Clean Up Post #1

Some musings need to percolate (this relates to Monday morning at Union Square):

I watched the latter part of the Artist Power demonstration 4 floors up across 14th street while Sheila was looking around Filene’s Basement…after the media left, the ring of demonstrators around the 1st Amendment-in-sand loosened. No one showed any malicious intent toward the work, but a number of people passing through did not look down and walked through the sand, causing a little bit of damage with each crossing. Their body language was easy to read as the knowing crowd shouted out that they had just defaced a piece of political art; each looked like they were realizing that they had just stumbled across red hot coals! Embarrassment, defensiveness, some pain…

Went down to report this to The Artist as he was sweeping up: His work was the perfect symbol…the greatest threat the to 1st is probably obliviousness. He seemed to like that interpretation. As he packed up his recycled sand in a rolling carry-on bag for another day, he left me some rhetoric (that sounded like a sales pitch) and this: http://www.joemangrum.com/

When I tracked down the real issue for the protest, and little cynicism began to seep in, I began to imagine the shape of a Venn Diagram of Free Speech intersecting Free Enterprise...Joe is standing in the middle.