2009 PARKing Day Cleveland Recap

So another PARKing day has come and gone.

In local news the Cleveland PARKing Group did indeed set up a nice little park on Prospect Ave. and East 4th. The above photo was taken minutes after a Cleveland Peace Officer driving a Downtown Cleveland Alliance truck informed us that we were violating some law. Not seen in the photo are the two solar cookers we put together and some other accoutrement that was to be added to spice up the party. Next year.

The officer whom asked us to vacate wasn't sure which law(s) we were violating was but he was getting antsy and in my experience an "antsy" official who believes he is doing "the right thing" and happens to be "armed" gets you right about to the point where you have to weigh whether you had anything to do for the rest of the weekend or your willingness to pack it up and say "yessir, right away sir, you're the boss sir". The information we were given was that street parking spaces are not to be occupied by pedestrians and that we were a "distraction" (I don't know to whom or what...).

An interesting sidenote, the vast majority of passerbys (80%) were really excited/happy/supportive of what we were doing and appreciated the effort. Of those quite a few mentioned that their only concern was that the city may not approve (of sitting in a park? No one was 100% clear on that). What was clear was that a better understanding of what the rules and regs are are necessary and in hindsight other action should be taken.

Summation:

There is a lot of hesitancy to do things outside of some strangely construed "comfort zone", not that sitting on some grass is really all that outstanding but to quite a few citizens and this particular police officer this event was. This causes hesitancy of action that is truly unnecessary. If some action that causes no harm and violates no law is undertaken then the only risk is of being asked (politely at first) to cease. Fine. This doesn't mean that every nuance of action to be accomplished has to be ordained under an umbrella of fear, it means that the boundaries are a flexing item to be bent and pushed and discovered. We were asked to pack it up and leave which this time we did. No harm, no foul.

I did learn though that for events such as PARKing day I will have to clear the following weekend so that I can safely inquire as to what the possible legal infraction is, what charge shall be levied and what the possible punishment would be so as to actually discover where the boundary of legality is. Last year the parking officer had no problem (nor this year when one walked past us) so without actually receiving the citation I am unsure as to which law we were violating. I asked the officer and he was unsure, which should have been a dead give-away that no citation was going to be issued, instead there was just some "badge-bullying".

Next year I will plan better and if a citation is issued I will share with the class just which really stupid law happens to be in the books. If the officer was under the impression that legal action was taking place which really wasn't then I truly feel sorry for him. Either his procedure manual was unclear or his instructions were, either way I am sure he had much more pressing matters then a bunch of dummies sitting on some lawn chairs.

Now if it was Sunday and there was a home Browns game we could have been sitting anywhere and probably drinking beer but that whole dichotomy is a discussion for another day.

Oh, if anyone knows which possible laws were being broken, we would love to know. Seriously. Knowing is half the battle.