Sign this petition, if you haven’t already: http://savechicagoculture.org

City Council is proposing that all “event promoters” must be licensed. Unfortunately, this will also hit small theater companies, improv teams, musicians, poets, pretty much anyone who does not own their own venue. Seriously. Dumbest. Thing. Ever.

UPDATE 5/13: The ordinance has been tabled until more “research” can be done, presumably by Alderman Schulter, who was heading up the committee. My favorite part: Made aware of concerns in many corners of Chicago’s arts communities, Schulter asked DBA [The Department of Business Affairs] for more facts and figures about the alleged “problem venues” and “underground promoters” that the ordinance was designed to curtail. Some of those who attended the meeting said DBA had to admit that it had no hard information and that it has not formally studied the extent of the alleged problem that the law was crafted to address; they had only the anecdotal evidence of the single tragic incident at the E2 Nightclub five years ago.