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Closing Of UCIMC Performance Space |
Current rating: 0 |
by Charles Smith
Email: charlessmithpiano (nospam) sbcglobal.net (unverified!)
Address: 1710 West 106th Street, Chicago, Illinois 60643 |
27 Oct 2003
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Speculation on why the UCIMC performance space was closed
indefinitely by members of the Urbana Fire Department |
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>
> The closing of the performance space at the Urbana
> IMC
> 3 or 4 months
> ago was probably for one reason---to stop the
> flourshing of
> peace-related dissent. This relates definitely to
> Ashcroft and his denuding of some national civil
> liberties
> and national constitutional freedoms after 9-11.
>
> I can only speculate that a few members of the
> Urbana Fire Dept., in the name of silencing peace-
> related dissent after the 9-11 attacks (probably,
> those particular firefighters loathe at such
> anarchists such as non-violent peace activists)
> targeted the
> Urbana IMC performance space without any reason to
> do
> so
> (there was no written notice from the Urbana Fire
> Dept. saying that they will be coming to inspect
> the place for fire code violations),
> and caused its indefinite closing.
>
> If you can remember the firefighter or firefighters
> from the Urbana Fire Dept. (or their badge numbers),
> who caused the IMC performance to indefinitely close
> in the first place, you
> can register a complaint or complaints to the Office
> of Professional Standards, if you can find it in
> downtown Urbana. The Fire Dept. people involved in
> this unfair closing should
> be either disciplined or fired.
>
> _______________________________________________ |
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Re: Closing Of UCIMC Performance Space |
by ML
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
27 Oct 2003
Modified: 09:19:26 AM |
While your concerns were shared by many of us at first, unfortunately they are just that, speculation. The clumsy way in which the affair was initially handled by the city was problematic and certainly added to the IMC's fear that the situation was designed to shut down our space, rather than deal with issues of safety. Similar inspections and shutdowns of political organizing space in other cities were (and continue to be), in fact, designed to suppress resistance to the policies of our current government, but we found that this was not the case here.
We had never tried to hide our use of the space and numerous city officials were cognizant of our usage of it without having previously raised the issues that the fire inspection found.
After reassessing the way the city went about things, they were very cooperative with the IMC in resolviing these issues to the best of each side's ability. The fire safety items noted in the initial inspection were quickly dealt with. I accompanied the fireman responsible for the original inspection on his re-inspection, which we passed to his satisfaction.
The IMC has been open since right after the initial inspection, with a maximum occupancy limit of 49 persons. We were recently granted a certificate of occupancy for how we currently use the space, which allows smaller gatherings and does not overly restrict what we can do in our more limited original space. What has kept the perfomance space closed were code issues discovered that had nothing to do with safety, such as a need for two, accessible bathrooms, in order to use the space as we had previously. Since we saw no reason to invest the amount of money required to deal with these peripheral issues (at least $20,000), we decided these funds would be better spent investing in our new building. Funds are currently being raised by our Capital Campaign and we hope to be in a new IMC by this time next year. |
