Fuck The Police!

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So Rome is posing some dificulties...
Yesterday the Municipal Police kicked us out. All Artisans got kicked out. From Trastevere, from Trilusa, from Giubonare and everywhere else. I knew it because after they made us close, other lost artisans came to Giubonare all looking for a place and finding us with our shops closed, gave up and went back to their own closed shops. I hate days like this. Then you start to get angry with the other sellers, the ones we feel have no RIGHT to be there. The Bangladeshis who sell pirate Rolexes and MontBlanc pens. And the Senegalese who sell fake Gucci and Louis Vutton bags. I don't like it when I start thinking they have no rights and I do. Ok, we are protected by almost all contitutions or at least some medieval laws or something. The artisan has a right to develop and show their work on the public street, no taxes no permits. We have a RIGHT. Here in Italy there was a law put in place by Mussolinni that said the artisan has 1 square meter to work on any public street. It's been taken out. Doens't work anymore, now we count only on the goodness of the heart of the police or their respect. But with some many Bangladeshi and Senegalese (not to mention the chinese) impregnating the street with pirated goods, it gets hard for us to fight for a place to work, it's hard to stand your ground when you first have to fight with the guy next to you to give you enought place to open your shop. Most of time when the police comes, the illegal vendors disappear. If they don't the Police will take their merchandise. they don't so this to us (so far) but they threaten alot. After being told to scram, we beaten artisans, get together to sulk over a pizza and say things over and over again like: who protects our rights? and such bulshit. We want to be completely independent and live outside the system but every time there's a problem we wonder how the system can defend us. You have to laught at us.
Santiago is Equadorian and works on the street in rome for 8 years and says it's better this way. Says it's always been like this: Today they leave you alone and you work in the same place for a week and then they come and kick you out and you have to go. Find another place. As long as it is like this we know what we have to do. The day they outlaw it completelly then we'll have real problems. Like it is in most parts of Spain. He is so right. Now it is like this: look where you see another artisan and then open your shop there. Of course he wont be very welcoming, but then again, he knows and you know that after you, another will come and another, and certainly the Bangladeshis and the Seneglese will discover that we've found another good place to work and soon it will be full of people selling all kinds of things, not just handmade work but all the other crap chinese made plastic cheap jewelry which fucks up you sales, not to mention again the pirated bags and watches and pens and sunglasses. So the police comes and the first few days they leave you alone cause they see you with your pliers and your wires or you macrame in progress, but when the store owners and the people who live on that street start to complain, everyone is out again. So we meet for a joint or a pizza or a beer and talk about how unfair, how no one respects us anymore, how we have no rights.
I wish I had videotaped everyday in Piazza Navona last year. There we were happy even though sometimes we did get kicked out. But at least the police knew us and we were treated with alot more respect. Now navona is completely prohibited, they won't let you stay put for two minutes. So, no artisans in Navona, only Senegalese and blangladeshis and Chinese, running around in mad chases with the police on their heels trying to confiscate the pirated goods, many times hurting the tourists. These things I saw everyday in Navona last year. Should've taped it. Want to make a documentary. Want to show romans how much of a hypocrite their system is, how they will not let the Senegalese work selling bags but the big licensed street shops all sell pirated goods and anyone can see it. But as long as they have a permit and they pay well for them and sometimes can wait ten years to get them, they can sell whatever they want. Even if two street away Senegalese are getting arrested for selling the same things. I don't care if they are pirated bags. First they are made the same way with the same materials. Good leather, very nice, just like the real ones. Only the real ones sell at around 1000€ and the fake one you can get for as low as 15€. I gotta be honest, I wouldn't walk around with a big logo on my shirt or bag or glasses. That is free advertising. And advertising is something very expensive. I think Gucci is happy so many people are walking around with their logo even if instead of paying 1.000€ to them they payed €15 to some mafia. It's still alot of advertising space. These logos are part of popular culture already, they are public domain if you ask me. Still I don't see why everyone should take everything to the street. Surely these mafias could open up stores for the Senegalese and the Chinese and stop impregnating the street, so that we artisans, respectable folk, can work, I know I know, they have their whole families to send money back to, me I only wanted to build a little house, but oh well. These are the issues. And I can see the sun is out, the rain stopped and it's time to go again, back to the streets, to pitch my handmade shop, fraternize with the other sellers because until the police comes we are all the same, we are all friends and we look out for each other. Viva La banda!

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Comments

[Marcos]

What about simply getting a permit? Is this a crazy idea?

[Tine]

Oh a permit!
Did I forget to mention I am illegal here? And even if I wasn't a permit here you can get maybe if you have a disability and can't work a regular job and they take enought pity on you which can take a long time and alot of fighting. For a vendor's license I would have to pay the kind of taxes (if I was legal) that I would only afford to pay if I start to sell things bought in wholesale because 4 hands don't fill a shop, or I can go to India or So. America and buy handmade things there and sell, like most people do. My problem there is that handmade work from third world countries like for exemple, silver in India and coconut and seed and wire jewelry in south america is mostly made by slaves (people who get nothing or close to nothing for their work) alot of them children. This is why a permit or a license is so dificult. Where I can get them, and I had in the past (Amsterdam, Las palmas of Gran Canaria), I get them, but it's usually a miracle.

[Jorge]

It's all about adapting.
Adapting? It’s easy to say being from a place that sets global trends (or annihilates long valued systems, depends what side you’re on). Yes, I’m speaking of the place referred to in some entries here as home, New York. It maybe difficult to understand your options from here but that’s likely because several people might not fully comprehend where your limits are, what you consider unethical, immoral, illegal, impossible, unlikely, ultimately just not desirable to your ideal utopia of having your own (God given?) space to practice your art while earning an income. Key point is “earning an income”. Sure, you may do it mostly for the love of it but there’s the income factor involved and if there’s money to be made, there’s competition and in most cases, competition is bad for your business, sometimes to the market if unregulated (which yours is). It’s hardly “unfair” that the Senegalese and the Bangladeshis, who come from a country much poorer than US or Italy, have adapted to today’s global market of commercial crap demand by catering to the less wealthy or spoiled by providing a lower quality yet similar products to that of Gucci. I know some artisans with 1st world education and experience in numerous other fields who still keep getting in the way of the people with no choice than making a living off of cheap knock-off fashion products. (just flipping the coin to see what’s on the other side) From a rights perspective I see little difference between the Senegalese Gucci people and the artisans so I fail to thing either should get better treatment. Both are making money without giving the state a cut (you can’t pay me rent, go elsewhere). That’s really not the complicated, nothing new. Get legitimatized, or look out for la polizia boot. What I don’t get is, you have several other options and you’re still doing what you’re doing so how bad can it be? What’s the big complaint about? Obviously this new found dislike for the artisan’s axis of evil (Senegal, Bangladesh and China) is just part of what make the whole experience interesting so don’t go letting the American in you influence your actions, as it turns out it’s not that easy to go to war with people and walk away. Who knew?! I really have no opinion of how to make you passion a sustainable source of income without turning it into a business involving partnerships, simplest being with a citizen for permit, although you’re likely not to go that route considering your quick dismissal of the permit suggestion. Maybe negotiating with licensed organizations (for or non for profit) branch out to create street fairs with tent registrations restricting piracy. You know, don’t just be part of a fair, arrange the damn thing yourself, or are you no longer an IndiQueen! I can go on forever about what a person with your knowledge and capability can do but that may just be a waste of script. By what I’ve read you’re on a path you’re American family’s too disconnected from to understand or even possibly influence. Unless that was just some more of that “America is sooo evil” sentiment that quite frankly, even we democrats are starting to think is getting a bit old already. Now without further ado, I must return to my brain wash therapy.