health care, but we pitched in to be good citizens in our downtown.

We asked and asked for help from the County. We spoke with countless concerned officials and citizens and no one seemed to care that all of the expense, the bad reputation, the needed services, and the problem-solving fell on our little nonprofit. Even the Farmers Market didn't want to help us. (A quick edit: Actually, we have gotten good support from EPD to help with the law-breaking, and I thank them.) We tried putting our own booths on the block, but none of our members wanted to sell over there. We tried making it clear that it was not part of the Saturday Market, but a brand name like ours means nothing when everyone feels free to use it. It's a day of the week...it's a market. Put a word in the middle and you seem to have something new...or just lump us all together. What's the difference?

The Weekly letter-writer seems to think it is little old ladies selling over there, all innocent. It's true that not everyone can afford a canopy or the fees we pay. You can get a 4x4 space at Saturday Market for $8 plus ten percent, or $13 if you want an 8x8, or you can stroll for $5. You have to pay a membership fee of $50 but you can sell a time or two while you get the money together. You have to get your items screened to see if they are hand crafted. We're not a flea market. You can't sell used things or things you buy at Goodwill and that might seem a little restrictive. And you have to pay your fees so we can rent the 9 or 10 porta potties, pay for the street permits so people are safe, pay for the fire marshal to come and inspect you, pay for the health inspectors to come inspect you, pay the city rent for the space, pay the people to sort the garbage so you can keep tons of waste out of the landfill, buy more forks for the ones that go missing, pay the staff to come at 5:00 in the morning to get the site ready, pay the managers to hire the staff and the security to protect us from thieves, pay for all the paper to register everyone and inform them, pay the musicians, pay for the advertising to attract the customers, and pay for everything that we as members have decided to pay for to make ourselves attractive enough to make our livings doing our art. We govern ourselves (lots of meetings.) We put our money together to make it all happen for all of us. It works very well!

But then, it seems, we have to pitch in more to pay for the people who don't want to pay. They want, for all of their various reasons, to set up over there, bypass laws and ordinances that society requires businesses to follow, but to get all the benefits of membership that we offer, for free. It's a bit hard to watch, I'll admit. It has taken me years of working on my patience to take a charitable view of it all. I see myself when I was just starting out, when it only cost me $3.50 to sell, and I remember having a zero-sales day and trying to get out of my fee. Howard wouldn't let me. I can't believe I thought I should have gotten that day for nothing, when I look at what my $3.50s have built. I've lived from my art for my whole working life now, over forty years. I would not have been able to do it at all without Saturday Market. My membership has given me my life, the wherewithal to buy my home, to pay for my health insurance, and to move somewhat gracefully into what is going to be my semi-retirement, because without the Market I can't really retire. I'm going to have to keep doing it or lose it all. It's a bit odd to be seen as the establishment now, to be seen as the ones trying to force out the innocent people just trying to make it, over there, where they are using what we have built as if it were owed to them.

So when she says that they've never caused a problem, I have to disagree. People who don't want to pay their own way in the world cause thousands of problems. The deeper question, to me, is who should pay for it if they won't? I think Saturday Market has paid and paid, and that is what is wrong with what's happening over there. Free speech isn't free. Selling isn't free. How does it make sense that no one over there has to pay for what they use? If they can't pay, then let's solve that problem. Instead of me handing out ten dollar bills every week, maybe the people who love it so much could pony up some cash. Maybe the people selling there could pay someone to clean it and chip in for a porta potty. Maybe the County could take on the expense of managing what is happening on their property, in front of their courthouse. Or maybe we could go back to having real free speech, and not commerce. The way it is now, you can't really go over there and express yourself, schedule a rally or bring in a speaker. It's dominated by people who are taking advantage of a lot of other people without consent. I call that a problem.

Saturday Market has mostly been trying to be charitable about it, to keep doing what we are doing so well, and to not publicly embarrass Lane County for their lack of concern for our well being as their neighbors. We are now having to endure the criticism of those who see us as opposing free speech and pushing around those less fortunate. There is something really wrong with that picture, and it isn't Saturday Market. We're still working together to create and maintain the best community event, the most accessible business incubator, the greatest gathering of cooks, musicians and artists in the region, and we're doing it with style. What's happening on the Free Speech Plaza is not free speech, and it's not our problem. You fix it.