A Million Stories

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Evan M. Lopez

So here's something: On April 22, City Councilmen Darrell Clarke and Bill Greenlee introduced Bill No. 100267, which would encumber event promoters with a slew of new requirements and restrictions. In the words of one promoter, "It's chilling."

Under the proposed rules, promoters would have to apply for a permit from the Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) 30 days before every single event — meaning if you promote a weekly club night, that's 52 permit applications per year . More than just a bureaucratic nightmare, this would all but abolish last-minute shows or pickup parties. These applications would have to include detailed security plans, the promoter's business-privilege-license number, the venue's capacity and the expected crowd. Perhaps most importantly, the bill would hold promoters liable for the actions of the crowds at the events they promote.

Additionally, the bill requires that every permit application include a copy of the contract between the venue and the promoter — in effect, making rental prices and rates for each individual promoter a matter of public record . To make matters worse, the cops can deny a permit for any reason and without explanation up to 10 days before the event — which could devastate businesses that fronted costs, to say nothing of destroying the credibility of those trying to book events.

"We're not trying to stop people from having a good time or those responsible for creating good times from making money," says Greenlee, who wants Council to pass the legislation by June. "We just have to think about the communities surrounding these locations where a number of events have gotten out of control in the past. All events should have regulations in place."

The bill is necessary, he says, because of event-driven disruptions throughout the city — an oversold event at the Comcast Center, for instance, in which kids flooded the streets and sidewalks of residential buildings nearby.Greenlee says he and Clarke are open to amendments. The permits, he points out, are free : "We just want to know what levels of control are in place. Even in regard to revealing salaries, we're trying to show that these are legitimate transactions and not just fly-by-night characters . We want to show that there're true contractual agreements between promoters and venue owners."

DEPT. OF scary BROWN-LOOKING PEOPLE

Call us optimists, but maybe, just maybe, the new Arizona immigration law — the one that requires brown-looking people to show their papers, because they're brown-looking — may ultimately benefit the immigrant-rights movement. Just as images of racist cops attacking civil rights protesters with dogs and water cannons led to progressive reforms in the 1960s, so, too, might these nativists catalyze the kind of fear and anger necessary to push comprehensive immigration reform through D.C.'s clogged arteries.

Probably not, but, you know, we're optimists.

Of course, it's hard to stay optimistic, surrounded as we are by troglodytes. Like, for instance, state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (R-Butler), who, on May 4, introduced legislation modeled after the Arizona law. It probably won't pass the Democratic-controlled House, but it will make xenophobes tingle in their naughty places . (Metcalfe, coincidentally, is running for the GOP's lieutenant governor nomination.)

Then there are Philly's police-immigrant policies. As City Paper previously reported (News, "ICE Cold," Daniel Schwartz, Aug. 19, 2009), Secure Communities, Immigration and Customs Enforcement's latest effort to identify and deport undocumented immigrants, arrived in Philadelphia last summer, implemented at the state level. The program grants ICE access to local police arrest records, effectively making a PPD arrest the first step toward deportation for an undocumented immigrant. What's more, Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey signed off on a separate agreement with ICE in 2008 that connects Philly's Preliminary Arraignment System (PARS), which contains detailed records of PPD arrests and evidence, with the feds' immigration records. This has brewed distrust among Philly's immigrant communities: After all, if immigrants are worried about getting deported, they're less likely to cooperate with cops investigating actual crimes.

And this brings us to last Thursday afternoon at 20th and Market streets, where some 100 Philadelphians gathered outside U.S. Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr.'s office, demanding that he take a stand on comprehensive immigration reform. Amid chants in Spanish, Regan Cooper of the Pennsylvania Immigration and Citizenship Coalition (PICC) grabbed a bullhorn: "We believe Senator Casey's heart is in the right place when it comes to immigration reform, but he hasn't taken a public stance, and we need him start fighting so that people like the Arizona legislators and Metcalfe don't take immigration reform into their own hands."

Casey wasn't there; one of his staffers came downstairs to politely tell the crowd that the senator "just didn't have enough information to make a stance yet." Jen Rock, co-leader of the New Sanctuary Movement, handed her a bundle of fliers and press releases.

"Well, hopefully, we're giving it to you now."

THIS WEEK IN KABLETOWN

When a U.S. Appeals Court ruled last month that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had no authority to stop Comcast from interfering with subscribers' ability to access peer-to-peer network applications, we freaked out a little : Philadelphia's biggest corporation wants to be able to control how you access the Internet, and a court had just ruled that the FCC couldn't stop it.

The ramifications were huge. As University of Nebraska-Lincoln cyber-law expert

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put it on The Huffington Post May 3, if the FCC didn't reassert its authority on net neutrality, "There is almost no list of 'horribles' that are not fair game."

Among the possibilities: Comcast, Ammori wrote, could "block your tweets, if you criticize Comcast's service or its merger, especially if you use the #ComcastSucks hashtag ." Another: "Block your vote to consumerist.com, when you vote Comcast the worst company in the nation . No need for such traffic to get through." Scared yet? Try this: "If you create a small online business and hit it big, threaten to block your business unless you share one-third or more of all your revenues with them."

This is precisely the thing that net neutrality advocates fear — and why a regulatory framework that would prevent telecoms from dictating what you can do on the Internet is so necessary. Good news! Last Thursday, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski detailed his plans to to force telecoms to play fair while promising not to over-regulate. Net neutrality advocates and 13 major tech companies, including Google and Amazon, cheered Genachowski's announcement. Comcast? Not so much.

Joseph Waz, Comcast's senior vice president for external affairs, complained at a Stanford University conference that the FCC's policy was " scary" and "opens the door to the entire heavy burden of regulation." According to CNET News, he suggested that more lawsuits were in the offing. Of course they are.

This week's report by A.D. Amorosi, Jeffrey C. Billman and Daniel Schwartz. E-mail us at amillionstories@citypaper.net.