Hip-hop fashion designer Marc Ecko has threatened to sue the city of Denver if it does not repeal or change its anti- graffiti ordinance within the next week, an attorney for Ecko said Sunday.
In response, Denver City Councilwoman Rosemary Rodriguez and a couple dozen angry residents and business owners held an afternoon news conference to blast Ecko and his attorney, David Lane, arguing that graffiti plagues their communities and that undermining the ordinance would worsen the situation. That news conference devolved into a series of heated exchanges between Rodriguez and her supporters and Lane.
“I’d like to see what kind of graffiti Mr. Ecko has on his house, on his property,” said Denver resident Alicia Ibarra.
Ecko is a former graffiti artist turned clothing and media magnate who founded New York-based Ecko Unlimited. He wants to put on a graffiti art festival in Denver, Lane said. His plan, Lane said, is to give kids large canvases and cans of spray paint so they can “express themselves artistically,” Lane wrote in a letter e-mailed to city leaders Saturday.
But there, Lane said, the plan runs afoul of a Denver ordinance that makes it illegal for juveniles to possess spray paint except under certain conditions. Lane said this is a violation of Ecko’s First Amendment rights, and he gave the City Council until April 17 to either change or repeal the ordinance or else face a lawsuit. Lane said there is no date for the proposed festival, but Ecko wants it to be soon.
One of the exemptions in the ordinance is if the juveniles have the permission of the owner of the property where they are. That would seem to exempt the festival from problems, but Lane said Ecko is worried kids who come to his event will be arrested and have to go through the judicial system to be exonerated.
Denver City Attorney Cole Finegan said the city would be “foolish” to prosecute kids who have exemptions from the ordinance. He, along with Rodriguez and her supporters, accused Ecko of trying to create controversy to boost sales, especially of Ecko’s recently released video game, which features an anti-authority tagger as its hero.
“In my opinion,” Rodriguez said, “his (threatened) lawsuit is frivolous and publicity- mongering. I think he’s going to use this issue in Denver to sell his stuff.”
Rodriguez and others fear that changing the ordinance or promoting legal graffiti would worsen the illegal-graffiti problem.
Mike Moore, who owns a mortgage business on South Federal Boulevard that he said was frequently tagged until he installed security cameras, said the line between legal and illegal needs to be made clear.
“I think the idea of holding a festival and promoting graffiti as an art is OK,” he said. “But it has to be promoted in a way so that people don’t start thinking they can go out and do this anywhere.”
Lane countered that Ecko does not support illegal graffiti. Lane said the city should work to catch illegal-graffiti offenders and leave artists alone.
“Marc Ecko is not seeking to have a festival of vandalism,” Lane said. “He’s seeking to have an art festival using spray paint.”
Staff writer John Ingold can be reached at 720-929-0898 or jingold@denverpost.com.
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