I've had some great responses to the opening of the
Music Right Next Door Legal Fund, and I thank all of you who have been so supportive. Financial support is wonderful, of course, but now there's another way you can help:
you can tell other people about this attempt to restrict our Constitutional rights and encourage them to read up on the details and support our efforts. My wonderfully creative friend
Ivan Stiles has created the great icon you see here and donated its use to us. What we'd love is if you'd take that graphic, add it to your own web site or blog, and link to this blog or to the MRNDLF site at http://livingroommusic.googlepages.com . You can copy the icon from this page, or download it from http://pages.prodigy.net/cah/concert/graphics/MusicNextDoor200.jpg . And if you do that, please
drop me a note to let me know that you're on board, and I'll periodically put up a list of all our friends with backlinks.
On the news front, no new news from our recent mediation session with O'Hara Township. But there's now another family that's running into very similar unconstitutional restriction of their rights to host parties with live music in the Boulder, Colorado area.
Greg and Debbie Ching recently lost their appeal of a cease and desist order that prevents them from hosting a party with live music if and only if people chip in to help pay for the music. Greg tells me that the commissioners have determined that it's perfectly ok for them to host a Valentine's Day party or a Halloween party that has live music, but if people chip in for the party, it's no longer legal. I'm still scratching my head and wondering exactly how the commissioners expect to enforce such a restriction. Suppose the Chings host a May Day party with live music, don't set out a basket or ask for donations, but individuals who attend the party privately stuff cash into the refrigerator, the sugar bowl, or Greg's jacket pocket when he's not looking. Then a neighbor complains about the party and an officer shows up asking "Excuse me, where did you get the money to pay your performer?" If Greg says "From my checkbook" (because he wrote a check) is he telling the truth? If he says "I found it in my pocket and my sugar bowl" has he violated the cease and desist order? And (most important) do the local authorties even have the right to ask that question if there's no search warrant or any reason to expect that the money came from an "illegal" source? Check out
Greg and Debbie's web site and read some of the linked articles -- it would be pretty funny stuff if it wasn't so sad.
For those of you who are hosting house concerts and setting out a basket for donations to the Music Right Next Door Legal Fund, I've created a couple of things to make your lives a little easier. First, here's a little poster you can set next to the basket. And here are some business cards you can print and stack next to the basket or even carry with you and hand out to anyone you speak to about our civil rights complaint. And here's the donation form you can use to send a donation to the fund yourself, or to send whatever the basket collects at your house concert.
