Barry and I were a part of a large - but very polite and stunningly geeky - crowd of, eventually, one to two thousand people gathered today (Jan. 18) in Midtown.

We were outside of the Manhattan offices of senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Charles Schumer. Both are co-sponsors of the latest egregious Congressional attack on the Internet, the tech industry generally, and, in its ultimate implications, the basic right of free speech: It's a Senate bill called the Protect Intellectual Property Act, or PIPA. The House has its own version, called the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA,.

Both bills were actually written by Hollywood and the recording industry, which together have thrown millions at a Congress whose members have admited that the voters have not actually asked for their personal and quite extraordinary ministrations in this area of critical national interest. If the two houses were to agree on its terms and a bill were signed into law it would essentially mean the corporate privatization of the Internet.

The protest had been called by New York Tech Meetup, a group founded in 2004 to represent professionals from all parts of the technology industry in the New York community. Along with many other sites, Wikipedia and New York Tech Meetup went black today to protest SOPA/PIPA, but in a very quick search I found 1stwebdesigner, only one of many useful sites able to provide information useful especially to those less than completely technically fluent.

Why were we all there this afternoon?

Those of us who use the Internet know the difference between fair use and piracy, but an unrepresenative government owned exclusively by the super rich and the wealthiest corporations - including legacy media - a government which can't figure out how to keep people from being thrown out of their homes, a government which worships secrecy while it engages in torture, wars of aggression, and political assassination, which enshrines gun ownership as something of a Constitutional sacrament while erasing habeas corpus, due process, the rights of assembly and free speech, and prohibitions against indefinite detention without trial, is a government which absolutely cannot be trusted to make the right call if it gains the powers contemplated by SOPA and PIPA.

I'm always excited to see theatrical or dramatic elements introduced into political activism, and sine this was a pretty staid crowd, I was particularly delighted when a man stepped into the crowd near where we were standing listening to the scheduled speakers, unwrap a large stash of blank all-black cardboard sheets, and then quickly distribute them to strangers. Most of them accepted their assigned role in representing conceptually an internet blacked-out by government censorship. Others immediately picked up on the image of blank screens they had formed and whipped out their cameras to capture it. The action's creative director appears in the center of this picture.

Patti Smith performing for the one percent at the Chelsea Wednesday night

UPDATE: Citing the wishes of the Chelsea's tenants, Patti Smith cancelled Thursday night's concert, to which they had been invited. Her statement appears on her web site. Score another one for the 99%.

The Chelsea Hotel seems to be attracting more tourists than ever these days; do they know that what they have come to photograph is now a shell, that it has already been destroyed, in a process begun three and a half years ago?

We live almost directly across the street from it, and I have passed by its front doors almost every day for 25 years. I also have wonderful memories of both strangers and friends, and of the provocations of both visual and performance art projects which could only have come out of this amazing community.

I can't bring myself to look inside the lobby these days. I stopped going in when the bouncers appeared, and later the new owners removed all traces of the life with which the building had been so richly endowed as they tossed out the odd furniture and the amazing collection of art, both accumulated over many decades. Adding insult to injury, the walls were then essentially - and revealingly - whitewashed.

Those of us who remember the Chelsea Hotel when it was still a vibrant cultural hive have been made both saddened and angered by the unfolding story of its demise, driven by an unfettered greed absent during the 70 years it was under the management of the Bard family.

I admit I don't understand much of what is happening inside 222 West 23rd Street, and I don't think many people do. More to the point, I can't believe that so little is known about the owners' plans for such an important landmark and once-living monument, if only because of its importance as real estate in a real estate-obsessed city. Permits have to be applied for - and granted (or not) - and I would think the media would be on top of any developments in the story, even if they turned out to be rumors.

All of this brings me to the latest development in the saga of the beautiful 127-year-old relic of brick, iron, and passion: A Patti Smith concert is to be held tonight inside the old hotel ballroom, a concert which may or may not be sponsored by the Chetrit Group, the new corporate owners. The New York Times finds the response to the announcement newsworthy, but doesn't add much light to the larger story. The newspaper neglected to mention that last night Smith was at the hotel to play what the Village Voice wrote "appears to have been a new-hotel-management-planned event to which tenants were not invited, but the architect and others were".

This is a story which wouldn't exist at all if it weren't for the fact that a number of people still live in the 12-story landmark, and obviously have a more personal stake in its future than those who merely love it; these people have paid for their attachment to the Chelsea, and they continue to do so. It is their home, but they also stewards of its heritage, on behalf of all of us. We should do them the honor of respecting their concerns and join them in asking for answers to questions apparently not being asked anywhere else.

I was moved, in coming up with a title to this post, by the indispensable in-house Chelsea Hotel blog, "Living with Legends", published by our friend Ed Hamilton. We want to see Ed, his blog, and the Chelsea thrive; our hope is for continuing living legends, not just ghosts.

"Jeremiah's Vanishing New York" and "Living with Legends" are asking friends of the real Chelsea to meet outside the hotel tonight at 8pm during the second, tenants' concert, to raise lit lighters, and recite the lyrics of Smith's song "People Have the Power":

[image by Maydersen via the Village Voice; lyrics from STLyrics.com]