Are you breaking the law? Is that why the shoots are so quick?
In
New
York there basically was a law that protected me, but [former mayor
Rudy] Giuliani
didn’t care. He said, "Let him sue us — we’ll keep on arresting him and
the participants." Eventually my First Amendment lawyer filed a lawsuit
against the city and sued the police commissioner after my fifth
arrest. The case reached the Supreme Court and Justice [Ruth Bader]
Ginsburg agreed
with the highest New York federal court. Then the Giuliani
administration reappealed to
the entire Supreme Court,
which they rarely do — maybe for death row sentence cases — and then the
entire Supreme Court had to look
at the case. They agreed they weren’t going to take a ruling
on it and had to uphold the New York State decision. So I eventually
won against Giuliani. One or two arrests for your freedom of artistic
expression is kind of interesting, provocative, hip. But after the
fifth it starts getting depressing and fearful.