Recently, a group called 20,000 Parades contacted Islands of LA about a tea party they were organizing on a traffic island. Islands of LA shared some insight on the lawful use of traffic islands for gathering or assembly. The group’s event, titled L.A.’s Tea Party, is on Sunday August 15.

They plan to have live cello music and perhaps play some parlour games and invite the public to come out and have some tea. Please note they are requiring a dress code (parasols, hat and gloves) and ask that you bring your own tea cup and saucer. While the requisite dress code creates an exclusivity around their use of pedestrian accessible traffic islands, the group said it is in keeping with the tradition of high tea parties and creates a juxtaposition between the industrial landscape and frippery.  Of course, the island is public so anybody can walk by…but if you want to be served tea, you’ll have to be dressed up.

This is a fairly large traffic island with room for about 10-30 people (depending on what they are doing) to peaceably assemble or gather without blocking the pedestrian right of way or restricting vehicular traffic. There is also plenty of additional space on the corner across the street, which features rectilinear groundscape (to prevent skateboarding?); while it isn’t a traffic island, it is another example of an island of public space that is hidden in plain view.

This island is also full of interesting sights including industrial architectural highlights, passing trains, bridges, and found objects.

Tip of street corner with groundscape feature

Parliament Square and Big Ben 1920s

This traffic island in the middle of London was designed by Charles Barry in 1868 to improve traffic and featured London’s first traffic signal. (Click here to see a great image of Parliament square from 1897 owned by the Getty.) It sustained damages during World War II and Grey Wornum was commissioned to redesign it in 1948 as a central garden for the Ministry of Transport.

Many of the country’s most important government buildings overlook the square including Westminster Abbey and St. Margaret’s, Westminster, the Middlesex Guildhall (the seat of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom), 100 Parliament Street serving HM Treasury and HM Revenue and Customs, and Portcullis House (site of the House of Commons and House of Lords). There are also nine statues including Winston Churchill, Benjamin Disraeli, Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela and others.

The site has a rich and complex history.  It was a churchyard connected to St. Margaret’s church until the 1780s, when the area was cleared and a lawn was sown.  In 1834, a fire destroyed the medieval Westiminster Palace. Following the fire , Charles Barry won a competition to design the new palace for the House of Parliament.

1940s Postcard: Parliament Square in foreground after Wornum's redesign (Big Ben clock Tower in the background)

In 1852, the new buildings were completed and, in 1858, the clock tower housing Big Ben was finished. Barry’s plans included the garden and Parliament square, which were completed a decade later. Recently, the site was registered as a an English Heritage Grade II Registered Garden of Special Historic Interest.

There were extensive plans to redo the traffic island/Parliament Square for the 2010 Olympics in London detailed on Greater London Authority government site and The Sunday Times but the mayor, Boris Johnson, recently canceled them.

This is also the site of several protests including an ongoing nearly 10 year protest by Brian Haw and, in 2010, a protest called Democracy Village. Lord Mason also addressed the House of Lords about access to the island.

Critic Edward Lucie-Smith criticizes the work and the Tate museum. He argues the work is a blatant copy by Mark Wallinger. If it is art, then the praise and authorship belong to Brian Haw.  Other critics praised the work. Tim Teeman concluded it was both art and politics. But Waldemar Januszczak says the peace is compelling not for its political position but for what it say about originality and authenticity.

Waldemar views “Haw is a hero of our times, one of those potty and indefatigable political eccentrics who make you proud to be British.” Brian Haw’s protest included various banners, posters and artwork donated to Brian Haw and various artists including famed graffiti artist Banksy.  Regarding the artwork, Waldemar claims that will there are elements which are emotive, informative and provocative but, those belong to the work that Brian Haw did. As far as the artwork, this is where it fails: “instead of responding to Banksy’s painting as a work of protest, I found myself imagining how much a Wallinger re-creation of a Banksy original might be worth. That’s the trouble with this setup. Instead of making you think about politics or protest, Wallinger’s installation directs you to issues of originality and authenticity. “

May 2006, from the Wooster Collective

In 2001, Brian Haw began Parliament Square Peace Campaign (PSPC) , a 24/7 vigil to protest about the suffering of Iraqis during the 1990s because of economic sanctions.

It’s been a strange and fascinating journey with court rulings in favor and then against him, police raids, donated works from Banksy, replica’s of his destroyed panels by Mark Wallinger as part of a work of his in the Tate Museum, and the list goes on.

In 2002, The Guardian reported that Mr Justice Gray, a high court Judge, affirmed Brian Haw’s right to protest at Parliament square: “Looking at the issue of reasonableness in the round and taking account of the duration, place and purpose and the effect of the obstruction, as well as the fact that the defendant is exercising his convention right, I have come to the conclusion that the obstruction for which the defendant is responsible is not unreasonable,” he concluded. “I decline to grant the injunction.”

Photo by Haris Artemis

The government has continued to challenge Brian Haw’s 24/7 protest.  In 2006, after various appeals, the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act was applied and, in a pre-dawn raid costing £27,000, Brian Haw’s posters and banners were forcibly removed. He was later allowed to return with a much smaller site and in 2007, he was given limited permission to use a megaphone (the only person allowed given this authority).

But many in the country view Brian Haw’s protest as praiseworthy having even called him a hero. In 2007, Britain’s Channel 4 awarded him the “Most Inspiring Political Figure” Award (view the award and Brian Haw’s acceptance speech).  In 2009, an article in The Times details his life giving insight to this 60 year old divorcee and father of seven.

The Protest Continues

Recently, on May 25th, 2010, Brian Haw was arrested again as police cleared the area in preparation for the Queen’s speech. Brian Haw’s protest began over 3,000 days ago. To follow Brian and get an extensive history of his protest, visit him online.

A biography of Lord Mason was published in 2008, which describes Lord Mason as follows: Now in his mid-eighties but still active on the Labour benches in the House of Lords, Lord Mason has had a glittering career in politics. He has had first-hand knowledge of all Prime Ministers from Atlee and Churchill to Blair (and Brown); and has had numerous meetings with royalty and world leaders.

A former mineworker and NUM-sponsored MP, Roy Mason was elected to  parliament in his late twenties, in 1953. In 1964 he was appointed as Minister of Power, the first of a series of high offices culminating in his most challenging role, that of Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, at the height of the Troubles. The forthright way that he approached this difficult job resulted in both praise and hatred from various combatants. He survived a number of assassination attempts and has had to live with the spectre of high personal security, even when out of office.

Mason was a central figure during the turmoil that engulfed the Labour Party during the late Seventies and early Eighties, often labelled as a Right Wing voice.

In the United States, understanding this issue requires an examination of the Bill of Rights as well as a larger historical context. The right of the people, peaceably to assemble in order to consult for the common good is a constitutional right protected by the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. [emphasis added]

Tracing this back, this right was also included in 1774 in the Declaration and Resolves of the First Continental Congress:

The inhabitants of the English colonies in North-America, by the immutable laws of nature, the principals of the English constitution, and the several charters or compacts, have the following rights: They have a right peaceably to assemble, consider their grievances, and petition the king: and that all prosecutions, prohibitory proclamations, and commitments for the same are illegal. (NCD 8 ) [emphasis added]

Going further back in history, the right to peaceable assembly is found in chapter 61 of the Magna Carta, written in 1215. And this history continues all the way back to the Athenians in ancient Greece, where the concept of gathering in public space and the role of a useful citizen centered on discussion and decision making for the sake of the public good. The strength of this conviction is conveyed in this famously classic statement about democracy made by the Athenian leader Pericles as part of a public funeral oration after a battle.

“Our public men have, besides politics, their private affairs to attend to, and our ordinary citizens, though occupied with the pursuits of industry, are still fair judges of public matters; for, unlike any other nation, regarding him who takes no part in these duties not as un-ambitious but as useless [emphasis added], we Athenians are able to judge at all events if we cannot originate, and, instead of looking on discussion as a stumbling-block in the way of action, we think it an indispensable preliminary to any wise action at all.” From the History of the Pelopennesian War (Book 2.34-46) by Thucydides.

This history conveys a longstanding relation among public assembly, political life and the city. It is reflected in the first amendment, which framed the right of assembly in relation to the right to petition the government. Additionally, public assembly was a significant part of 19th century American life in the form of public meetings and spontaneous parades. But the interpretation of the first amendment changed beginning in the end of the 19th century in several ways. (see below for links to The Neglected Right of Assembly by Tabitha Abu El-Haj for an extensive historical and legal analysis published in the 2009 UCLA Law Review).

The most important change occurred when the States’ high courts, beginning with the Massachusetts state Supreme Court, began affirming cities’ ordinances requiring permits and fees for public assembly. This abridgment of peaceable assembly marks a significant change from the culture in the 18th and 19th century, where citizens actively used streets, squares and parks for spontaneous parades, festivities and gatherings that were both political and social. These events took place as part of elections and holidays and launched “the politics of the street into the mainstream of American politics.” (Simon Newman, Parades and the Politics of the Street: Festive Culture in the Early American Republic, 1997, p. 192)

The ability to hold these events spontaneously and in public, without restriction except that they not disturb the peace, was central to their legal, political and social value. While some events were related to elections and holidays, others were assemblies as part of a variety of political viewpoints that sought to be heard. The absence of permit requirements empowered a diversity of gatherings that allowed people to fluidly shift from an assembly to a march or parade. This gave tremendous voice and agency to non-elected individuals to communicate their beliefs to society and congress, serving as an important component of the system of checks and balances that is the hallmark of representative democracy in the United States. Thus, “[a] decision to strike, a meeting’s outcome, or a festive gathering could move quickly from an assembly into a marching line that conveyed a message to coworkers, neighbors, and the city at large.” (Susan G. Davies, Parades and Power, Street Theater in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia, 1986, p. 33) . Reaching back into the forgotten beginning of peaceable assembly and what it meant, consider the voice of this gathering in Petersburg, Virginia:

“A 1786 gathering of citizens in Petersburg noted that ‘it is the indisputable right of Freemen to assemble at any time in a peaceable and orderly manner to discuss their public grievances, and if necessity shall require, to petition or remonstrate to their Rulers thereon.’” (Raymond C. Bailey, Popular Influence Upon Public Policy: Petitioning In Eighteenth-Century Virginia, p 23, 1979).

The question of safety and disturbing the peace during this time was handled by criminal law rather than civil law. Thus, an assembly had to have the likelihood of becoming a riot or it would have to actually become disorderly for it to be dispersed. The implementation of permits to control events is strident because it meant all assemblies were controlled before anything ever happened and even without indication that something might happen, rather than controlling only those assemblies that were proven to be disorderly.

On March 3, 1913, over 5,000 [women] suffragists paraded in Washington, D.C…. As the suffragists started down Pennsylvania Avenue, the crowd became abusive and started to close in, knocking the marchers around with hostility. With local police doing little to keep control, the cavalry was called in as 100 women were hospitalized. Many suffragists concluded that public protests might be the quickest route to universal franchise. (Wikipedia)

Head of March 3, 1913 suffrage parade, Washington, D.C.. Women suffragists marching on Pennsylvania Avenue; Capitol in background. George Grantham Bain Collection

On March 3, 1913, the day before Woodrow Wilson's inauguration, thousands of women paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., demanding their right to vote. Underwood & Underwood/Library of Congress. (quoted from Smithsonian.com)

As a result of these public, collective gatherings, the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.”

Another important change shifted the relation between assembly and the right of petition, which was of greater importance than the right of assembly until 1937 when in De Jonge v. Oregon the Supreme Court said, the right of assembly is:

[C]ognate to those of free speech and free press and is equally fundamental…. [It] is one that cannot be denied without violating those fundamental principles of liberty and justice which lie at the base of all civil and political institutions— principles which the Fourteenth Amendment embodies in the general terms of its due process clause…. The holding of meetings for peaceable political action cannot be proscribed. Those who assist in the conduct of such meetings cannot be branded as criminals on that score. The question . . . is not as to the auspices under which the meeting is held but as to its purposes; not as to the relation of the speakers, but whether their utterances transcend the bounds of the freedom of speech which the Constitution protects. (De Jonge v. Oregon, 299 U.S. 353, 364, 365 (1937). See also Herndon v. Lowry, 301 U.S. 242 (1937).) (excerpted from Supreme Justia’s website on the right of assembly.)

Finally, and of extreme importance, the right of assembly in the early-mid 20th century began to be folded into free speech and the public forum doctrine (the public forum doctrine developed out of a series of Supreme Court rulings and became the standard for governing assembly and free speech). Although it has not been argued to the court, this change is critical and contentious because there is a fundamental difference between these two protections that has been forgotten: free speech is about individual expression while assembly and the right to petition are about collective discussion and action. The right to assemble and petition the government by citizens who are not elected officials was the standard of democracy in the United States in the 19th century; in terms of the United States, it served as an important, check and balance on representative democracy that citizens could directly enact. It also resulted in parades, festivities and public meetings on streets and in parks, which were a significant element of the culture of the United States at the time.

Today, the evolution of law and public space has created a surprising context for peaceable or public assembly in relation to the availability of public space. Pedestrian accessible traffic islands in U.S. cities are the only place you can freely gather at any time without a fee or permit, as long as you adhere to certain guidelines. In discussions with Munger, Tolles and Olson (MTO), which provided Islands of LA with pro-bono legal advice on the use of traffic islands as public space instrumental to Island Law and the guidelines, the question arose as to whether even a benign community gathering such as a picnic in public space could be construed as a type of participation in political life particularly if it was in reference to the use of a space in relation to the public forum doctrine and the right of assembly. It is unknown how the high court would rule on this perspective but, with this in mind, Islands of LA has explored the use of traffic islands for activities such as an evening picnic discussion and stroll or a sound game that intertwine a discussion of these spaces for assembly with social interaction and small festivities.

Islands of LA will continue to research this complex legal and cultural history and revise this essay accordingly. Below is a short list of articles and related content about the right to peaceable assembly. For a listing of case rulings related to peaceable assembly, visit Islands Law.

• The Neglected Right of Assembly by Tabitha Abu El-Haj.  Two version: two page summary and the full 47 page essay published in 2009 the UCLA Law Review (pdf) This article considers changes in both our understanding of the constitutional right of peaceable assembly and our regulatory practices with respect to public assemblies. It shows that through the late nineteenth century the state could only interfere with gatherings that actually disturbed the public peace, whereas today the state typically regulates all public assemblies, including those that are both peaceful and not inconvenient, before they occur, through permit requirements. Through this regulatory shift, and judicial approval of it, the substance of the right of peaceable assembly was narrowed. The history recounted in this Article is significant because it provides insight into the democratic and social practices the right was intended to protect-insight that cautions against collapsing the collective right of assembly into the individual right of free expression. ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR.
• Right to Assemble by Lisa Bancuk provides an overview of the right to assemble and relates it to the philanthropy sector
• A Legal Analysis on the Rights of Assembly and Petition from FindLaw

A partial list from Wikipedia of Human Rights instruments where the concept of the right to peaceably assemble is protected includes:

• European Convention on Human Rights – Article 11
• International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights – Article 21
• India- Fundamental Rights in India
• Republic of Ireland – Guaranteed by Article 40.6.1 of the Constitution of Ireland
• Turkey
• Germany – Art. 8 GG
• Canada – S. 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms which forms part of the Constitution Act, 1982
• France – article 431-1 of the Nouveau Code Pénal
• Hong Kong Basic Law Section 27

Go to the event details for:
The Gardens of LACMA
(part of Fallen Fruit Presents EATLACMA)

Islands of LA has focused on the temporary use of traffic islands as a vehicle to consider the city as well as examine and engage with public space for gathering (peaceable assembly), speech and questions of individual agency. In the end of 2008, the law firm Munger, Tolles and Olson, which was providing Islands of LA with pro-bono legal advice, concluded that pedestrian accessible traffic islands are most likely traditional public fora and protected under the public forum doctrine for assembly and free speech (see Island Law). Since then the emphasis of Islands of LA has been on legal, temporary activities, which don’t require fees or permits, that can be done on these shrinky-dink piazzas.

In early 2008, in a collaboration with Fallen Fruit called Love Apples, Islands of LA began experimenting with the possibility of legally cultivating the unused portion of traffic islands with tomato plants without additional fees or permits as an exercise of what is the city and who creates it. The project reached a critical point when the City of Los Angeles, which had removed some of the plants, agreed to replant them together with Islands of LA and Fallen Fruit after a meeting at the Department of Public Works (DPW). Love Apples culminated with SALSA SALSA, a harvest festival for the citizens of Los Angeles where the public was invited to make and taste tomato salsas while listening and dancing to salsa music to celebrate public space.

In late 2009, Fallen Fruit invited Islands of LA to participate in the Gardens of LACMA (part of Fallen Fruit presents EATLACMA, curated exhibition 2010) and collaborate on a second chapter of Love Apples by planting tomato plants on traffic islands adjacent to LACMA. While this would require permission from the city, Islands of LA pursued the collaboration as an opportunity to expand the dialogue with the city and explore the limits of possibilities for the semi-permanent use of a traffic island to grow edibles.

In January 2010, Islands of LA met with the DPW to discuss doing a second version of Love Apples for The Gardens of LACMA. The DPW claimed tomatoes were an attractive nuisance and suggested planting root vegetables or leafy greens. Fallen Fruit invited Islands of LA to collaborate with another group and continue with the attempt as part of the exhibition.

Seeds are Sown for the Roots of Compromise

Beginning in late January, Islands of LA invited several artists (Karen Atkinson, John Burtle and Owen Driggs) to collaborate on the possibility of planting roots vegetables on the traffic island. After an initial attempt to frame a project around democracy, we settled on the title Roots of Compromise, focusing on compromise and the institutional process for planting a radish garden on a traffic island. Working together, we enacted the possibility of planting the traffic island at Curson and Wilshire Blvd, in walking distance from LACMA, with a radish garden. This involved meetings with LACMA, councilmember Tom LeBonge’s office, a neighborhood assessment group that maintains various parkways and traffic islands in the area, and communication with the Bureau of Street Services, part of the Los Angeles Department of Public Works.

In late June it became clear that, for Islands of LA, planting would not be possible because of insurance issues. Roots of Compromise also had concerns. As a result, we created a constructive response in the form of a distributed garden, a mobile traffic island maquette and related content including a forthcoming website and the radish island image. Additionally, the  questions and issues of compromise and public produce that have surfaced through this experience and related research have opened an exciting landscape of inquiry. Roots of Compromise plans to extend its exploration and investigation into these areas becoming a standalone project, since these questions are beyond the context of Islands of LA’s focus. Islands of LA and Roots of Compromise will continue working together in relation to attempts to plant the radish garden and for questions of public space and the city in connection to traffic islands. Join us on June 27th from 5-8pm as Islands of LA presents Roots of Compromise, one of several artist garden projects for The Gardens of LACMA (event details).

To follow the continuing story of legal public planting and the distributed garden, including radish recipes and rad(ish) tales, visit Roots of Compromise.

Conclusions

Interpreting the landscape and history of planting on a traffic island based on experiences with Love Apples and Roots of Compromise, Islands of LA concludes that there are, in general, three potential routes to pursue the legal and sustainable cultivation of root vegetables on pedestrian accessible traffic islands:

• Bureau of Engineering (BOE): obtain a permit for temporary use, which requires architectural drawings, insurance and various other elements.
• Adopt-A-Median program (Office of Community Beautification): this would avoid the costly and nuanced permit process and insurance would be covered through the city but it is unknown if this route is viable since the adopt-a-median program has always been for beautification and not for cultivation. Islands of LA is currently investigating this option.
• Land lease: negotiate with the city for a short term lease of a suitable traffic island, analogous to Los Angeles Community Gardens’ approach. This has never been done with the Bureau of Street Services, the division of the Department of Public Works that oversees traffic islands, and they have indicated they are unlikely to consider this option.
• Local Assessment District (AD): some traffic islands are maintained by local groups that have contracted with the city and set up and AD. This involves paying additional fees and working with the city and a landscape contractor for the beautification and maintenance of the island and parkways under contract. This route, which is what we attempted to pursue, first requires the approval of the local AD. Additionally, the city and, most likely the AD, will require individuals in charge of the project to purchase general liability insurance in excess of $1million and indemnify the city and the AD for the duration of the time the planting is on the space, covering all contingencies.

Based on these experiences since 2008, Islands of LA believes a traffic island would need to be sufficiently large, pedestrian accessible and have the soil recurringly amended or tested for it to be a suitable location to cultivate food. Testing of produce is also required to determine if there are any safety issues. This testing would need to take into account the widely varying degrees of contact with vehicular exhaust on traffic islands but certainly there are some islands due to size and/or location where exhaust is unlikely to be an issue. Additionally, there is the likelihood that individual participants would need to consider island insurance issues, or work through the adopt-a-median program or find another alternative. For example, a community in South Los Angeles is working on a large Vermont median project with initial proposals including a community garden. In this respect, it raises the question of why try to plant on a traffic island as opposed to other urban land? Islands of LA believes there are three reasons.

First, it enacts a process that experiments with the question of what is the city and who creates it and, moreover, explores the impact that this has on the unique urban and legal context of traffic islands. Second, because traffic islands are pockets of underutilized land available throughout many cities, which may have some use for small scale, local gardening of edibles. Third, because it would make these overlooked spaces more utilized by constituents of a city. But, this socio-agricultural approach needs to considered in relation to the urban, political and socio-legal context of traffic islands as unique spaces for gathering and peaceable assembly, without fees or permits, at anytime as well as spaces with varying histories and usages. To this extent, Islands of LA believes that traffic islands which have limited capacity for gathering and speech or where the cultivation would either support or, at minimum, not constrict this remarkably absurd yet historically and globally significant context of traffic islands should be pursued.

The process of negotiation with the various institutions has, therefore, reaffirmed Islands of LA’s focus on (1) examining and archiving traffic island usage from a variety of perspectives such as law, urbanism and culture, to understand their context in the built-environment world-wide and what this says about about space, citizens and the city; and (2) investigating and engaging in the legal use of pedestrian accessible traffic islands for temporary activities such as peaceable assembly that utilize these specks of city in a sea of urbanization given their unique urban and legal context.

In the future, Islands of LA will continue to consider and support semi-permanent or permanent projects on traffic islands to the extent that they enable the rich and complex context of the traffic island as shrinky-dink piazzas or fragments of publicly owned land that can foster meaningful discussion and interaction in public beyond the typical usage of public space for transportation, recreation and shopping.

Join the celebrations for The Gardens of LACMA

(part of Fallen Fruit Presents EATLACMA, curated exhibition 2010)

Joins us from 5-8 for a guerrilla-style picnic near LACMA’s amphitheater to celebrate and meet new friends. BYOP (picnic) or you can purchase food in the cafe. Picnic blankets and acoustic musical instruments are welcome for the after-picnic in the park. Don’t forget to check out the various artist gardens including Roots of Compromise. This is all part of EATLACMA, a year-long investigation into food, art, culture and politics by Fallen Fruit.

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1. View traffic islands as available space (constructive, non-confrontational usage): this approach or methodology for Islands of LA began from its inception and is at its genetic or conceptual core. Prior to beginning the project, an essay by Margaret Crawford called Contesting the Public Realm was found online.  The article is a feminist critique is a response to the “architectural ‘narrative of loss of public’ space lamenting the loss of public space, [and] argues that urban residents are constantly redefining the public sphere through their lived experience.”

Only the first page was available but the core idea was impressionable. It cast a new perspective on the dominant idea that we are loosing our public spaces to private interests (including shopping malls and large scale private sports stadiums), and presented an alternative view by considering the past and how those normally excluded used and constituted public space.For example, the public spaces we long for in the past were highly restrictive. Women and minorities couldn’t participate. Instead, they went elsewhere to fields or kitchens to gather and interact.

From this perspective, she asked, who creates the city? Is it planners, architects, city officials, etc or the everyday people who use the space. She looked at the city landscape from this perspective and found public spaces field with numerous examples of public life such as “outlaw entrepreneurs.”

Islands of LA interpreted this to establish an approach to the use of traffic island as available options and to engage in the use in a constructive and functional, non-confrontational manner. In the face of what seems overwhelming circumstances, the suggestion is to find an approach to the city and the use and availability of public space that emphasizes use, the absence of permission or fees and is non-confrontational.  Islands of LA took this to heart and decide to view and approach traffic islands as available public space.

This approach impacted and continues to be at the core of Islands of LAs usage and investigation of traffic islands. It informed a belief in temporary and ethical, non-damaging use of these spaces. For example, signs where installed in a manner that created no temporary or permanent damage to public property and right-of-way was never disturbed. Additionally, there was an examination of what these spaces are and who uses them rather than an attempt to usurp or colonize them.

The question of searching for available space in a non-confrontational manner, particularly in relation to democracy, raises important issues that political theorists have begun to grapple with. Society and, in particular democracy, are marked by psychology, conflict and emotion. Islands of LA has begun to investigate theories of agonistic democracy that attempt to integrate and account for psychology and conflict in a constructive manner. Agonism is “a political theory which emphasizes the potentially positive aspects of certain (but not all) forms of political conflict. It accepts a permanent place for such conflict, but seeks to show how we might accept and channel this positively. For this reason, agonists are especially concerned to intervene in debates about democracy. The tradition is also referred to as agonism. ” (see Wikipedia on Agonism) Moreover, consider the essay, Deliberative or Agonistic Democracy by Chantale Mouffe, which attempts to consider the “crucial role played by ‘passions’ and collective forms of identifications in the field of politics….[and that] democratic theory needs to acknowledge the ineradicability of antagonism and the impossibility of achieving a fully inclusive rational consensus.”

2. Gathering in public without a fee for discussion and cultural interchange or community interaction: a second core value is the desire to gather in publicly owned public space without a fee to interact with other people and foster discussion and community, face-to-face interaction. Thus, traffic islands were seen as places to gather, however absurd this initially appeared.

3. Legal or lawful use of traffic islands: this value grow out of experiences in the first year of the project when the law firm Munger, Tolles and Olson agreed to provide Islands of LA with pro-bono constitutional advice about the use of traffic islands as public space for gathering. In the course of this relationship, MTO conclude that traffic islands are most likely traditional public fora protected under the First Amendment of the U.S. and California constitutions. Given this unique and highly important legal analysis, which dovetailed with it’s already established core values, Islands of LA focused on the legal use of traffic islands as public space for gathering including nuanced interpretations of the law to foster dialog abut questions of public space and support the identification and use of traffic islands as public space for gathering. This helped established Island Law, which has been tested in encounters with law enforcement that affirmed the safe and legal use of traffic islands for gathering including this dinner event. Recently, Islands of LA has begun a deeper investigation into the constitutional issue of peaceable assembly.

These are the primary core values or princples of Islands of LA. There are also various secondary principles which include the following:

• Communities are fragmented and dynamic: rather than singular or static. The ethical use of space is not based on who owns the space or whether someone is an “insider” or “outsider” but on how they interact with the space and its surrounding landscape, people and history. This perspective came from Miwon Kwon’s One Place After Another

• Integrated or transdisciplinary: analysis of these spaces based on the topic rather than a particular discipline. Thus, the project has been informed and integrates a variety of perspectives such as law, urbanism, political theory, cultural theory, psychology and art.

• Archiving and mapping: the collection and documentation of the use of traffic islands supports a complex understanding of the space and informs how these spaces can be understood and utilized. This is enabled through the website and the functional map that provides information and direction to locations for anybody’s use. The archiving also has the important value of conveying the history of these spaces, which supports the Island Law and the legal analysis by MTO that, while it is an open question of the law, traffic islands are most likely Tradtional Public Fora.

That was the meeting place.

Marlowe Brian West

A few hundred yards up Sunset, on the road to the Valley, there’s an island on Laurel Canyon boulevard. It’s just in front of the Canyon Country Store. On its back, still stands the house where Jim Morrison used to live when the Canyon was the place to be if you were a cool musician in the sixties.

It is exactly at that time that this triangular island raised to prominence as the place to see and be seen in Los Angeles.

The full story is recollected by Michael Walker in his 2006 book Laurel Canyon – The Inside Story of Rock n’Roll’s Legendary Neighborhood.

“It was the custom in those fading days of the ’60s for the canyon’s freaks to gather across from the Canyon Store on a triangular concrete traffic island formed by the intersection of Kirkwood Drive and Laurel Canyon Boulevard.”

Quite interestingly, writing in pre-Islands of LA days, Walker goes on noting that “this was a strange choice, if for no other reason than that the traffic noise must have been deafening and that in an area overrun with glades, swales, culverts, stands of eucalyptus, and ridgelines with Olympian views to the ocean, metropolis and mountains, why gather on a slab of cruel, unshaded concrete, poisoned by auto emissions and the constant threat of being mowed down by a Microbus?”

The answer he suggests for this question casts a light on the potential use of such peculiar public spaces in LA, especially in secluded residential neighborhoods.

“The answer was that it was a way to see and be seen in a place where hiding out was turning into an art. The Kirkwood-Laurel Canyon intersection was the L.A. equivalent of Haight and Ashbury streets, a stronghold from which to proclaim to the straight world roaring by on their way to and from the Valley: Behold the hippie.”

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Written by Andrea Veglia, co-founder of architecture and urban design firm PAT in Torino, Italy. Andrea served ten years as architecture editor of Label Magazine, which he co-founded in 1997, and has written articles for Label, Il Giornale dell’Architettura, deArchitect, and other publications.