Bernie Sanders Could Be the Best Arts President in US History

[Uncle Joe]

During the 2016 presidential campaign season, Bernie Sanders made an unusual pledge: “As president,” he said, “I will be an arts president.” He cited, as an example of his past support of the arts, the Burlington Arts Council, which he founded in 1981 as one of his first acts as mayor of the Vermont city, with the goal of making the arts “available to all, regardless of social, economic or physical constraints.”

The municipally funded effort supported public art in the form of street murals and performances in parks, as well as brought arts programming into public schools and provided grants to artists and small arts organizations. Early in his tenure, Bernie and his wife Jane O’Meara Sanders, then director of the mayor’s youth office, overturned a local ordinance against live performances on public property to establish a youth center that became an iconic punk rock venue, which still stands today. He brought free outdoor concerts, too, to Burlington’s Battery Park; today, the Discover Jazz Festival continues to bring live music to Burlington each summer. The council expanded over time; in 1988 Burlington was deemed “one of the most livable cities for the arts.” Today it continues to thrive. In his pledge, Bernie was unequivocal: “Art is speech. Art is what life is about.”

(snip)

In 2019, for the third year running, Trump proposed axing the National Endowment for the Arts, the federal agency founded in 1965 and the largest single funder of the arts in the country, which provides direct grants to artists and art organizations. NEA panels, made up of experts in different artistic disciplines, review grant applications and make recommendations to a panel. The NEA chairman makes the final decision on awards. Eliminating the NEA, however, would barely make a dent in the national debt, despite the Trump administration’s claims doing so is necessary to lower it. This year, the NEA’s appropriation is $155 million, which in inflation-adjusted numbers represents a steep decline from its heyday in the 1970s. The NEA’s most recent funding cut came in 2011 from the Obama administration, the result of a compromise with Republicans who wanted to do away with the agency entirely.

(snip)

We also have examples from our own history, and there have already been proposals that could bring us closer to robust state support for the arts. One intriguing suggestion is the creation of a new Federal Writers Project — part of the original New Deal’s Works Progress Administration, which funded Zora Neale Hurston’s work interviewing African Americas in Florida and inspired Their Eyes Were Watching God, as well as launched the careers of writers like Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright — to be included in the Green New Deal. Through this initiative, writers would be employed to use their powers of storytelling to address the climate crisis. This vision could be expanded to encompass all artistic media. After all, stories are told through the visual arts, dance, music, and theater, too.

The original New Deal provided a livelihood to thousands of artists, many of whom became legends. Their work gave Americans a glimpse into the lives of people who might otherwise have gone unseen and unremembered, including survivors of slavery. The New Deal gifted us public works of art that still stand, and community art centers that continue to serve their constituents.

(snip)

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/08/bernie-sanders-national-endowment-of-the-arts-nea-president-burlington-arts-council

[Me.]

1. OMG

all things to all people

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

4. And it will all be free, too!

[NurseJackie]

14. That's the important part. And fast too. (Six minute abs!)

[stonecutter357]

2. lol i just googled arts president.

[NurseJackie]

15. Jacobin...

[AllaN01Bear]

3. the rs have been wanting to dismanlte a lot of stuff before ray gun.

[George II]

5. And he's apparently rolling this into his "green new deal"!

There are a LOT of things in those 35 pages that have nothing to do with climate change, like this and many other proposals.

[NurseJackie]

16. For people who only got as far as the title page.

[pnwmom]

6. Not unless millions of Hillary 2016 voters decide to choose him this time around

instead of Elizabeth Warren, Kamala, Joe, Beto, Cory, etc.

[billpolonsky]

7. Once again, Bernie strikes a chord

It's one thing to beat Herr Trump...

(and I think many of the Democratic candidates this time round can and will beat him in the general)

...it's another thing to have a vision of a society beyond that great date.

I really appreciate Sanders' capacity to look into the future of the nation.

[Uncle Joe]

8. I agree billpolonsky, Bernie most definitely has vision.

[Joe941]

13. yup. this.

[lillypaddle]

9. HA!!!!

The guy barely has a soul.

[Uncle Joe]

10. "This Is the Soul of the Democratic Party"

(snip)

Warren set the tone for the night in stark terms. “We’re not going to solve the problems we face with small ideas and spinelessness,” she said in her opening statement. “We need to be the party of big, structural change. I understand what’s broken, I know how to fix it, and I’m willing to fight to make it happen.” Sanders, who played the bad cop to her good cop, reiterated that his goal was to “not only defeat Trump but to transform our economy and our government.”

(snip)

These moments gave some lower-profile contenders a chance to attack their top-tier rivals, though to little avail. “On Medicare For All, the hospitals will save substantial sums of money because they’re not going to be spending a fortune doing billing and the other bureaucratic things that they have to do today,” Sanders said. “I’ve done the math, it doesn’t add up,” Delaney chimed in. “Maybe you did that and made money off of health care,” Sanders fired back, referencing Delaney’s past work in the industry, “but our job is to run a nonprofit health care system.”

(snip)

But it was Warren and Sanders who delivered the most convincing visions for the future of the Democratic Party—and indeed for the country. Sanders did so by remaining relentlessly on message, as he has been for years, about dismantling the American oligarchy. Warren, meanwhile, appealed to Democrats who may want to dismantle the oligarchy, but who also live in fear of four more years of Trump—the voters, in other words, who are susceptible to the moderate candidates’ unfounded claims of electability.

“I get it,” she said. “There is a lot at stake, and people are scared. But we can’t choose a candidate we don’t believe in just because we’re too scared to do anything else. And we can’t ask other people to vote for a candidate we don’t believe in. Democrats win when we figure out what is right and we get out there and fight for it. I am not afraid. And for Democrats to win, you can’t be afraid, either.”


https://newrepublic.com/article/154567/second-democratic-debate-cnn-warren-sanders-battle-centrist-moderates

http://historymatters.gmu.edu/audio/8_5_7_a_FDRFirstInaug_MSTR.mp3

[dgauss]

11. Interesting article, thanks for posting.

[Uncle Joe]

12. Thank you dgauss.