At 6am on February 3 of 2011 I got this email from the Americans for the Arts Action Fund:
Dear Thomas,
We need your help.
The new majority in power in the U.S. House of Representatives is taking an axe to the current 2011 federal budget in an attempt to bring it down to levels from three years ago. That alone would cut irreplaceable National Endowment for the Arts funding to state and local nonprofit arts groups by at least $27 million immediately.
However, 175 members of the Republican Study Committee, an independent but powerful arm of the GOP party, are pushing even further by unfairly targeting total elimination of many programs that you and I care about. Elimination of such federal agencies as the National Endowment for the Arts would cripple support for nonprofit arts and culture programs in every city and state across the country. It would no doubt quickly impact the livability and economic vitality in Chicago as well.
Help us prevent attacks to disproportionately cut these federal agencies and programs:
- National Endowment for the Arts and for the Humanities, funding arts organizations throughout Illinois
- Arts Education Programs, which fund local model projects through the U.S. Department of Education
- Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds NPR and PBS stations throughout the country and are strong supporters of arts programming
In these next four weeks, the House of Representatives will finalize the 2011 budget. We don’t have much time – please donate even as little as $5 to the Arts Action Fund’s Campaign to Prevent Elimination of the Arts.
There were radio buttons for $5, $10, $25 and $50. The email was signed by Nina Ozlu Tunceli, Executive Director. Nina is Chief Counsel of Government and Public Affairs at Americans for the Arts, where she has worked for 15 years.
I think this is about the zillionth such email I’ve gotten from the Americans For the Arts and related advocacy organizations.
Who is Nina?
Her biography says “For 15 years, Nina has been Americans for the Arts’ chief policy strategist, overseeing all of its federal, state, and local government and public affairs work; grassroots advocacy campaigns; policy development; and national coalition-building efforts with both cultural and civic organizations to advance the arts in America.”
Well, Nina, I would say it’s time for you to resign. Given the current climate in Congress I would say the arts have not been “advanced” in America. I would say that we lost the Culture Wars of the early 1990’s and that the arts in America have never recovered. I would say that happened on your watch and that I don’t want to give you any more money for ineffectual “advocacy” campaigns.
Neither should you.
Here’s an image of a letter I received from the Christian Coalition in 1991.
Note the strongly worded intention: “We are training people to be effective – to be elected to school boards, to city councils, to state legislatures, and to key positions in political parties.”
You know what? They did exactly that. They told us what they were going to do. Basically, they would activate and train their base to fuel and propel a grassroots effort to take over America’s political infrastructure.
This is the flier the Christian Coalition sent out in 1991. The Christian Coalition is just one of many well funded evangelical or Far Right organizations that have engaged in policy and politics.
One annual event The Christian Coalition has used to surface new leaders and start training them is the Road To Victory Events.
They were successful from the start. The front page of the New York Times from November 11, 1992
has this headline: “Quietly, Christian Conservatives Win Hundreds of Local Elections.”
Let’s not forget that the way the Christian Coalition activated its base was by beating the crap out of America’s arts groups.
Dozens, if not hundreds of campaigns were aimed at arts funding organizations over America for over a decade. From the Panhandle of Florida to the Far North of Alaska, local Christian Coalition groups targeted arts exhibits they found objectionable and mounted strident direct mail campaigns to de-fund the arts. They raised millions of dollars by attacking the arts all across the United States.
The long and patient campaign to activate their fundamentalist base has born fruit. Below is a copy of a voter guide used by the Christian Coalition of Alaska in the local elections in Anchorage in 1997.
Note they have singled out the well known and much honored Out North Theatre. Out North’s mission is “To discover and share cultural explorers whose ideas challenge and inspire our lives; to raise up creative space where people of all cultures, generations and abilities gather and learn; and to champion, through the arts and humanities, people marginalized in our times.”
Eventually the founders of Out North, Jay and Gene Dugan-Brause, a same-sex couple, left the state for London. I talked to Jay at length a few years ago and he sent me a thick file of the articles and hate-filled letters and ads aimed at his organization. One article from December 5, 1997 tells the tale: “Alaskan Theatre Loses Funding: Claims Bias.”
Meanwhile, the electoral strategy of the Christian Coalition has born continued success. Here is an article from The Chicago Tribune from 2000. “Right makes might. Judging by their impact on races around the nation religious conservatives remain a political force.”
Funny. I don’t recall seeing a headline “America’s Arts and Creative Community Organizes To Become a Potent Political Force.” Nina, you must have been following this, right?
You can read my reporting on one Congressional victory by the Christian Coalition that sent moderate Democrat John Cox (Rockford, IL) packing in November 1992. I spoke to John in December of 1992. He was pissed off. He said “I would urge us all to become actively involved in the political process so that we don’t allow the outcomes of elections to be decided by those who are on a mission that I believe really does not represent the wishes of a majority of our citizenry.”
Who replaced Mr. Cox in Congress? Don Manzullo, that’s who. The last time I looked his Congressional voting record was abysmal:
- 2003 Americans for the Arts = 0%
- 2003 Sierra Club = 0%
- 1999 Consumer Federation of America = 25%
- 2003 Business-Industry PAC = 100%
- 2001 People for the American Way = 6%
- 1999 American Bar Association = 0%
- 2003 AFL-CI0 = 13%
- 2003 Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence = 0%
- 2002 Coalition to Stop Violence = 0%
- 2001 Children’s Defense Fund = 18%
It gets worse. The Christian Coalition and their allies turned their attention to state house elections across the country and went to work. Here’s another story from the New York Times from 2004.
So you want to know where the rash of initiatives across the country that have targeted text books, gay marriage and other repressive legislation came from. Now you know.
So what does Nina what us to do to counter this right-ward march that has led directly to the current state of affairs in American political life?
Near as I can tell she wants us to visit our law makers once a year and to send them email messages. We are to invite lawmakers to event openings and thank them for their support. We are to make the case that the arts are a good thing for America and her communities.
Right now she wants us to send her money.
I would urge all supporters of the arts in America NOT to send her a dime.
I would support the creation of a new instrument to organize America’s creative sector for political power in order to inspire, train and support our own people to run for local office. Why can’t we take OUR values and priorities into public life and use our problem-solving skills to serve the public and create new solutions to tough problems?
The Anti-Arts Coalition has done its work well and everyone in the arts and creative sector has suffered the consequences.
Isn’t time to try to duplicate their winning tactics?
February 6, 2011
Featured, Politics