Artists Call to Action: Part 2
In Part I (12/12/24) of our ongoing blog series, “ARTISTS CALL TO ACTION”, we highlighted the necessity of artists coming together in this moment of threat to humanity, justice, climate, democracy and compassion. In Part II we focus on the essential building blocks that we, as artists, must create to combat this threat...
Resistance
Donald Trump took the Presidential Oath of Office on January 20, 2025. As we approach the 100th day of his second term, on April 30th, two things have become abundantly clear: (1) the escalation in the execution of his right wing agenda and (2) the damaging effect of it. His systematic attacks on institutions – government, academic and legal – as well as whole swaths of society – immigrants, trans people, muslims – and even ideas (DEI, “wokeness”) have been executed with the intent to shock and immobilize any resistance. We are also now viscerally aware of the dangerous outcome of the political divide. Within the arts, this has manifested through high visibility firings at the Kennedy Center and Smithsonian, as well as his dictatorial self-appointment and Executive Order “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” (read ‘erasure of black and brown people’). His nativist trade war has led to global economic instability. Historically, with few exceptions, due to the short reporting periods in a capitalist economy, almost every recession has come in the third quarter of October. After all the triggering event of the Great Depression came with the stock market crash of October 29, 1929. Given recent events, it is certainly possible that this 20th century event will repeat itself in 2025.
Coalition
If the problem is in part due to political division, isn’t the response an energetic focus on creating solidarity? Building a coalition? It’s simple math: division subtracts from the whole. Coalition adds to the whole. What can we do as artists to build a coalition?
As artists we have historically siloed. While it is true that the words “starving” and “artist” go together like white rice, how many artists simultaneously dream of “making it”? While we are notoriously generous in our elevation of community-based art and in our commitment to themes of social justice, how many of us also secretly covet the solo gallery exhibition, the museum retrospective, the high bid at the collectors auction, the bestselling book, platinum record or blockbuster film?
What would happen if we instead focused our energy on building coalition with our most natural partners? If we understand and define the many hours we devote to our art legitimately as labor, then isn’t our natural partner legitimately Labor? Yet not since the 1930s have artists been an integral part of worker movement(s). This, we believe, is a mistake. After all, collaboration in the 1930s helped create an entire NEW DEAL. The same New Deal that is now being systematically attacked and dismantled. With all the working person protections we expect like social security, general financial relief, Medicare, student loans, unemployment insurance, etc.
If the problem of political division today is in part one of “messaging”, specifically, the success of right-wing messaging, then shouldn’t the solution to this problem include a writer? A poet? Who better to craft a viable truth-based alternative message than an artist? Musician? Filmmaker? On two mornings last September, artist Maria Magdalena Campos Pons marshaled New Yorkers across the economic divide to draw attention to the inequity in resources devoted to rich and poor communities in her “Procession of Angels for Radical Love and Unity”. How much more media attention could hypothetically be attracted if such out-of-the-box creativity were attached to the next Protest against Predatory Real Estate Practices after the fires in Los Angeles, or a National Boycott against Teslas or a General Labor Strike? How much more difficult to refute the message of LOVE and inclusion when an artist has roots in/and shared responsibility with/the community of organizers and labor?
Life experience teaches us that the only true control we can individually exercise is over the self. In a relationship between two individuals, each person has direct power over their own transformation, and only through the resultant changes made to the self, can one then in-directly affect, modify or change the behavior within the other. This holds true no matter how far we scale up the example, including onto a model that pairs artists collectively with the broad base of human society.
The single most important thing we can do at this moment is to build solidarity. Solid bridges of mathematical addition, between communities (all of them) + labor + collective care + faith-based communities + art. Universal bridges of inclusion, without exceptions.
If the triggering event of the Great Depression came with the stock market crash of October 1929, then let’s be prepared as artists to meet the moment if it repeats in October 2025. Let’s focus our collective energy on building bridges of coalition. The mythical phoenix also crashes to earth in its recurring cycle. And out of its ashes something new and, yes, even better emerges.
In Part III of “ARTISTS CALL TO ACTION” we will share details and specific steps artists can take to build solidarity across historic barriers…