THE COMING ASSAULT ON THE ARTS
Trump taking over the Kennedy Center foreshadows the battle
Now that the Super Bowl posting has passed, let's start talking about things that will actually impact our lives. If you're in the arts Trump's takeover of the Kennedy Center foreshadows upcoming moves re PBS, NPR and NEA. Within the year there will likely be a Trump believer running them with the current staff either mostly replaced and or decimated. Funding for anything that the right objects to will also disappear. So if there's a dance company, museum, theater group or any such organization you frequent, it's time to adopt them via fund raising, volunteering or just attending their events. They'll need patrons if they're gonna survive the coming purge. Book bans will increase. So will the pressure on libraries to remove texts on the local level. So being proactive in knowing what's happening at school and public libraries will be important. Using the stick of removing federal money Trump and his minions will be trying to rewire the arts landscape and, just as the right did in politics, a lot of this work will be done on the local level. Wealthy commercial artists will be somewhat isolated, at least initially, but the tech bros who now control the distribution of entertainment are in Trump's pocket and can put their thumb on the scale at any time. I am fundamentally an optimist, so i believe we collectively will survive. But the road ahead is rocky. I'm currently working on a documentary and a book, both dealing with different aspects of black history. The marketplace will be different by the time they're released in a few years. Who knows if NPR will exist to help promote them or libraries in many cities with stock the book? But that won't stop me from working and the current environment shouldn't stop any artists from pushing ahead with even the most personal work. Anything that promotes humanity and respect for others spits in the face of the Trump agenda of cruelty and white washing history. (On a related note folks need to read up on the SAVE Act that's recently been introduced by some GOP Congress people. Its a national voter suppression law that would truly be the erasure of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.)