Why Should Delaware Care?
The First Amendment protects the right to free speech, but a city-hosted open mic event has raised concerns among community members after an email from Mayor John Carney’s office asked participants to avoid discussing two specific minority groups.
A backlash emerged against Wilmington Mayor John Carney last week after his administration directed artists performing at a city-sanctioned open mic to not talk about homelessness or LGBTQ issues.
Hours before the Thursday event, which the city sponsored at The Queen music hall, the mayor’s special assistant sent an email to performers announcing restrictions on what they could discuss.
“Please be advised that we ask each act to stay away from subject matter around homelessness and the LGBTQ community. Other than that, please feel free to express yourselves!” special assistant Ashley Christopher said in the email
Over the 24 hours following the email, several individuals and organizations — including the American Civil Liberties Union of Delaware, Delaware Democratic Socialists of America, and Food Not Bombs — made statements claiming the directive amounted to censorship and could violate the First Amendment.
“When the city undertakes sponsoring an event — especially a forum marketed as an ‘Open Mic’ — it must take great pains to ensure that any guidelines produced adhere to its commitments to the First Amendment,” ACLU executive director, Mike Brickner, said in an open letter to Carney.
During the event, someone had also posted flyers outside of The Queen that included Christopher’s email, along with the words “Public Notice” and a claim that the city was demanding that artists avoid topics that “might upset” Carney.
In response to the backlash, the city posted a statement to social media on Friday, saying the intention of the email was to ask participants to “avoid jokes made at the expense of communities that were recently the subject of negative attention.”
When asked why the city did not specify that in the original email, and why homelessness and the LGBTQ+ community were singled out specifically, Carney’s spokeswoman Caroline Klinger said again that those groups had been “subject to negative attention in recent weeks.”
“The intention behind this directive was only to ensure that no one felt singled out, unwelcome, or disrespected at a city-sponsored event. We will ensure that this goal is clearer in future communications,” Klinger said.
Klinger did not respond to a question of why the city believed it was appropriate to tell performers what they can or cannot discuss at a public event.
The incident came just weeks after Carney faced sharp criticism over his policies around homelessness, and particularly a decision to move residents of a city-sanctioned encampment out of their tents and into government-issued ones.
On Friday, some of the same critics responded to the Carney administration’s public statement about the open-mic controversy.
Food Not Bombs, an organization that supports the unhoused, characterized the statement as the mayor’s office “trying to save face.”
“Otherwise they would have said don’t discriminate against any groups,” the organization said in a statement to Spotlight Delaware.
Shyanne Miller, a city housing advocate, told the mayor on Facebook to “just stop. You want to censor people. Own up to it and do better.”
Another activist, Jea Street Jr., whose Facebook post about Christopher’s original email drew more than a hundred comments, was more charitable. In a subsequent post, he said he might have “misunderstood what the city was attempting to communicate.”
Even current and former politicians weighed in. Former Christina school board member Shannon Troncoso, who represented Wilmington, noted that the city email included the phrase, “Please be advised,” which she said reads like a directive and could “raise real First Amendment concerns,” among other questions.
City Councilwoman Shané Darby replied to Troncoso’s post, stating that governments shouldn’t host these types of events. She also claiming that Carney “is so disconnected and out of touch with (the) community.”
What led up to this?
Following Klinger’s initial response, Spotlight Delaware again asked for the particular reasons the city singled out homeless and LGBTQ+ communities in the email.
In response, Klinger said comedy sets often draw from current events, and noted that officials were concerned performers might joke about homelessness, or target LGBTQ+ people amid what she described as “a growing tendency for media personalities across the country to poke fun at LGBTQ+ individuals.”
Homelessness has been a hot topic after the Carney administration created a city-sanctioned encampment at Christina Park last year, which sits in the East Side community.
The city’s most recent plan to reorganize the camp by pushing park residents to stay inside of city-owned tents within a grid system sparked criticism from housing advocates and from unhoused individuals who feared the changes could threaten their property and disrupt the community.
State legislators are also debating the issue with a bill to strengthen protections for the homeless, which has sparked calls from Republicans and real estate advocacy groups, who said it would hurt small businesses and make local governments the target of costly civil suits.
While homelessness has been a topic of debate, one performer at The Queen’s open mic said the city directive wasn’t necessary. And he said it caused confusion because it had not appeared in original sign-up materials.
“I think at the end of the day, it really would have just been nice to get up there and not have to think about this,” said the performer, Brian Piccolomini.
Spotlight Delaware also spoke with an employee at The Queen, who requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation. The employee said they were “deeply disturbed” by the email sent by Christopher.
“There was no communication to my knowledge and to other people’s knowledge in the staff about anything related to that email at all, and they would not have gotten approved by the venue for sure,” the employee said.
