Millions of people enjoy unfettered access to public spaces in NYC a year. You can often walk the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges anytime, 24 hours a day and never see a cop. You are completely free to drive both of them, checkpoint-free, even.
There are protocols for art installations in the parks and there are innumerable private art spaces in NYC. But, barring, you know, scaling the Brooklyn Bridge towers and removing city property, there is plenty of room to make your case in the parks if it doesn't encroach on others.
> You can often walk the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges anytime, 24 hours a day and never see a cop.
This is how it should be, but that is hardly the reaction of the media and security agencies.
The suitable reaction should be that it was an anomaly, a harmless prank. Not something society condones - since it was not done in a sanctioned park - but not something that should cause a hysteria because every public space doesn't have 100% security.
Paranoia feeds into paranoia. These security systems are never minimizing in size, only expanding due to reactionary policy.
This is the type of thing that squeezes both freedom and creativity from society, two things that are heavily intertwined and interdependent.
There are protocols for art installations in the parks and there are innumerable private art spaces in NYC. But, barring, you know, scaling the Brooklyn Bridge towers and removing city property, there is plenty of room to make your case in the parks if it doesn't encroach on others.