Photo courtesy of the Washington City Paper.
Yesterday morning GM linked to a Washington City Paper article covering a dispute over the use of the sidewalk in front of Washington Harbour. Several readers wrote in to take GM to task over the way he took the WCP article on face value and accepted the underdog vs. entitled narrative it spun.
Fair enough. As one reader explained, the story is more gray than the WCP depicts it. That article states that Dennis Sobin set up a table on the sidewalk to sell prisoners’ art and then faced immediate harassment from the property owners. It then states that Sobin has a letter from the city affirming his organization’s right to sell merchandise.
The reader pointed out the (allegedly) other side of the story, namely that the letter from the city does not stand for the proposition that Sobin believes it does. He believes it states that he can vend his wares wherever he wants. What it actually says is that during a legitimate protest, you are permitted to sell merchandise. Nobody, including Sobin, can just sell goods wherever you want, it needs to be a protest first.
And in the case of the Georgetown location, (again allegedly) he set up his vending table on a stretch of sidewalk where no vending is permitted. This drew official response, and then he protested that response and is trying to use the existence of his protest as a legal justification to continue to sell his wares. In other words, via his protest he is trying to bootstrap his way into a blanket vending permit that would not otherwise exist under DC law. It’s actually quite clever.
Another reader pointed out that Sobin has quite a turgid past. As a different writer at WCP wrote several years ago, he is, among other things, a convicted child porn producer. Of course, the cause he is specifically celebrating is the right of convicts who have served their time to return to society. No matter how horrific the crime, ex-cons have (with some specifically legislated exceptions) the same civil rights as anyone else.
But then again, anyone else is not permitted to set up vending tables wherever they want. And Sobin is free to apply for any of the countless vending locations that anyone else is permitted to.
The Georgetown Metropolitan 