San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Arts foster community, drive change
In an area with such stark inequality as the Bay Area, with pressing human needs such as poverty and homelessness, why should foundations and philanthropists support artists and arts organizations? The answer to this question lies in how we consider artists and cultural workers in relation to the community, and how they help address these and other problems.
The arts provide a way to bridge gaps and amplify the voices of those who may not otherwise be heard. This is not new. Throughout history, artists have used their art to catalyze social movements, spark revolutions and change entrenched societal beliefs. These artists often emerge from current struggles and work to change narratives around racial inequity, community health, housing and economic displacement.
For example, throughout Oakland’s history, activists have used their art to effect change. Groups from the Black Panther Party to Black Lives Matter to LGBTQ+ rights groups have often used creative expression as part of their tactics in Oakland and the Bay Area.
Today, Oakland remains a bastion of creative expression, with artist communities surviving in the area against great odds. The Joyce Gordon Gallery, the Betti Ono Gallery and the resident companies in the Malonga Casquelourd Center for the Arts located in the heart of downtown Oakland helped mobilize the larger arts community in working with city officials to create legislation launching Oakland’s first arts and culture district — the Black Arts Movement Business District (BAMBD) along Oakland 14th Street corridor. The arts are of vital importance to Oakland’s past and present. The arts foster community and create change toward a more just world.
In general, large and small arts organizations have struggled, yet small organizations led by people of color and LGBTQIA+ have struggled to sustain themselves and as a result many of them have closed their doors.
We are burdening organizations led by people of color, LGBTQIA+ people, people with disabilities, and other marginalized people with the most onerous, timeconsuming proposals for the lowest amounts of funding. This needs to change.
In California there are 103,191 artsrelated organizations employing 545,627 people, with nearly 40,000 arts employees in San Francisco alone. As
Back in 2013, in his first year in Washington, Rep. Eric Swalwell had a radical idea for an institution steeped in tradition. As he rushed back from weekend trips to his East Bay district for decidedly routine votes — naming post offices, allowing Boy Scouts to use the Capitol grounds for soapbox derbies — the Dublin Democrat questioned whether there was better way to handle that Monday evening business in the 21st century.
But HR287, the legislation he cosponsored with Rep. Steve Pearce, RN.M., to allow House members to vote remotely on procedural issues and to use videoconferencing in certain hearings went nowhere. Top House and Senate leaders, Democrat and Republican, then and now, have been opposed.
Swalwell never gave up on the idea. Now a pandemic that has sidelined two lawmakers with coronavirus and caused more than two dozen others to selfquarantine has brought the issue of electronic voting to the fore.
“So I sent a letter with (Rep.) Katie Porter at the beginning of the week with 50 members signed onto it, bipartisan, asking for this (remote voting) capability to be given to us” during the coronavirus emergency, Swalwell said. “And we’ve seen progress with it.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had been resistant to the idea. But rather than dismiss the letter out of hand, she asked Rules Committee Chairman James McGovern, DMass., to study and report on the matter.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, RKy., has been adamant. “We’ll not be doing this,” he said Tuesday. “We will deal with the social distancing issue without fundamentally changing Senate rules.”
Tradition is one of the forces against such a change, and there is no overstating its influence on the Capitol culture. Another concern is online security, though it would seem that any breach would be instantly detected. And then there is the “slippery slope” argument, that more and more of the legislative process would gravitate to the internet, diluting the personal interactions among lawmakers that are essential to finding common ground on significant matters.
Swalwell said another apprehension among some of his colleagues is that it would be perceived as shortcutting a way of supporting arts organizations working on the front lines of advancing racial and economic equity, the San Francisco Foundation Place Pathway launched the Artistic Hubs Cohort in 2013 and is now supporting a second cohort. AHC organizations such as Grown Women Dance Collective, consisting of dancers age 50 and over, is partnering with the East Bay Housing Organizations to create a dance piece to help organize affordable housing residents, many of whom are
their workload.
“I know in the past that some have not supported it because they thought of it as a proposal to have a virtual Congress, that we would never meet,” Swalwell said. “That was not my intent and I have never talked about it that way.”
Instead, he viewed remote voting as a way to handle routine matters — and emergencies.
“I see it as beneficial for the crisis we’re in,” he said. “I never intended it to be a substitute for meeting in Washington, only to supplement the work we do in Washington, so that when we are away we can still be productive.”
Porter, a firstterm Democrat from Orange County, said it would be especially helpful to younger members with children. She and Swalwell fall into that category. “Instead of getting
African American seniors. Additionally, in San Francisco’s Chinatown, the Chinese Culture Center is hosting an international exhibit on LGBTQIA+ people in 2020 to highlight the narratives of this often overlooked Bay Area population.
Local and national funders play a key role in these organizations’ ability to create capacity, as do city officials and policymakers. However, people of color, along with other marginalized groups, face an uphill battle to receive up at 5:45 a.m. on Monday, letting my kids get themselves off to school and spending the entire day on airplanes to arrive at the House floor by 6:30 p.m.” for a noncontroversial vote, the mother of three told the Associated Press.
Another benefit: It would give our elected representatives a chance to spend more time with their constituents and less time with Washington lobbyists.
Beyond that, it would compel members of Congress to make an adaptation to reality that Americans are experiencing, in the immediate and long term.
Many Americans of myriad endeavors — and all of us at The Chronicle not involved in printing or delivery — are working remotely to limit exposure to the coronavirus. Most Capitol Hill staffers are working from home. It’s ludicrous for members of the funding for their projects. Even during what the United Nations has declared the International Decade for People of African Descent, organizations led by people of color have received, on average, only 10% of philanthropic dollars over the past few decades.
We need artists and cultural workers to help address serious, systemic challenges in the Bay Area, where extreme wealth coexists with extreme poverty. Actions that can help to improve these circumstances: Funders and government should increase their investments in the small arts community Funding applications need to be simplified and streamlined to create a level playing field for smaller arts organizations. Funders should prioritize general operational support, capacity building and facilities grants so that more arts organizations can obtain the facilities they need in order to operate. Voters and appointing bodies need to put arts and cultural leaders on school boards, commissions and funding advisory committees.
Because of their potential for integrating economic development, performing arts and human services, arts organizations are critically important voices in policy conversations around cultural economies, creative placemaking, restorative justice and community cohesion. Sitting at the table with policymakers and philanthropists in conversations about critical social issues is an important next step for arts organizations.
Maya Angelou once said that “all great artists draw from the same resource: the human heart, which tells us that we are all more alike than we are unalike.” It is often through artistic connections, speaking directly from the human heart, that we can cultivate change and transform the cultural narrative, perceptions and even policies.
Danny Glover is an actor and U.N. ambassador. Barbara Lee represents the 13th District in the U.S. House of Representatives. Glover came of age as a young actor in the 1960s working with organizations like San Francisco Center for African and African American Art and Culture (now the African American Art and Culture Complex) and the Neighborhood Arts Program (NAP), which shifted the focus of the arts community to neighborhood centers that reflected the cultural identities of the local communities.
House and Senate to insist on inperson voting during this pandemic, especially with so many of them in the age range of greatest risk.
Also, it’s time for an increasingly diverse Congress to catch up with society’s growing appreciation of the need for a familyfriendly workplace. The rules that forced members to show up in the chambers to vote were made when men filled the halls and, as Sen. Dick Durbin, DIll., put it, “physical presence was the only way to make sure that a person was present and voting.”
Techsavvy members such as Swalwell have employed online tools to expand their reach to constituents. That he regularly uses Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat does not supplant his frequent town halls, in person and online.
“Our constituents always knew they could find us online,” he said. “And now (with the coronavirus crisis) almost everything shifted that way.”
Remote congressional voting would be the least of the changes that will emerge from this pandemic.
The mores of the new world struck Swalwell as he was home “maxing out on our Netflix consumption” with his wife and two young children.
“Anything that you see on television now when people shake hands or hug or in a large crowd ... you almost cringe: that’s not social distancing,” he said. “You’re already conditioning yourself to think that human contact is something inappropriate. My hope is that we go back to that. I don’t want to lose that humanity.”
We can all vote yes on that aspiration.
John Diaz is The San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial page editor. Email: jdiaz @sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JohnDiazChron