Freedom blasters: a Chicago alderman takes on property rights and free speech.

• Author: Balko, Radley
• Position: Artifact - Jim Balcer - Brief article

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IN MAY, art festival organizer Ed Marszewski asked the Chicago painter Gabriel Villa to paint a mural on a building owned by Marszewski's mother. The mural depicted three Chicago police surveillance cameras, one embossed with a skull, one with a crucifix, and one with a dead deer. Although the city requires no permit for murals on private property, Alderman Jim Balcer--responding, he claimed, to "three or four" citizen complaints-had the city's Graffiti Blasters bureau paint over the art without bothering to consult the property owner.

Balcer defended his actions in an interview with the Chicago SunTimes, insisting that the mural was a "threat to the community" and that "everything in it was death." Balcer added that the mural may have indicated gang activity, although he couldn't cite anything specific in the images...