Announcing our 2024-2026 Strategic Plan!

A year ago, the USDAC team gathered for a strategic planning retreat. Over the course of several days we wrestled with deep questions, shared food and laughter, and walked away with a fresh mission and vision for our collective work.

We are so excited to share our reflections from that retreat– and the months that followed– in the form of our new strategic plan! You will recognize many themes from the first ten years of our programming, and you’ll also see that we are stretching our legs into new areas and sharpening our focus.

OUR NEW VISION STATEMENT

The U.S. Department of Arts and Culture contributes to the strength and vibrancy of the movement for collective liberation by resourcing and mobilizing cultural organizers and artists. 

As a people-led and people-centered arts and culture department, we merge organizing, political education, and performance to create a vibrant ecosystem that activates and harnesses spaces ripe for social, cultural and political change.

CENTERING ARTISTS IN OUR MOVEMENTS

We believe that artists and cultural organizers play a critical role in the movement for liberatory change. It is our belief that the movement for liberatory change will be more potent, powerful, and joyful when artists and cultural organizers are connected to and working in deep collaboration with movement organizations of all sizes and issue areas. We believe that by investing in artists and cultural organizers, we are contributing to a strong and vibrant movement ecosystem.

WHAT IS A CULTURAL ORGANIZER?

A cultural organizer utilizes a blend of strategic action and multidisciplinary creative practices to activate social change. They work to impact material change in people’s lives - politically, socially, ideologically and spiritually.

They are loyal to the connections they hold to people, community, land, and ancestry and see those connections as a strength. They actively center the people and communities who have been at the margins, while bridging themselves and others to a powerful vision of a liberated future.

STRATEGY AREAS

Our programs bridge the gaps between cultural organizers, artists, and social change movements through the following four strategies: 

  • Political Education for Artists and Cultural Organizers:

We support and sustain a vibrant movement for liberatory change by investing in the leadership development and training of artist-activists and cultural workers. 

  • Network Weaving:

We connect artists and cultural organizers to each other, and to movement organizations. Our programs create clear pathways for cultural organizers to connect, convene, and collaborate with each other and with movement organizations.

  • Policy Shift:

We aim to shift the material conditions that artists and cultural organizers are currently working within by using policy as a tool. We do this by advocating for policy changes that improve and expand access and resources for cultural organizers.

  • Play & Performance:

In the absence of a "real" federal department of Arts and Culture, we are “performing” the state, supporting the communities and work we'd want to see that agency support. We catalyze possibilities for new worlds, new systems, and new rituals through this play and performance.

Click for a link to the full strategic plan!


Sunsetting Honor Native Land

“Acknowledgment by itself is a small gesture. It becomes meaningful when coupled with authentic relationship and informed action. But this beginning can be an opening to greater public consciousness of Native sovereignty and cultural rights, a step toward equitable relationship and reconciliation.” (USDAC attribution)

With more than 45,000 downloads,the USDAC Honor Native Land (HNL) toolkit and accompanying materials have powerfully and purposefully amplified the practice of land acknowledgement—with significant impact across many sectors. From 2017 to the present, the HNL work contributed to a burgeoning field of solidarity, understanding, and decolonization. When authored in 2017, the HNL toolkit filled a void. Today, land acknowledgments are almost commonplace, and have shifted in ways we did not always anticipate. Our intention has always been to use acknowledgments as a starting place for much more significant and bold solidarity action. With gratitude and deep reflection, we are sunsetting our HNL programs. Numerous organizations exist to support the movement from acknowledgement to action and we now defer to them.

The USDAC trajectory with land acknowledgements began with non-Indigenous allies, at the encouragement of and with deep consultation from numerous Indigenous individuals and groups. Specifically, the USDAC convened Indigenous activists, artists and culture bearers on the forefront of many movements. This deepened and broadened our understanding and scope for land acknowledgements and the sphere of operation they should inhabit. Land acknowledgements are beyond statements, they have dimensions beyond geographic, academic, political, Indigenous and colonial realms. 

The USDAC is deeply committed to the shifts and potential impacts for those who are touched and reached through thoughtful land acknowledgements. As land acknowledgements become more commonplace, the impacts have become more complicated. We recognize ever changing landscapes require deliberate and informed ongoing action.  Because of these and other circumstances, we have made the thoughtful decision to sunset USDAC Honor Native Land programs. The toolkit and other resources will continue to exist, but It is time for others with a strong pulse on the spheres enveloping land acknowledgements and those better equipped and staffed, to proactively lead the charge. 

The foundation of the Honor Native Land campaign goes beyond naming the humans who inhabited and continue to steward the land. HNL is an assertion that we are all connected to the earth, the water, the air, the cosmos, and each other. Our destinies are intertwined in this moment of change. We join together, as collective liberators, promoting and creating change that honors all living beings. We lead with hearts, minds, and creativity, knowing that policies and governments will follow. The USDAC will always Honor Native Land, and the program we set on behalf of such. 

We remain grateful to the previous members of the USDAC team who created and evolved USDAC’s HNL work—Adam Horowitz, Amelia Winger-Bearskin, Arlene Goldbard, Gabrielle Uballez, and Jaclyn Roessel—and to the many partners and advisors who helped us forge and walk this path! With gratitude, we acknowledge and thank them. (Biographies below)

We encourage you to utilize these land acknowledgement resources, and always seek and contribute to liberation!!

Resources on Land Acknowledgement:

Deep gratitude to everyone who has downloaded and forwarded the toolkit and assisted with our vision and efforts. Particularly, we thank the following key contributors to the USDAC Honor Native Land efforts:

FAQ’s:

Why are you sunsetting your efforts?

Our dreams for HNL are being manifested by others and frankly, we do not have the manpower to take it to the levels and realms we envision. 

What are the USDAC dreams beyond Land Acknowledgements?

We envision broad understanding that land acknowledgements are central to understanding complicated histories of people and regions. We emphasize the necessity for including perceptions beyond land and people. The realms for these understandings include air, water, plants, animals, birds, spirit, memory, and more.

How can I help move land acknowledgements to new levels and realms?

Educate yourself and others about sovereignty, Indigenous rights, Land Back, and Indigenous reparations. Support these movements. Our resource list can assist with your connections. 

Who else should we connect with for Land Acknowledgment guidance?

Several great resources are listed and linked above, along with a few articles that will lend information about the changing landscape of land acknowledgments. 

Where are the people who used to lead this program?

They are still part of our valued network. We have put links to their websites in the thank you above. 

Are your resources still available for use?

Most definitely. We believe the work produced through this effort is valuable so the toolkit will remain available on our website. 


What can I do if I need more assistance than is offered in the toolkit?

For a donation to our non-profit, the USDAC team is available to consult with your organization. We can lend expert advice on how to craft your specific acknowledgement. Just ask!

How will you continue to prioritize Indigenous voices in your work?

The USDAC holds Indigenous rights as central to all social justice work. Our work is now focused on supporting and connecting cultural organizers to movement spaces. This means we honor, support, and include Indigenous expressions and actions.

Dispatches from Borikén and Providence: Shey Rivera Rios

Introduction: Shey Ri Acu Rivera Rios is a Puerto Rican multidisciplinary artist and community organizer based in Providence, RI. In this blog post, they introduce us to their practice and urge us to support the people in Puerto Rico who are experiencing the ramifications of Hurricane Fiona, and Hurricanes Maria and Irma from years prior. To learn more about their practice, view their presentation during our 2022 Fall Network Gathering here.

PHOTO CREDIT: CAT LAINE, PAINTED FOOT STUDIO

Tai karaya, hola a todes, hello everyone. 

I’m Shey Ri Acu Rivera Ríos, born and raised in the island of Boriken, and otherwise known as the settlement of Puerto Rico, land of Taino people and of AfroCaribbean resistance. 

And I live in Providence, RI, land of Narragansett and Wampanoag peoples, and a long lineage of Black leaders. 

I come from a land of mangoes and rainstorms, of wet soil, and warm seas. My people are warriors and healers. My people understand the power of joy in times of hardship. My people are proud. My people can knock down colonial governors and sustain movements of self determination across time, against hurricane winds, snapping skirts at the beat of drums under the canopies of the fiery red flamboyan trees. Today I am a person with a heart that is split between two geographies and has learned to call this abundance. 

I’m a multidisciplinary artist and community organizer. I’m a 2012 Intercultural Leadership Institute (ILI) alum. I use performance, visual art, and storytelling to imagine better futures for and with the communities I’m a part of. I am an independent artist and founder of Studio Loba, a storytelling lab that uses art to strengthen social causes. I’ve worked with many amazing organizations, including AS220, an arts and culture organization in Providence, First Peoples Fund in Lakota territory, and One Square World, - a climate justice org in Boston. And I’m the Co-Director of an abolitionist futures project called Moral Docs alongside co-director and arts facilitator Vatic Kuumba. 

My practice is informed by my experience in the arts, community development, and social practice. But most of all, it is informed by my family and growing up in rural Borikén, and the experience of colonization. I use whatever medium I can, to create stories to imagine decolonial possibilities. And I’ve been on a long journey that has led me in the path of using art and creative practice to impact policy. Whether it’s imagining abolitionist futures that invest in and center community care; or imagining a liberated future for Borikén where Black, and Indigenous,  women, and nonbinary folks are leading the way into new governance models; or writing poems of queer love. I’m here for the possibilities of being better together. 

I want to uplift the experience of the people of Borokén right now, at the 5th anniversary of the devastation of Hurricanes Maria and Irma, and the very recent trail of Hurricane Fiona. And the humanitarian crisis that reminds us how the climate crisis is connected to colonization and white supremacy. And uplifting the people on the ground in Borikén who have long been doing the work to shed light on the injustices and the problems, those who ground us in hope, and those who lead the way and take risks to engage us in bold reimaginings. 

This can only happen with intercultural and intersectional coalition building. It can only happen with truth and vulnerability and risk to walk in our truth and learn from others.  

The Art Worlds We Want: Solidarity Art Economies

Guest Blog by Nati Linares and Caroline Woolard

 

[USDAC Introduction: Last year, we launched A People’s WPA, a bold reimagining of labor. New Economy Coalition has been at the forefront of reimagining economic systems for artists. This is an excerpt from a piece written by art.coop’s Nati Linares and Caroline Woolard in 2021 for Nonprofit Quarterly. Read the entire piece. Through our blog, we are excited to continue to bring you reflections and provocations from our partners in the field.]

We are two mothers, listening, learning, in a pandemic, writing to you from the United States, on unceded Nipmuc, Podunk, Tunxis, Wangunk, and Sicoag land on the East Coast. Here—and likely where you are—artists and culture bearers are innovating models for liberation. We tuck in our babies, hold their small hands through the virus and tear gas, and continue the intergenerational work. We are Nati Linares and Caroline Woolard—a cultural organizer and an artist—and we believe that every cultural worker should be able to feed their children and pay their rent. We believe that culture is the key to reimagining the collective vision of what’s possible. As you read this, we invite you to sense the heartbeats that flow through it. This is one effort among many. This is an invitation to join a long process of transformation—together.

Recently, in an Anticapitalism for Artists workshop,1 musician Clara Takarabe said: “I have asked, as you have probably asked: Is there a place in this world for me? Today, I would reframe that question as: Is this the world we deserve?”2 Takarabe reminds us that together we can join and organize the worlds we deserve—in the arts and beyond. In fact, the people who have been most harmed by our current system of neoliberal and racial capitalism are creating community-controlled, hyperlocal economies that move us beyond capitalism. The systems that artists want are not only possible, they already exist—and they can be strengthened and cultivated with intention.

There are many examples. A leading Native artisan co-op in the country, Qualla Arts and Crafts, has been led by culture bearers since 1946.3 In Boston, a democratically managed investment fund, Boston Ujima Project, places Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) arts and cultural organizing at the heart of its work.4 A leading national community loan fund that invests in U.S. worker co-ops, The Working World, was started by artists.5 Artists in Belgium founded Smart, the co-op that gives 35,000 freelancers the benefits of full-time employees (including unemployment insurance).6 Smart’s model is now being piloted in the United States by the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives’ Guilded.7

Why should culture and economic innovation go together? Because, right now, we have a superstar system in which the winners take all and the rest are left with crumbs. Because, just like art, housing and dignified work are human rights. Because artists are the original gig workers. Because culture making and political organizing go hand in hand. Because we want a world in which everyone’s needs are met, so that everyone can participate in the remaking of culture and society. Because an artist living in a community land trust in New York City will have twenty-seven hours a week to make art, compared to an artist in market-priced housing who will have four hours a week for artmaking.8 Because we must repair centuries of injustice.

While practices of equitable and sustainable self-determination and community control are rooted in a myriad of ancestral and community norms, the term solidarity economy is relatively recent. The term emerged in Chile and France in the 1980s,9 gained popularity in Latin America in the 1990s as economía solidaria, and then spread globally as an interdependent movement after the first annual World Social Forum in Brazil, in 2001, which popularized the slogan “another world is possible.”10

The solidarity economy is now recognized internationally as a path to valuing people and the planet over profits and to uniting grassroots practices like lending circles, credit unions, worker cooperatives, and community land trusts to form a base of political power and transform our economy and world. Most people are aware of the discrete practices and models that comprise the solidarity economy, but do not know that there is a framework that holds these concepts together, or that these practices are supported holistically in other countries around the world.

The following are some examples of arts and culture groups and initiatives that are part of the solidarity economy in the United States. It is important to note that all networks and infrastructure in the solidarity economy—regardless of emphasis or not on arts and culture—aim to support artists and culture bearers.11

Read the entire piece for examples.

To support the solidarity economy with integrity in the United States and beyond, a slow process of relationship building between culture bearers, solidarity economy organizers, public sector workers, and arts and culture grantmakers must begin. Lasting impact will not be made if (1) solidarity economy becomes a buzzword, popular only for a short time, or (2) if newcomers with visibility are supported instead of community-based groups who have been doing this work for decades.

It’s clear that artists need a solidarity economy if we are to overcome our status as exploited workers. Likewise, the solidarity economy movement needs artists if it is to prevail. We believe that culture—visual arts, music, culinary arts, sports, video games, literature, theater, television, Web content, TikToks, and more—is the key to sparking the collective imagination of what’s actually possible when there is community control of our economies and resources. There have never been radical movements without radical artists and creators at the helm—so let’s get busy resisting, building, and creating.


Envisioning Black Liberation and Indigenous Sovereignty

IMG_5896.jpeg

By Amber Starks (aka Melanin Mvskoke)

 

“What is Black Liberation and Indigenous Sovereignty?” I ask myself this question regularly and have spent countless hours reading and digesting the works of scholars and academics, thought leaders and activists, community organizers and peers. Folks who do and live/have lived this work, who dream/have dreamt up technologies of resistance, and who have translated those ideas into research, books, opinion/think pieces, art, and community-led movement. 

It is in this question that I have developed my politics and have gained a greater understanding of what sovereignty and liberation are.  And it is by regularly returning to this question that I’ve found the boldness to speak to this idea of an authentic, sovereign Indigenous future and a fully realized, Black liberated future.  Not, however, as an authority on either subject but as a Black and Native person who is deeply invested in both of my communities.  As a willing participant in these movements of refusal.   Ultimately, it is my hope to contribute something genuine to the discourse and something tangible to the work that progresses us forward towards that which is actually possible.

Therefore, my present understanding of Black Liberation and Indigenous Sovereignty is grounded in the notion that white supremacy, settler colonialism, and racial capitalism must be interrogated and dismantled. That an authentic sovereign Indigenous future is rooted in the fundamental belief that Indigenous peoples (globally) have the inherent right to self-governance, self-determination,  and political and social autonomy. That the contemporary “Land Back” movement is an articulation of our absolute right to be in relation with the land and to steward it as in the days of our ancestors.  Where the land is set free from capitalism and commodification. Where it is no longer deemed private property as a means of delegitimizing Indigenous people’ relationship with it. A  sovereign Indigenous future is also one where our epistemologies and understandings of the  natural world are honored and respected as legitimate, scientific knowledge. It is also a future  where the violence of white supremacy and the ongoing policies of settler colonialism no longer  contribute to the erasure and genocide of our tribes, nations, communities, or families. 

“ A  sovereign Indigenous future is also one where our epistemologies and understandings of the  natural world are honored and respected as legitimate, scientific knowledge.”

Additionally, a fully realized Black liberated future, in my opinion, is one rooted in the  fundamental belief that Black people (globally) are also sovereign and have the right to self determination and autonomy. Where our bodies and our lives are no longer commodities of  white supremacy and racial capitalism, but instead belong to us, to do as we please with them.  Where our health outcomes, quality of life, and life expectancies are not determined by our  positionality within this racialized hierarchy. Where our indigeneity to the lands of our ancestors  is also recognized and affirmed. Where proximity to whiteness is of no value and European  beauty standards don’t supersede our acceptance of Black beauty and love for self. Where we  bask in our cultures and ways of existing while rejecting the gaze and limitations thrust upon us  by those who rather see our demise than see us free! And finally, where our humanity fully is realized. 

Additionally, I fundamentally believe our arrival at Black Liberation and Indigenous Sovereignty will certainly require us to remember who we are outside of our oppressors’ institutions, ideologies, and  imaginations. It is a future that will ask us to internalize and embody the notion that  subjugation is neither our birthright nor our inheritance. It will demand that we forfeit any loyalties to our current positioning and divest from any misguided belief that this is our lot. It is  not! Our destination of freedom will also challenge us to see ourselves and one another as worthy of something better than this!! 

If we expect to achieve this future, it will be our responsibility as Black folks and Native peoples to continue the work of those who came before us. To deconstruct the colonizer and the oppressor in our hearts, in our communities, and in our understanding of the world, with intentionality. To dismantle institutions that dehumanize us and to refuse ideologies of systems that seek to commodify and profit off our oppression. It is imperative that we remember that both of our peoples have  always been the authors of our liberation and the architects of our deliverance. That our ancestors were never passive in their subjugation but instead active participants in their fight towards freedom. That is the legacy we have been entrusted with. So as contemporary stewards  of this work, it is our responsibility to continue imagining the future fought for by our  predecessors while simultaneously envisioning a world and a future more brilliant than what our  oppressors have planned for us.

“It is our responsibility to continue imagining the future fought for by our  predecessors while simultaneously envisioning a world and a future more brilliant than what our  oppressors have planned for us.”

It is also my hope that as we build this future, prepare to inhabit it, and leave it to our descendants as  an inheritance that we understand the value of solidarity and community. Within community and between communities. As I absolutely believe that Black Liberation and Indigenous Sovereignty are compatible movements of freedom. Black and Native folks have had to navigate this white supremacist, settler colonial, racial capitalist project for hundreds of years both independently and also in cooperation. Without romanticizing our past, we understand that there have been moments of authentic solidarity as well as moments of lateral harm and violence.  There have been moments of victory and moments of failure. 

Both of our peoples understand that existing within these systems has been hard. It has been brutal, unrelenting work. And through it all, our oppressors have always sought to pit us against one another. They have at times even required us to stand in for them against one another. These are the realities we must be honest about and it is our responsibility as Black folks and  Native peoples to acknowledge and address these harms. To talk through them. To try and see one another instead of erasing one another. To contextualize all this so that we can find a way to empathize with one another. Ultimately, we should want more for one another  instead of seeking to  replicate the evils and violence of our oppressors, as we understand what it means to have to endure under these systems and should, therefore, want no person to ever share in such misery. 

And while I believe it is for Black folks and Native peoples to lead the way and be active participants in the building of our futures, I think it’s equally important for non-Black and non-Native peoples to participate as well. Everyone has a responsibility to divest from anti-Blackness and to respect Indigenous sovereignty (and specifically tribal sovereignty). And for those who carry the political, legal, and social currency of whiteness and benefit from these systems that oppress and attempts to stifle the future of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color, I believe it is their responsibility to use their currency to dismantle said systems with the intention of forfeiting their privilege and positionality within this hierarchy.

Finally, I will admit I am sometimes an overly hopeful person but I have learned to temper that hope with reality. So while I have hope in Black folks and Native peoples, I don’t expect perfection from us. I understand that in an attempt to build community and consensus we will be challenged. Doing this together will absolutely be hard work! We will undoubtedly make mistakes and will disagree. There may even be times where we don’t like one another. But none of those obstacles are reasons to stop pursuing what we deserve, Black Liberation and Indigenous Sovereignty! 

So here’s to our future!

 
Amber Starks-Melanin Mvskoke Headshot2.jpg

Amber Starks, (aka Melanin Mvskoke) is an Afro Indigenous (African-American and Native American) activist, organizer, cultural critic, decolonial theorist, and budding abolitionist. She is an enrolled citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and is also of Shawnee, Yuchi, Quapaw, and Cherokee descent.

Her passion is the intersection of Black and Native American identity. Her activism seeks to normalize, affirm, and uplift the multidimensional identities of Black and Native peoples through discourse and advocacy around anti-Blackness, abolishing blood quantum, Black liberation, and Indigenous sovereignty. She hopes to encourage Black and Indigenous peoples to prioritize one another and divest from compartmentalizing struggles. She ultimately believes the partnerships between Black and Indigenous peoples (and all People of Color) will aid in the dismantling of anti-blackness, white supremacy, and settler colonialism, globally.

She earned a Bachelor’s of Science in General Science (emphasis in Biology and Anthropology) from the University of Oregon. Her pronouns are she/her.


 

Press Release: U.S. Department of Arts and Culture launches “A People’s WPA” calling for a publicly funded artist works program

Wheatpaste action in Richmond, VA by Free Bangura

Wheatpaste action in Richmond, VA by Free Bangura

U.S. Department of Arts and Culture launches “A People’s WPA” calling for a publicly funded artist works program

This Labor Day, a new, vividly Illustrated book launches with a public “wheatpasting” poster campaign across 4 U.S. Cities, as US Congressional Representatives propose a new WPA style program.

ALBUQUERQUE, NM; CHICAGO, IL; DETROIT, MI; and RICHMOND, VA, September 6, 2021— On Labor Day, The U.S. Department of Arts and Culture (USDAC) will unveil 4 large-scale public “wheatpasting” poster campaigns in several US cities to coincide with the launch of A People’s WPA, a bold proposal (and book!) that aims to uplift essential forms of cultural work, and offer guidance on how to  build an inspiring vision of our shared future. The USDAC is a national people-powered network (not a federal agency) composed of artists, activists, and allies inciting creativity and social imagination to shape a culture of equity, empathy, and belonging.

The richly illustrated publication, A People’s WPA, calls upon policy makers to institute a publicly-funded artist works program – reenvisioning the WPA of the past – that recognizes the ways that artists contribute to society along 7 themes: DEEPENING DEMOCRACY, HEALING, LIBERATION, NOURISHMENT, REGENERATION, REMEMBERING, and TRUTH TELLING. Over the course of a year, USDAC collaborated with 25 projects across the US that embody these ideas in action, and commissioned 25 poster artists to illustrate the power of their work. USDAC is excited to release a publication featuring these works, along with essays, toolkits and policy ideas that can help pave the way forward. 

Four artists/artist collectives in four different cities will deploy public wheatpasting campaigns of the WPA-style posters included in the book to promote the work.  They are: fronteristxs (Albuquerque, NM), William Estrada (Chicago, IL), Sacramento Knoxx (Detroit, MI), and Free Bangura (Richmond, VA). In addition to coinciding with A People’s WPA launch, the wheatpastes also coincide with the introduction of HB #5019 Creative Economy Revitalization Act (CERA) by Representatives Teresa Leger Fernandez (D-NM) and Representative Jay Obernolte (D-CA), along with Reps. Chellie Pingree (D-ME), Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and Ted Lieu (D-CA).

“A recovery from the pandemic must include culture at its core.” said Raquel de Anda, The USDAC’s Minister of Bridge Building. “A People’s WPA builds upon existing pieces of legislation and public works programs to affirm the role that artists play in repairing society and moving us all towards a more just, sustainable and enriching future,” 

For a complete list of posters and collaborators, visit usdac.us/peopleswpa 

Schedule of Events:

  • Twitter townhall lead-up event - Wednesday, September 1st

  • Poster campaign - Labor Day Weekend

  • Book launch - Labor Day

About the US Department of Arts and Culture

The USDAC is a network of artists, activists, and allies inciting creativity and social imagination to shape a culture of equity, empathy, and belonging.

The USDAC affirms the right to culture and pursuing cultural democracy that:

  • Welcomes each individual as a whole person

  • Values each community’s heritage, contributions, and aspirations

  • Promotes caring, reciprocity, and open communication across all lines of difference

  • Dismantles all barriers to love and justice

Unearthing Truths: Reckoning with Our Nation's Indigenous Boarding School History

By Jaclyn Roessel, USDAC Director of Decolonized Futures & Radical Dreams

Ben Nelms/CBC: Memorial at the Kamloops Indian Residential School

Ben Nelms/CBC: Memorial at the Kamloops Indian Residential School

As a Diné child, I relished the time spent traveling to lectures that my dad delivered to museums and universities about his work as a photographer. The old Kodak projector slides dropped into focus with the rhythm of his lessons: Navajo people are the land, Navajo culture is Navajo survival. Native culture is Native survival. 

His talks would share what it meant to be Navajo. As he shared about his work he would illustrate the legacy of Federal Indian Policy and its treatment of Native people. I still couldn’t imagine at that age what the U.S. government boarding schools had done to attack the very essence of my identity and pride in my culture I held so dear. Each time he delivered a talk, he asked a simple question that rings in my head to this day: “how many schools do you know that have graveyards next to them?”

That question rings in my head again today, and the past several weeks as multiple First Nations and Indigenous communities have uncovered mass graveyards of people— many of them children— at the sites of former residential schools in Canada.

Here at the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture, we’ve long stated the importance of providing a land acknowledgement before events, gatherings and meetings. Whether in-person or online, the purpose of a land acknowledgement is meant to restore and name the ancestral and continuing bond between Indigenous peoples and the land, air, minerals, water, vision that we’ve stewarded since time immemorial. We see this as a small first step toward being in right relationship, toward true Native sovereignty. Today, we ask you to join us in recommitting to acknowledging not only the proper stewards of our land, but the specific violence that keeps that space in settler occupation. We ask you to commit to naming and contextualizing the violence that undergirds the places we call home. 

For most Americans, the idea of a boarding school might invoke images of affluent college prep schools, or repositories for disobedient students. For Indigenous people in the US and Canada, the term brings forth terror. Indigenous boarding schools were a tactical experiment, supported by the US War Department and the Department of Interior. After hundreds of years of attempted ethnic genocide, Indigenous people maintained their hard-fought connection to land and culture. The U.S. government made the strategic decision to wage a new kind of war. Alongside the implementation of the Dawes Act of 1887, the Carlisle Indian Industrial School was a targeted effort to obliterate the ties children had between their culture and land before they were fully developed.

The continuing slogan of the first boarding school, Carlisle Indian School was “kill the Indian, save the man.” A phrase illustrative of the genocidal agenda at the center of these institutions. The school opened in 1879 and swiftly became a “success” by white supremacist standards as the children were taught Euro-centric education and were severely punished for practicing any part of their culture, language or Indigenous way of knowings. 

According to the National Boarding School Healing Coalition, “between 1869 and the 1960s, it’s likely that hundreds of thousands of Native American children were removed from their homes and families and placed in boarding schools operated by the federal government and the churches. Though we don’t know how many children were taken in total, by 1900 there were 20,000 children in Indian boarding schools, and by 1925 that number had more than tripled.” 

In Canada, from the 1800s to 1996 over 150,000 children were removed from their families and communities. Regardless of which side of the colonial border, Indigenous children were sent away from everything they knew and forced to assimilate into the settler culture. For countless Indigenous children, this meant pervasive abuse, psychological torment, cultural erasure and, as the recent headlines illustrate, murder.

In times like these I think of my dad, the photographer, how do you photograph the invisible? How do you document the erased? The Indian Boarding School Project created ghost generations. I have never wanted to become accepting of this horrific legacy in the U.S. education system. Children “graduated” from these hellish places to find a country that regarded them as subhuman, no matter how hard they’d had the culture beaten out of them. Many tried to return home and found they could no longer communicate with their own families, or practice their most sacred rites. Many lay in graveyards next to these schools, waiting to be found. We see now that the ghosts of this trauma want to be seen.

So how can we begin to be in right relationship? Here are some first steps: 

  • Push for action to fund the U.S. efforts to investigate what happened to the thousands of children who didn’t return home: a call that Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland declared. Contact your representatives and let them know you support this call to action. 

  • Incorporate and specifically name the violence of boarding schools into the land acknowledgements you are already giving. Be explicit about the history necessary for truth-telling. (Check out the USDAC Native Land page if you don’t know how to get started)

  • Research the location of boarding schools near you. Since Carlisle proved to be “successful,” the U.S. and Canadian governments funded the opening of these schools across both countries, many times partnering with churches like the Catholic Church to operate these schools. For these reasons there are hundreds of schools that were opened across the U.S. and Canada.

  • You can access the curriculum of the National Indian Boarding School Healing Coalition to learn more about the history of the boarding school here. 

  • You can teach the children in your life about the boarding school experience. There is a very poignant, child-appropriate episode of Molly of Denali here from PBS. You can read and access questions to help have a generative conversation with the children in your life here. 

  • You can participate in Orange Shirt Day, a legacy project meant to build awareness of the residential school project and its harmful events. 

Indigenous Nations and communities have long carried the living history and trauma of the boarding school era. It is time for allies to help in fighting for justice and truth. Without truth we will never reach the hope of reconciliation. 

Press Release: Announcing the 2021 Poetic Address to the Nation

The US Department of Arts and Culture joins with The Theater Offensive and MASSCreative to present the Poetic Address to the Nation, April 22, 7pm ET

The event will be the culmination of the 2021 People’s State of the Union

BOSTON, March 30, 2021 — The US Department of Arts and Culture (USDAC), The Theater Offensive (TTO), and MASSCreative announced today that they will be collaborating to present the seventh annual Poetic Address to the Nation on April 22nd, 7pm ET. Every year, the USDAC sponsors the People’s State of the Union, inviting community members across the country to host story circles in their own homes, schools, houses of worship, and community organizations, engaging in conversations that reveal the state of our union. The Poetic Address to the Nation invites writers, performers, and activists to present work inspired by the stories. TTO will produce the virtual 2021 Poetic Address to the Nation, featuring exemplary Boston-based and national performers, in partnership with the USDAC and MASSCreative.

The USDAC is a people-powered national action network (not a federal agency) composed of artists, activists, and allies inciting creativity and social imagination to shape a culture of equity, empathy, and belonging. Founded in 1989, TTO is a social change organization that presents liberating art by, for, and about queer and trans people of color. MASSCreative advocates for a well-resourced and equitable creative sector that is essential to the economic and civic vibrancy of Massachusetts.

“The combination of national scope and deeply-local roots is precisely what the USDAC stands for,” said the USDAC Co-Director Jordan Seaberry, and Chief Ray of Sunshine, Carol Zou. “The Poetic Address to the Nation seeks to build radically imaginative interventions across the country, and the values of TTO and MASSCreative are the embodiment of those principles.”

This year, community members across the nation were invited to reflect on the interlocking crises of systemic racism, eviction, poverty, access to healthcare, and more laid bare by COVID-19.

“The Theater Offensive’s deep roots in trans and queer communities of color allow us to bring artists and stories to the forefront that often are marginalized, especially as COVID has revealed some of the structural inequalities that have always marked our neighborhoods,” said Harold Steward, Executive Director and Cultural Strategist at TTO. 

“We stand with the belief that democracy is not a monologue, it’s a conversation,” said Tri Quach, Director of Engagement and Organizing at MASSCreative. “The Poetic Address to the Nation will demonstrate how vital that conversation will be to the future of our union.” 

The Poetic Address to the Nation is historically an in-person event; moving it virtually this year allows partners and participants to expand the event’s accessibility beyond any single space, bridging communities across geographic boundaries. Those connections are the foundation of what Story Circles can weave in communities across the country.

The 2021 People’s State of the Union

April 22, 2021

7 to 8 pm ET

Register by clicking here, or by visiting https://usdac.us/psotu/

About the US Department of Arts and Culture

The USDAC is a network of artists, activists, and allies inciting creativity and social imagination to shape a culture of equity, empathy, and belonging.

The USDAC affirms the right to culture and pursuing cultural democracy that:

  • Welcomes each individual as a whole person

  • Values each community’s heritage, contributions, and aspirations

  • Promotes caring, reciprocity, and open communication across all lines of difference

  • Dismantles all barriers to love and justice

About the Theater Offensive

The Theater Offensive’s mission is liberation. To present liberating art by, for, and about queer and trans people of color that transcends artistic boundaries, celebrates cultural abundance, and dismantles oppression.

About MASSCreative

MASSCreative advocates for a well-resourced and equitable creative sector that is essential to the economic and civic vibrancy of Massachusetts. Working with its organizational and individual members, MASSCreative advances the public policy, grassroots advocacy learning, and cross-sector alliances necessary to creating a Commonwealth where art, culture, and creativity are a valued part of everyday life.

On the Tragic Passing of Amelia Brown, USDAC Cabinet Member

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“Emergencies not only create new problems but compound existing issues. They also offer opportunities to create new solutions.” 

- Amelia Brown

From Art Became the Oxygen; A Guide to Artistic Response

I’m deeply saddened to report the sudden death of my friend, colleague and fellow USDAC Cabinet member Amelia Ruth Brown. She died suddenly of a heart attack on January 16th at the age of 41. Amelia believed fiercely that art can transform, heal and repair communities, including those devastated by natural and manmade disasters. As an artist, writer, community organizer, activist and consultant, Amelia was a fearless force of nature, bringing light, love, energy and passion into every room she entered. Her heart was as big as her infectious smile; even if you just met her, she’d act like you were long-lost friends.

She traveled the world, sharing her research on the role of the arts and artists in repairing wounds, and advocated for the arts to be fully integrated in emergency relief efforts. From post-Katrina New Orleans to earthquake-devastated Christchurch, New Zealand, Amelia crisscrossed the globe several times, inspiring audiences and bringing practical solutions to light. She founded the nonprofit Emergency Arts, which was her passion, and worked in a wide variety of settings: LISC, AmeriCorps, Forecast Public Art, and the City of Minneapolis, where she helped develop DEI educational programs for city staff. She also led the charge to develop a resolution for the City declaring racism a public health crisis, leading to reallocation of city funds, and leveraged city funding of $100,000 to support artists’ response to the police killing of George Floyd. 

At her memorial service, held on the 23rd, there were numerous words used to describe Amelia: “warrior for justice, big-hearted, energy, spirited, kind, thoughtful, hopeful, caring, passionate, in-the-moment, nature-lover, supportive, soulful, and great hugger.” We need fierce warriors like Amelia—now, more than ever. Her work needs to continue, and I—along with many of you—remain committed to keeping her legacy alive as the world struggles with healing, recovery and rebuilding.  I invite you to read one of her last articles, entitled Art: Creating Possibilities in Emergencies. Rest in Justice, Amelia, and may your legacy live forever!


- Jack Becker, Public Art Mobilizer, USDAC National Cabinet

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A Truthful Indigenous Peoples’ Day

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What does it mean to “shelter-in-place” for people who have been displaced?

What meaning does a “stay-at-home” order hold for people who have been ripped from their ancestral homes? Here at the USDAC, we believe that culture is a human right, and that belonging is critical to community survival. This Indigenous Peoples’ Day, let us acknowledge the land we’re sheltering on, the air we’re filtering through masks, the water we’re drinking. It’s time to move that acknowledgement into action. Take this moment to join us in committing to not just “reopening” our country, but to reimagining it. 

We’ve seen roiling protests for Black Lives and a raging global pandemic that are both reshaping our understanding of grief and connection. Our communities are reckoning with the historical injustice of racism, highlighted by the disparate response to the pandemic, the long-standing need for health equity, fair housing, full employment and so much more. I have been witnessing from my partner’s homelands of the Tamayame, meditating on my people’s sacred stories. Sacred stories ground me. They let me see beyond the profit-motivated decisions to reopen economies, even as our people suffer and die.

On Monday, over 130 cities across this country, 14 states and numerous communities will celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day. This important action is a powerful method of truth-telling. By renaming this federal holiday, we amplify Indigenous truth and history.

 
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Imagine a turning point this Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

Imagine after Monday, your workplace, your local museum, your child’s classroom all begin the day by naming and acknowledging the ancestral stewards of the land beneath our feet, the nourishing water and the air we breathe. As communities decide on reopening, we can decide to do things differently. Don’t let your workplace, your school, your church, your library reopen with business as usual. We can reopen in truth.

In my Dine’ community, our origin stories show us how to live in right relationship with this world. Each story shows us how interconnected we are to each other— plants, animals and all the other creatures on this planet. Indigenous communities like mine hold origin stories at the forefront of our covenant with the Earth and the worlds around us. These stories describe how the worlds came to be, how we five-fingered beings came to be.

We can see small cracks of consciousness opening toward what a world honoring and valuing Black and brown lives could really mean. In the origin of this nation, two factors played outsized roles: stolen land and stolen labor. Both Indigenous genocide and Black slavery are the bedrock’s of this nation’s current wealth and prosperity. Calling those histories forth can help us understand our placement in time, and can help us build a new path forward. 

We’re calling on you to hold your community institutions, elected officials, workplaces, friends and others accountable to the truth.

Use our guide, or any of the many other useful resources, but start the conversation today. Here are some ways you can start:

Commit to learning. As Equal Justice Initiative founder and author Bryan Stevenson shared on a recent episode of the Sunstorm podcast, “Learning is an action item.” As we work toward justice, it’s necessary to build our knowledge and make it accessible to others. (Side note: Stevenson shares much wisdom in this episode illustrating the importance of Black Indigenous solidarity, listen & learn.)

Just as my ancestors emerged into this Glittering World millenia ago, we have the beautiful opportunity to establish a world where white supremacy’s reign can—and will— end. We can co-create this reality. It’s within reach. But it demands that we not be silent. It demands that we acknowledge the truths of the past and move to action.

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS: The People’s WPA! DEADLINE September 25

Like many of you, we’ve been wondering what is within our unique capacity to respond to COVID-19. Like many of you, we've been inspired by the myriad ways that artists and creative interlopers have rallied to meet the needs of their communities.

Informed by our many conversations with advisors, friends, and YOU, we’re so excited to launch The People’s WPA! Over the course of Fall and Winter, 2020 we'll be embarking on a listening, learning and storytelling project with the goal of convincing policymakers to invest in arts, culture-making and newly reimagined sectors of labor critical to our collective healing and survival. Are you or someone you know working to build a more just, equitable and sustainable world through an existing project? If so, let us know about it and join us in crafting The People’s WPA!

Please nominate yourself or someone you know to be part of the inaugural People’s WPA cohort by September 25, 2020. CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION, or visit usdac.us/peopleswpa.

 
People's WPA poster by N'Deye Diakhate

People's WPA poster by N'Deye Diakhate

 

Reflections from the #Defund Movement

Recent uprisings across the country have confronted elected officials with a clear, attainable policy demand: defund police departments. In response to this clear policy demand, however, many government officials are responding strictly in cultural terms. Washington DC’s mayor inscribed “Black Lives Matter” on a main road while approving a $19 million increase in police funding. Rhode Island’s Governor removed “Plantations” from the full state name while approving a $35 million State Police building. This strategic moment asks us to do many things at once: not only to acknowledge these concessions by the powerful as testaments to our increased power and celebrate them as important milestones on our journey, but also leverage them toward concrete change.

As the frame “Black Lives Matter” increasingly embraces demands for concrete reforms like Defund the Police, we see this as a critical moment to lift up the work of creative communities and underscore the power we have in bringing forth symbolic and material change. How can we recognize the multitude of ways we have helped give shape to the movement, while ensuring that our work is not co-opted by those seeking to make a superficial statement and avoid deep change?

Advocates have spent years fighting for increased training for officers in mental health awareness, de-escalation training, case management skills, and so on. The “defund” demand recognizes that the time is upon us to move to new visions. It’s important to note that in Minneapolis, the police have been equipped in nearly every tool a reformer might ask for: body cameras, community dialogue programs, early-warning systems for abusive officers and trainings in implicit bias, mindfulness, de-escalation and crisis intervention. Still, George Floyd is gone. 

We know that we cannot achieve what we cannot imagine, so we asked our network of artists, cultural workers, and movement organizers what it means for arts and culture to stand in true solidarity with the movement to defund the police. Today, we're sharing reflections from artist Nafis M. White and The Black School's Shani Peters:

We hope their words and actions can inspire you toward finding your own role in building an abolitionist future. Over the coming weeks, we’ll be sharing these critical reflections here on our blog, on social media, and directly with our network. If you’re not subscribed to our updates, now’s the time.

Together, we create.

The USDAC Team

Juneteenth: Resources for Imagination + Abolition

Black Lives Matter. They matter today, on Juneteenth 2020, and they mattered on the first Juneteenth in 1865. Black lives have always mattered— what’s changed is the way that our nation sees them, protects them, values them. That’s why the work of creativity, radical imagination, and cultural organizing are so critical. We have the power to push that way of seeing toward equity, compassion and solidarity.

Below are some resources— not just interesting pieces, but things to leap into, steps to take today— to support Black lives in your community. Happy Juneteenth.

  • #SixNineteen: click here to find a march in your community and join the Movement for Black Lives. Be sure also to read through their guiding principles for staying safe while protesting.

  • #DefundThePolice: Have you wondered what a defunded police department would really mean for your community? Check out this primer from the Movement for Black Lives on what it might look like. And here’s a great New Republic piece that goes even more in-depth on the concept.

  • #8toAbolition: If you’re curious about concrete solutions to address the #DefundPolice debate, here’s a critical resource for radically reimagining a world that stretches toward abolition, not just reform.

  • Center Black Trans Lives: As protests and organizing push to reimagine how the country treats and protects Black lives, it’s critical that we center Black women, Black trans women in particular. Take a look at this piece to see just how urgent this is.

  • 10 Rules to Fight for Black People’s Freedom: Read through this manifesto by #BlackLivesMatter founder Patrisse Cullors, and use it to have a conversation at your workplace, school, place of worship, community organization, or kitchen table.

  • BLK Paper: Incredible depictions of rage and hope by Black artists, photographers and graphic designers. Download the images, print them out, wheat paste them, stick them to light poles, share them with friends and inspire the neighborhood to join the movement.

  • City Budgets Belong to Us: Check out this resource and see how your city/town invests in policing. If it doesn’t sit right with you, join the debate to #DefundPolice, contact your local city officials and ask them the tough questions.

  • Call The Halls: Is this the first time you’ve reached out to elected officials? Check out this comprehensive guide on the most strategic ways to outreach your representatives.

  • Reparations Summer: A powerful, inaugural Juneteenth call for Reparations Summer—a large-scale campaign for organizing and moving resources to Black land stewards.

  • DIY Imaginings: The big-picture conversations we’re in right now require new ways of imagining our world. Whether we’re envisioning new forms of governance and public safety, or reparations and prison abolition, social imagination is a muscle that needs exercising. Use this free guide from the USDAC for tips on how to host an arts-based dialogues in your community that stretches imagination for the world that is possible and strengthens resolve to bring it into being.

Onwards!

Creative Responses to COVID-19: USDAC Listening Shareback

INTRODUCTION

When the COVID-19 pandemic reached the United States, we knew we had a responsibility to respond as the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture. But we also knew that we had a responsibility to listen to our community, to learn all the different ways that we were being affected by the pandemic, and all the different ways that we could show up for each other.

So we spent the month of May listening. We asked our network to log onto their ten millionth Zoom call, as well as filling out a digital survey. Nearly 400 of you shared your voices in that process. We reached out to partner organizations, to thought partners, to our USDAC Cabinet. All of those voices build the USDAC community: people whose thinking around arts, culture and social change is so critical that we knew we couldn’t take steps toward coordinated creative response without hearing those voices first.

WHAT WE LEARNED

We broke down what we heard into four different priority areas: fund, heal, connect, and change the damn system. 

Image credit: Angela Faz for U.S. Department of Arts and Culture

FUND

We heard loud and clear that artists and cultural workers are struggling economically. Almost half of the survey respondents have lost work due to COVID-19. Our partner organizations emphasized the need for creativity and flexibility in distributing funds to artists and impacted communities. We were also asked to step up and use our platform to advocate for funding to those communities.

What’s going to happen as the unemployment rate begins to skyrocket? What’s going to be true when no one has paycheck to live paycheck-to-paycheck? We need to reorganize forms of social life to help people get through.—Kenneth Bailey, Design Studio 4 Social Intervention

HEAL

You’re all showing up for your communities, but are your communities supporting you the way you need? Our thought partners working in somatic healing, grief, and disaster recovery noted that people are undergoing myriad challenges— grief, depression, anxiety, domestic violence, and many more. We heard a need to pace ourselves and to find creative ways to support personal and community mental health and wellbeing for the long journey ahead.

We need to be learning from our elders/ancestors—folks who have been through war, folks who have been through turmoil. Pausing and learning from them.—Adaku Utah, Harriet’s Apothecary. 

CONNECT

You’re all finding ways to connect with your neighbors. From creative uses of Zoom, to Story Circles, to socially-distanced public art projects, artists are showing the power of creativity to build local connections. We were reminded also to think of internet connectivity as a privilege and to consider the communities without digital access. We were called to connect our experiences to a global framework and to imagine new approaches to people-powered diplomacy across borders. 

A lot of the art [that we make with women in re-entry] is not about how terrible the moment is but about how beautiful family and community can be. [...] Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler and the power of speculative fiction is really relevant in this moment.—Mark Strandquist, People’s Paper Coop.

CHANGE THE DAMN SYSTEM

The response was clear: the system needs change. The ways that COVID-19 has disproportionately impacted the most vulnerable has highlighted just how broken our system already was. It wasn’t working for people who are incarcerated, for immigrants, for the elderly, disabled, poor, homeless, queer, black, Indigenous and other people of color.  Indigenous communities revisiting the generational trauma of pandemic are experiencing some of the highest rates of COVID-19 infections.  Black people continue to bear the brunt of police and white supremacist violence under COVID-19—evidenced by the recent murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Sean Reed, Nina Pop, Ahmaud Arbery, and Tony McDade.

The system needs to change, and we must act in this moment to build a world that’s equitable for all of us. Many people are starting to think seriously about the ideas of universal basic income, rent cancellation, universal healthcare. Communities that have been under attack for a long time have built, leaned on and refined ancestral technologies to thrive. We’re seeing new systems of mutual aid grow in every pocket of the country, and have the opportunity now to create permanently organized communities. We heard a desire expressed for new tools and resources to support in processes of collective envisioning and organizing. You said it loud and clear: artists are ready to make a new world. 

Oppressed people have written the playbook about existing in this moment and surviving pandemic/epidemic. [...] We’re not running towards the fire, we’ve already been in it. [...] The only new thing is that it’s happening today. —Harold Steward, The Theater Offensive

Image credit: Color of Change

WHAT’S NEXT? 

We will be using these findings and priority areas to help shape programmatic offerings in the months ahead. Stay tuned for upcoming opportunities for coordinated creative response. In the meantime, we encourage you to reflect on how you can connect to these four different priority areas in your own life and community advocacy—and to draw some inspiration from the projects compiled below. 

APPENDIX A: WHAT’S INSPIRING US?

In moments of emergency, artists have the great capacity to envision new futures and to build social well-being. And they’re doing it already! We want to shout out these amazing relief efforts from the arts and culture sector: 

#3DPPEARTISTNETWORK

The #3DPPEArtistNetwork is a network of artists using 3D printers to print personal protective equipment and distributing them to frontline responders and impacted communities. #3DPPEArtistNetwork.  

ARTIST RELIEF FUND

A coalition of grantmakers came together to create Artist Relief Fund, $5,000 grants to artists facing dire financial emergencies. Apply at: https://www.artistrelief.org/

ASIAN AMERICAN FEMINIST ANTIBODIES ZINE

Asian American Feminists Collective presents this zine that addresses care in the time of coronavirus, and anti-Asian racism. https://www.asianamfeminism.org/resources

AUNTIE SEWING SQUAD

Artist, local representative, and self proclaimed “sewing overlord” Kristina Wong has organized a 700+ member and growing Facebook group of Aunties who are sewing face masks for vulnerable communities such as farmworker communities and indigenous communities. The Aunties support each other with virtual sewing parties and self care goodies, and organize expeditions to drop off supplies. https://donorbox.org/auntie-sewing-squad 

CV19MEMORIAL

Led by a team of international artists and activists, cv19memorial creates a digital space in which to submit testimony and mourn the lives lost to COVID-19. http://www.cv19memorial.org/

DEAR FRONTLINE

Visitors to Dear Frontline can write a message to frontline workers on artist-designed postcards by Carrie Mae Weems, Favianna Rodriguez, Kate DeCiccio, and more. https://dearfrontline.com/

FILL THE WALLS WITH HOPE, RAGE, AND DREAMS!

Fill the Walls with Hope, Rage, and Dreams solicits submissions from visual artists and poets, which are then turned into beautiful posters that are wheat pasted in public. The posters create a reminder to those of us out in public that even though we are socially distant from each other, we are not alone. https://coverthewallswithhope.weebly.com/

JUST SEEDS COLLECTIVE

Printmaking collective Just Seeds Collective has been releasing Care Packages, free graphics related to COVID-19, healthcare, mutual aid, and more. https://justseeds.org/graphic/care-package-1/

NO GOING BACK: A COVID-19 CULTURAL STRATEGY ACTIVATION GUIDE FOR ARTISTS AND ACTIVISTS

Our friends at The Center for Cultural Power have just released “No Going Back: A COVID-19 Cultural Strategy Activation Guide for Artists and Activists” to meet the moment and help drive the lasting change we need. This artful guide helps movement groups and artists create aligned narratives that move us toward policies we need now, and gives tips on how to put this guide to practice. bit.ly/covidartistguide

SUNRISE CREATIVE SCHOOL

Want to learn how to make change during this moment of crisis? Sunrise Movement is taking applications for their creative school, a 3 week online course that teaches young people the basics of artistic activism such as: “Visual Art as an Organizing Tool,” “Video Production as an Organizing Tool,” and “Graphic Design Skills, Tools, and Strategies for Organizing.” https://www.sunrisemovement.org/sunrise-creative-school 

YIMFY2020

Artists Daniel Tucker and Emily Bunker turned their stimulus checks into Yes In My Front Yard 2020, an exhibition of yard signs featuring artwork by local artists. https://yimfy2020.wordpress.com/

APPENDIX B: USDAC RESOURCES

ART BECAME THE OXYGEN: AN ARTISTIC RESPONSE GUIDE

Art Became The Oxygen incorporates first-person experience and guidance from respected voices deeply engaged in artistic response from Katrina to Ferguson, from Sandy to Standing Rock. It includes hundreds of links to powerful arts projects, official emergency resources, and detailed accounts for those who want to go even deeper. https://usdac.us/artisticresponse

SIX ESSENTIAL ETHICAL COMMITMENTS FOR EFFECTIVE ARTISTIC RESPONSE

We broke down our lessons learned in Art Became the Oxygen into these six bite-sized shareable principles, which you can use in your teaching and in your artistic practice. Download images here.  

Community Care in the Time of Coronavirus

At the USDAC we stand against xenophobia, ableism, hyper-individualism, and all forms of injustice. We affirm the values of belonging, access, hospitality, community care, and systemic change in the service of collective liberation. Let us come together, firmly and creatively, to commit to these values amidst uncertain times.

As COVID-19 spreads in the U.S many of us are asking: How do we connect, organize, and deepen community amidst the necessary public health practice of physical distancing? How do we combat the spread of isolation, othering, and fear? How do we learn from BIPOC, queer, and disabled communities on surviving pandemics and caring for each other? How do we stand in solidarity, mutuality, and community care, at this time of social emergency, and use what we learn toward making systemic change?

This is a moment for us to recognize our collective interdependence and to strengthen our practices of collective care.

In addition to taking health precautions advised by the CDC, we invite you to take this moment to envision, build, and contribute to a more resilient society by: 

  • Advocating for social supports that help us to care for the vulnerable in our society in a time of pandemic—such as paid sick leave, a moratorium on evictions, universal healthcare, universal basic income, housing for the unhoused, ending cash bail, ending detention, paying freelancers for cancelled events, and more.

  • Strengthening our existing mutual aid support networks. Are you able-bodied? Can you work from home? Offer to run errands for those who are chronically ill/immunocompromised. Check in on your elderly neighbor to make sure they're OK. Support independent businesses. Buy only what you need at the grocery store so that there is food left for people who don’t make enough money to stock up.

  • Tapping into your creativity.  In this moment, art can help us connect to each other across distances, and tell the story of our fears and our resilience. Check out videos of neighbors joining together in chorus from their balconies in China and Italy, this facebook group for art instructors teaching remotely, and submissions to The Social Distancing Festival. What rituals, practices, invitations might you create and offer at this moment for healing and connection? (If you have ideas for how the USDAC might be of service at this moment, we’d love to hear. Write to us at: hello@usdac.us.)

There are so many resources being circulated. Here are a few we’ve found helpful in orienting to how to care for ourselves and our communities during these times.

Resources

In Love and Solidarity,

USDAC

Images: What Are We Doing During COVID-19? by Laura Chow Reeve of Radical Roadmaps. We advise that all letters to incarcerated folks be sent digitally, and for more resources to support incarcerated folks, check out recommendations compiled by The Justice Collaborative.

Building Strategy and Co-Creating Culture- Call #3 Summary

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Call 3 Recap: Building Strategy and Co-Creating Culture

Artists are the storytellers, visionaries, and the heart of our movements for change. You’ve learned about the nuts and bolts of a Green New Deal: now it’s time to strategize about how we can all be a part of making it real. On this call, we’ll hear from movement organizers and arts and cultural workers who are rolling up their sleeves to make a Green New Deal a reality. Then, we’ll share opportunities to plug in to the fight with the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture.


What a journey! After a summer of intensive study on the policy and the science behind a Green New Deal—with guest speakers including Rajiv Sicora, Molly Crabapple, Pablo Akira Beimler, Priya Mulgaonkar, Ananda Lee Tan, Kali Akuno, Demetrius Johnson, and Carrie Marie Schneider—we opened it up to hear from you about what you are working on regarding the September 20 Global Youth Climate Strikes and beyond. We invited Ronee Penoi and Tara Moses from Groundwater Arts, and Josh Yoder from Sunrise Movement, to be in dialogue with us about the different strategic ways that artists and cultural workers can advance climate justice. To watch a recording of the call, access the full graphic doodle, and more, download the Recap Bundle here.


What We Learned

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As artists, sometimes we need to begin by reimagining our own institutions. Ronee Penoi and Tara Moses from Groundwater Arts shared about their work in creating a #GreenNewTheatre initiative. Ronee and Tara brought together several leading theater organizations in order to train people on the principles of what sustainable institutional practices might look like. Their working document, which you can download here, outlines the 6 principles of a #GreenNewTheatre:

  1. Community Accountability

  2. Publicly Transparent Budgeting

  3. Decolonized Leadership

  4. Sustainable Resources

  5. Right Relationship to Land and History

  6. Immediate Divestment from Fossil Fuels

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In addition to working within our own institutions, Josh Yoder shared the stories of working in collaboration with advocacy organizations. As an illustrator and media strategist who has worked with Sunrise Movement, FightFor15, the People’s Climate March, the March for Science, local pipeline fights across the North East, and the campaign to stop Amazon’s headquarters in NYC, Josh helps communities take control of their own media narratives and storytelling.


How We’re Taking Action

Rachel Schragis, our Minister of the Bureau of Energy, Power, and Art,  shared with us four different strategic ways artists and cultural workers can get involved in the fight for climate justice. We heard from our guest speakers as well as participants about the inspirational ways you were engaging with each strategy.


Strategy 1: Shine a light on the crisis

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Shining a light on how climate change is affecting your community does double duty of pointing out that we need to make a big change, because the crisis is not abstract; it’s multifaceted, but literally the Carribean is flooding and the Amazon is burning. To the extent that we can lift up storytelling about the impacts of our community, help people be empowered in their storytelling, we are helping create the conditions for to demand systemic responses that are bigger than just helping people in one dire situation after another.

We learned about the work that you’re doing to shine a light, such as creating posters about environmental justice and environmental racism, developing classes on sustainability, and mural and puppet making around the Climate Strike.


Strategy 2: Claim governing power at every level

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This is the principle we most wrestled with how to think about our role as artists. Yes, we need to win elections...but what’s our role in that? We believe true cultural democracy is so much deeper and wider than just voting. What’s our role in THAT?


Sunrise Movement and #GreenNewTheatre’s work demonstrate two completely different approaches towards what we could mean by governing power. Josh shared the story behind Sunrise Movement’s occupation of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s office, creating the iconic image that inspired public momentum behind a Green New Deal. Josh emphasized that it was important to create a media image in which people can imagine themselves winning power in government.

Tara and Ronee shared about how #GreenNewTheatre is an effort to translate a Green New Deal into changes in governance in theater and performing arts institutions. They emphasized the power of the individual artist to make change by asking for accountability from the institutions they work with, through mechanisms such as tech riders.


Strategy 3: Envision the new world we want and build it now.

USDAC often says “Everything created must first be imagined,” and climate crisis is connected to such deep problems that it can be challenging for people to envision the solution in real, concrete ways—so we have to imagine them in order to create them.

In addition to envisioning sustainable theater practices, #GreenNewTheatre also envisions the intersection of different social movements. Tara and Ronee spoke about imagining arts institutions as sanctuary spaces, highlighting the intersection between climate change and climate migrants seeking refuge. Josh spoke about the nuances of envisioning Green New Deal imagery, and making sure to avoid narratives that only center urban communities, pristine landscapes, and gentrified neighborhoods.

We heard from the many artists on our call about the wonderful ways that you are envisioning the new world, from getting involved in sustainable community-building practices in your city, to working with young people to create a futuristic graphic novel about climate change.


Strategy 4: Disrupt—this is not normal!

The last strategy is probably the simplest, but also sometimes the most daring: Disrupt! Interrupt!

One big way to plug into that is the Youth Climate Strikes. Strikes have a long global history of catalyzing change by flexing the power of regular people. A strike that’s bigger than just one workplace and is open to all is called a “general strike”. Last year, Greta Thunberg stopped going to school and sat in front of the Swedish Parliament with a sign that said “school strike for climate” and helped catalyze a youth movement of walking out of school on fridays--first across Europe and then the world. On September 20th, teenagers around the world have called for adults to join them in their strike, en masse.  

Many of you shared that you are already preparing for the Climate Strikes, such as organizing a silent march in Minnesota, running digital campaigns such as BeTheGreen, and planting 40 trees to symbolize the interrelation between climate change and environmental racism.

What’s Next?

We encourage everyone to get involved with an action, big or small, on September 20 in support of the Global Youth Climate Strike! Sign up here for the strike.

We will host a one-hour Climate Strike debrief call on Tuesday, September 24, at 5pm PST/8pm EST. We’ll hear from you about how the climate strike went, and offer suggestions and next steps. If you registered for our Artists Unite For A Green New Deal call series, you will receive the link to the debrief call in your email. If not, be sure to register with us!

Lastly, please take a moment to fill out this survey on our Artists Unite For A Green New Deal call series. We would love feedback on how we can continue supporting you in your journey to creatively animate your communities in the service of the world you want to see. Thank you for spending this summer in deep study with us!

Science Facts, Science Fictions- Call #2 Summary

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Science Facts, Science Fictions

What will happen if we don’t take action on climate change? The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report presents different visions of the future depending on the action and policies that we take. These visions range from an equitable utopia to a fascist dystopia. Join us to learn about the science behind climate change predictions, and to hear stories of creative leaders who imagine with their hands, creating the best case scenarios for a just climate future through their visions and community work. 

Our conversation on how artists and cultural workers can get involved with a Green New Deal continued with Ananda Lee Tan, Demetrius Johnson, Kali Akuno, and Carrie Schneider discussing the visionary roles that BIPOC (black, indigenous, and people of color) and artists play in the movement for climate justice. We were inspired by your enthusiasm, and the steps that you have taken since our last call to inspire your communities towards action. (Want to access the call recording? Sign up here and we’ll send you the link—and other goodies!)


What did we learn?

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We began with a briefing about the science and history at the foundation of today’s fight for a Green New Deal.

Rachel Schragis, our Minister of the Bureau of Energy, Power, and Art,  walked us through some of the basics of the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report.  She explained the report’s concept of the “Shared Socioeconomic Pathways”-- scientific and sociological predictions of what directions the world could go, and what they look like for the climate.  The pathways point to the conclusion that it’s social questions: will there be war or peace? Will we invest in education and fight for economic equity? that most determine whether the world will address the climate crisis.  

Ananda Lee Tan, Climate Justice Alliance, emphasized the concept of Just Transition--a vision of a shift from an extractive economy to an equitable one, lead by the communities most impacted by the crisis, and redressing historic harms.  He spoke about the history of the movement for a Just Transition, and some of the key moments where community members from across the US and the world have worked together to build a vision of what it will take to shift from a “dig, burn, dump” economy to an economy of social and ecological wellbeing. He posed the question of what it will take to make the Green New Deal an enactment of Just Transition--it’s possible, but not a certainty.  “ You can download the briefing here. 

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What does a climate justice platform centered in indigenous sovereignty look like? Demetrius Johnson from Albuquerque Red Nation spoke about how the Red Deal, proposed by the Red Nation, encompasses the climate justice demands of a Green New Deal while also addressing areas of struggle including: End the Occupation, Heal Our Bodies, and Heal Our Planet. He connected the Red Deal to local efforts to protect Chaco Canyon, a Pueblo and Navajo sacred site in Northern New Mexico, from oil and gas development. Read the full Red Deal platform here.

How are communities embodying the principles of Just Transition? Kali Akuno, Executive Director of Cooperation Jackson, spoke about their work to realize a Just Transition.

in Jackson, Mississippi. Cooperation Jackson’s Just Transition plan includes building community land trusts, worker owned cooperatives, food sovereignty, a network of eco-villages, and policy transformation on a municipal level. Kali emphasized that the policy for a Green New Deal needs to be shaped by grassroots efforts, noting that “it's often easier to act a new way of thinking rather than to think a new way of acting...this is intentional cultural development.” More examples of Cooperation Jackson’s work on utilizing art and imagination to transform community can be found on their Facebook.

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And finally, how are artists responding to and visioning an environmentally just future? Houston-based artist Carrie Marie Schneider presented about her project Washing Water, a way to heal trauma and build community post-Hurricane Harvey. Carrie created a disco fish tank in which participants could make waterscapes and, through play and creativity, reimagine their relationships with water. Carrie’s work reminds us that in the future, artists will need to be both healers and visionaries when it comes to climate change. Learn more about Carrie’s work at WashingWater.com, and watch her presentation here.

What did we hear?

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During the breakout groups, many of you expressed gratitude for the Just Transition framework that centered BIPOC communities, and were inspired by the way that Cooperation Jackson and Washing Water addressed climate change on the local, and even bodily level. During the Q&A session, you were curious about how to build momentum on the grassroots level in order to make policy advocacy possible. Our speakers emphasized utilizing art to find moments of connection and hope, while at the same time not romanticizing the impact of climate change and other injustices. Our speakers also emphasized that modelling possibility at the grassroots level through art, community organizing, and creative uses of public space is what ultimately leads to policy change.

What’s next? 

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We highlighted the conversation using pieces of our graphic recording, done in real time by Emily Simons! You can download the recap bundle to access the full picture here.

We hope to see you on our final call! Join us for Building Strategy and Co-Creating Culture with Sunrise Movement and Groundwater Arts on September 5 at 5pm PST/8pm EST. 

Some of you have already taken action towards organizing your communities, such as organizing watch parties and sharing the information in our briefings. In our final call, we hope to take it a step further and build with you about how we can coordinate our efforts around the upcoming September 20 Global Climate Strike and beyond.

Sign up at usdac.us/gnd to make sure that you receive the registration link and updates about this series!

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Explaining Policy, Exploring Poetics - Call #1 Summary

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Explaining Policy, Exploring Poetics

How do healthcare and jobs help fight climate change? How does addressing climate change upend inequality and deliver justice in our time? The Green New Deal is a proposal for a decade of legislation that takes on many of the interlocking crises of our time. It’s ambitious and complicated—but as artists it’s our job to see and help activate its inspirational potential. 


Wow! Thank you to the 100+ people who signed on to hear Molly Crabapple, Pablo Akira Beimler, Priya Mulgaonkar, and Rajiv Sicora unpack the policy behind the Green New Deal and talk about how they are engaging with policy as local artists and activists! We heard from concerned citizens from all over the U.S. from Texas to Alaska to Hawaii, and who work in media as diverse as film, music, and even circus arts! (Want to access the call recording? Sign up here and we’ll send you the link—and other goodies!)

What did we learn?

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We started with a briefing about the Green New Deal from Rachel Schragis, Minister of the Bureau of Energy, Power, and Art, and Rajiv Sicora, Senior Manager of Research at The Leap. The briefing discussed how the Green New Deal came to be, it’s goals to address the interlocking crises of the climate, of equity, and of work. They shared some of the visionary potential for artists, cultural workers and community to engage, emphasizing that the legislation is still a work in progress that is being co-created through civic participation. You can download the briefing here. 

What does creative engagement with the Green New Deal look like?  For one example, we heard from Molly Crabapple about her video, “A Message From The Future with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez”, the film that she created with Naomi Klein, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and The Intercept. Molly discussed how climate narratives can be frightening and overwhelming, and how she instead wanted to create a representation of the beautiful future that is possible through the Green New Deal. Watch the video here.

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For a living example of artistic civic participation in co-creating the Green New Deal, we heard from  Pablo Akira Beimler, spoken word artist and part of the team of regular community folks building a Green New Deal for Hawaii.  He started off with a spoken word poem, and spoke about his years of organizing for environmental justice in Hawai’i through film screenings, concerts, and other forms of cultural organizing. Pablo spoke about the creation of the Green New Deal Hawai’i working group and emphasized the self determination of indigenous communities to restore the land. He finished by asking us to consider, what is policy without heart? Without empathy? Check out his presentation and poem here.

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And what will it look like to win a Green New Deal? For a small taste, we talked to Priya Mulgaonkar from New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, who spoke about the New York State Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act-- a piece of “Green New Deal style”  legislation that just became law in New York State! She helped us understand the concept of Just Transition (check out the Movement Generation zine and how a Green New Deal needs to center the most marginalized and impacted communities. She presented about the solar energy work at The Point CDC in the South Bronx as an example of a community realizing a vision of arts connected to environmental justice. 

What did we hear?

During the breakout groups, we heard from so many of you who wanted to connect with each other and with policymakers to advance the work of a Green New Deal. During the Q&A session, you were curious about what type of art is needed in the movement for a Green New Deal, and how to connect with work in your community. One answer from our speakers is that all art is needed to help visualize the future that is possible through a Green New Deal. Our speakers also encouraged seeking out groups working on the issues in your local area, and focusing on building authentic relationships first.

What’s next? 

We highlighted the conversation using pieces of our Graphic notation, done in real time by Emily Simons! You can see the full picture here. 

We heard from you a desire for collective artistic action, and our team convening these calls agrees.  We can’t wait to hear more from you as we build our shared understanding of what is possible and necessary this month. 

We hope to see you on our next two calls! Join us for Science Facts, Science Fictions with Kali Akuno and Shambe Jones with Cooperation Jackson, Demetrius Johnson with Albuquerque Red Nation, Ananda Lee Tan with Climate Justice Alliance, and artist Carrie Marie Schneider on August 22 at 5pm PST/8pm EST. And see you on our third call, Building Strategy and Co-Creating Culture, on September 5 at 5pm PST/8pm EST. 


Sign up at usdac.us/gnd to make sure that you receive the registration link and updates about this series!

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Celebrate International Mother Language Day!

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The United States government may have officially withdrawn from The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), but at the USDAC we stand with UNESCO and for the #RightToBelong through language and culture.

Today, along with UNESCO and member countries around the world, we celebrate International Mother Language Day.

At the USDAC we assert that culture is a fundamental human right—and we know that language is among the most powerful manifestations of culture. Yet, almost half of the world’s 6000+ languages are endangered, and one disappears at least every two weeks. As UNESCO states, “when languages fade, so does the world's rich tapestry of cultural diversity. Opportunities, traditions, memory, unique modes of thinking and expression—valuable resources for ensuring a better future—are also lost.”

We call on Citizen Artists everywhere to take a stand for linguistic diversity and language justice.

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Here are a few ways you can you take action toward belonging through language justice—the right for everyone to communicate in the language in which they feel most comfortable.

  • Learn about the variety of languages spoken in your community—and advocate for multilingual education practice and policies at your local schools, libraries, and other public services.

Cultural rights are only made real when we dedicate the energy and resources to supporting, promoting, and protecting them. Thank you for your efforts! And, as always, reach out at hello@usdac.us if you have any questions, comments, or just want to connect.



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CULTURE/SHIFT 2018 Recap: Welcoming Each Other Home

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At the USDAC National Cabinet meeting that preceded CULTURE/SHIFT 2018 (the people-powered department’s second national convening), a Cabinet member remarked that we have uncanny timing. The prior CULTURE/SHIFT took place just ten days following the 2016 Presidential election; and though few of us foresaw the outcome, all were grateful to be welcomed into a supportive community of people from many places who shared a commitment to culture as a path to equity, justice, and love. This time, when we gathered on November 1st in Albuquerque for CULTURE/SHIFT 2018, another election was just a few days away, and in a moment marked by intense organizing and mingled hope and fear, the mood of the body politic was divided.

On opening night, we stood together in the chill air of Albuquerque’s Civic Plaza to witness a beautiful acknowledgement of ancestors offered in song and blessing by Kansas Begaye (Diné) and Nicolle Gonzalez (Diné), to hear welcomes from the City’s Mayor Tim Keller and Hakim Bellamy, Deputy Director of the Cultural Services Department, CULTURE/SHIFT’s host partner. USDAC Minister of Activation and Collaboration and an Albuquerque native, Gabrielle Uballez, reminded the hundreds assembled there that

We are people who place our gifts at the service of community, equity, and social change.

We are more powerful than we think.

We are change.

And at a time marked by voter suppression, troops massing along the border, and violence directed at so many communities, Gabrielle said,

This weekend, as CULTURE/SHIFT-ers and USDAC Citizen Artists, we are that diverse, inclusive, beautiful group of people who is figuring out how we use our gifts in creativity, arts and culture to live together.

I invite you to take this energy and vision we collectively create this weekend back home with you into your homes, schools, neighborhoods, cities, states, and regions so we can show up as our whole selves to make U.S. who we really are and who we really want to be. Welcome! Welcome! Welcome!

Once again, we’d been welcomed into a true community, and the mood shifted. A path opened at our feet, marked by farolitos (sometimes called luminarias), small candles protected from the wind by paper bags. Carrying them, we wound our way into the convention center for a performance especially created for the occasion by The EKCO POETS— Maiyah King, Valerie Martinez, Michelle Otero, and Mónica Sánchez. And CULTURE/SHIFT 2018 had begun!

Participants process from Civic Plaza to the Convention Center for the welcome ceremony

Participants process from Civic Plaza to the Convention Center for the welcome ceremony

It was a full and rich three days, sold out with nearly 400 participants from the Southwest and around the U.S. taking part in more than 50 workshops, two plenaries, opening and closing ceremonies, and a culminating dance party. You can find a list of all the sessions here. Many of them were recorded on audio or video: scroll down on this page for a complete list. The Facebook album can be found here and there’s a great selection of photos on our website here.

CULTURE/SHIFT 2018 was infused with ancestral invocation and healing, participatory song, pop-up play, tools for making change on a neighborhood, city, and state-wide level, policy deep dives, movement and embodiment, calls to action, delicious food, cultural strategy, radical imagination, deep connection and listening, and raw honesty about both the grief and fear and the hope and possibility of these times.

With so much to choose from, it’s hard to know what could capture the spirit of CULTURE/SHIFT for those unable to attend, other than to say it was all ages, cultures, faiths, genders, abilities, all learning, all belonging, all engaging, all the time.

“This Moment: A Community Plenary,” the opening session on Friday morning, November 2nd, expressed it well.

You can watch the entire plenary on Facebook video here. After an acknowledgment of Tewa lands by Daryl Lucero of Isleta Pueblo and welcomes by Shelle Sanchez, Director of Albuquerque’s Department of Cultural Services and by USDAC Chief Instigator Adam Horowitz, one by one, six powerful Citizen Artists offered us five minutes each of deep sharing, and in between each pair of offerings, we turned to our neighbors to share our responses.

Frederick “Wood” Delahoussaye, Artistic Director of Ashé Cultural Arts Center in New Orleans, welcomed us home with a powerful short video originally created for New Orleans homecoming after Katrina, now replayed every August 29th. Then Wood spoke to us of an idea of home that encompasses everyone. “This weekend,” Wood said, “I want to offer you a chance to come home….Who you love, how you love, if you’re done with love, consider this space to come home. Take a moment, turn to your neighbor, and say ‘Welcome home.’” He was followed by Candace Kita, Cultural Work Manager of the Portland, Oregon-based Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon, welcoming us to bring all we are by sharing one of her own loves that isn’t always welcome wherever she goes: astrology. “I wanted to talk about astrology as an unconventional medium that moves us toward a lot of the same goals we have for cultural work: building connection, creating new narratives for understanding ourselves and the world, and healing in this divisive political moment.”

After an interlude of dialogue in pairs, Daniel Banks, Catalytic Agent on the USDAC National Cabinet and Co-Director of DNAWORKS, led us in breathing together and spoke about how so much that is being validated by science reinforces what many artists working in community know about the workings of our brains and breath to create connection, nourish creativity, generate empathy, and hold space for healing. “Breathing allows us to learn new things. In theater, our breathing is synchronized. Theater creates spaces of heightened understanding …[s]cientifically speaking, theater heals people and saves lives.”

After another dialogue interlude, Lulani Arquette, Catalyst for Native Creative Potential on the USDAC National Cabinet and CEO of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, shared that her ancestors were kahuna kalaiwa'a (master canoe carvers) and her great-uncles paddled with Olympic champion Duke Kahanamoku. Providing context for “I Ku Mau Mau,” a powerful Native Hawaiian chant she taught, she explained that it embodies the values of persistence and community embedded in the communal search for the right tree and the massive participatory process of bringing it home and turning it into a canoe.

Tannia Esparza, Executive Director of the Albuquerque-based Young Women United, “a reproductive justice coalition led by and for women of color,” came next, sharing her experience in organizing successful community-wide rejection of a ballot measure that would have eliminated abortion care. “We took it out of the polarizing narrative of pro-life and pro-choice, and flipped the script…to make it about people’s decisions, whether or not we agreed with abortion access itself.”

The topic for our third dialogue looked to the future: What seeds are you planting now that you hope to see grow and nourish future generations? Many people rose from the audience to share what they had heard, said, and felt. Visual artist Beverly Naidus, Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Arts, University of Washington – Tacoma, said, “It’s extraordinary to feel that you’re part of a national, maybe international group of insiders, rather than being an outsider, and to feel that you are resonating with the room in so many different ways. I thank you all for being here. I have so much gratitude.”

Charon Hribar of the Poor People’s Campaign leads the closing song of “This Moment: A Community Plenary”

Charon Hribar of the Poor People’s Campaign leads the closing song of “This Moment: A Community Plenary”

Chief Instigator Adam Horowitz offered a closing that ended this way: “May we continue conjuring futures different from the ones the powers-that-be would have us believe are the only ones possible. And may we vote on Tuesday!”

This plenary ended with a rousing song led by Charon Hribar, Co-Director of Cultural Arts for the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, who was joined onstage by a group of Citizen Artists who’d taken part in the previous evening’s “Happiest Hour of People’s Songs,” co-led by Charon and Santa Fe artist Alysha Shaw. Charon taught a new call-and response song written at a Poor People’s Campaign gathering by Minnesotan Ruth MacKenzie. Here are the first and last verses of “Goin’ On”:

There’s a racial justice movement goin’ on, goin’ on

Put your ear to the ground, feel the power movin’ around

There’s a racial justice movement goin’ on


There’s a cultural revolution goin’ on, goin’ on

Put your ear to the ground, feel the power movin’ around

There’s a cultural revolution goin’ on, goin’ on

Our gratitude to all who planned, prepared, presented, brought their hearts, souls, and minds to the convening, and together, welcomed each other home to CULTURE/SHIFT 2018! May all that you gave be returned to you a hundredfold!

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