Several Chicago comedy folks are planning to attend a protest rally tomorrow morning to fight the promoters' ordinance we wrote about yesterday. You know, the one that could cripple Chicago's nightlife by requiring huge licensing fees and insurance requirements for promoters of even the tiniest of music, theater, and comedy shows?

Tomorrow, Wednesday, May 14th at 9:00 a.m. at 121 N. Lasalle, join your fellow supporters of Chicago's creative culture and let it be known you oppose this potentially crippling ordinance. The vote is scheduled to take place at 10:00 a.m. so be there to make some civilly disobedient noise and support culture and creativity in Chicago.

Check out 47th Ward Alderman Eugene Schulter's interview on Chicago Public Radio's 848 this morning, illustrating his amazing way of being armed with lots of information and yet missing the point entirely.

EDIT: The minute this post went live, we got word that the ordinance has been tabled until it can be refined for further review. Hooray!

'Chairman Schulter has decided not to report the event promoter ordinance out of his Licensing and Consumer Protection Committee. In other words, it will not be on the City Council agenda tomorrow and there will not be a vote on the bill. We are not sure when it will come out of Committee for a vote, but we hope that Chairman Schulter will wait
until he and the City have engaged the music community publicly and meaningfully so their concerns can be heard and hopefully incorporated into the eventual law. We are pleased that Chairman Schulter has responded to community concerns here, and we look forward to working with him, members of the Committee, DBA staff and other music community stakeholders to come up with a workable version of the ordinance. CMC is committed to working with the music community to responsibly engage the City in this important effort.'"