Waterfront ESU officers shut down street magician during Grand Opening of new pier. Public gets involved and situation escalates.

I’m a street magician and I was filming this situation. I’ve been coming to Seattle every summer to perform shows for the last 4 years. This year a lot has changed, there are now “ESU” security officers who enforce the waterfront park rules. The rules include no amplification allowed and performers are only permitted in designated spaces.

In a public space, enforcing these rules is unconstitutional and violation of 1st amendment rights. You have the right to perform a show for a crowd, and use an amplifier as long as you follow the cities dB limits.

The Waterfront Park, the public street of Alaskan Walkway is no longer considered a public space, it’s now an event space and breaking the parks rules can lead to being trespassed.

A couple days before the grand opening of the new pier at the Waterfront, ESU officers were given orders to start enforcing no amplification on performers. However the rules on their website state amplification is allowed in the designated spaces. The ESU officers when confronted argued back, a member of the public looked up the rules and corrected the officers. An officer got fed up and told a lady filming and asking questions to mind her own business. Later their bosses told them the magician was right and they had to acknowledge their mistake.

Although you’re allowed freedom in these spaces, there are currently only 6 spaces. 3 are on the other side of the street. And the other 2 are in spaces pushed far from the foot traffic and in the sun.

There is one viable space in front of miners landing because of it’s closer distance to foot traffic and shade. The rest are in the sun and not spaces performers ever set up on. It’s clear the agenda is for street performers to not be heard or seen.

The spaces me and other performers have used for years break the Waterfront rules despite never getting complaints from other businesses. There are occasionally obnoxious performers that crank up their volume way louder than reasonable and they shouldn’t be allowed to be that loud. But performers that set a good example by keeping amp volumes reasonable, control crowds, keep the foot traffic free and accessible and don’t stop other businesses from operating and only do good things for the city are being criminalised because the city gave power to the waterfront to create rules in a once public space, and trespass those that don’t abide.

Seattle is known for street performing culture and part of the history is the street artist fighting back in court when the city criminalised artist’s rights. That’s now repeating itself, the constitution is still on the street artist’s side.

We are currently looking for a pro bono lawyer that can defend us against the City’s agenda to criminalise street artists. Any leads are appreciated. Here is a link to a petition https://chng.it/vDzZgHWryt

[For added context the magician, Clive, mentions an esu officer assaulted him, Officer Jones escorted him out of the park after Clive was a bystander in a meeting for vendors taking place in public at the waterfront a couple months ago. Jones forcibly pulled Clive and then pushed him out of the waterfront to the other side of the street]