Stimulus Art: What Obama Can Use from Roosevelt's WPA

Bring on the WPA style projects that is. Reading this is just what I need to keep on keeping on. Gracias otra vez, Al.  Estamos vistando el sitio and leyendo cada post, sin faltar ni una. :-)

Si somos americanos, seremos buenos vecinos;
compartiremos el trigo,seremos buenos hermanos -- canción de Rolando Alarcón

The Republicans who believe that arts funding doesn't create jobs must not know anyone who owns a restaurant or shop that's located near a theater, gallery or music venue.

The arts create tourism, usually a big job maker. Many towns and even states rely on tourism as their number one income generator. Two small cities near me have helped to fund small live theaters for just that purpose. It isn't just the theater that beneits, it's the entire area.

According to the study Arts & Economic Prosperity III: The Economic Impact of Nonprofit Arts and Culture Organizations and Their Audiences by Americans for the Arts, as of 2005, the economic impact of the NON-PROFIT arts community on the economy:

Nationally, the nonprofit arts and culture industry generates $166.2 billion in economic activity every year—$63.1 billion in spending by organizations and an additional $103.1 billion in event-related spending by their audiences. The $166.2 billion in total economic activity has a significant national impact, generating the following:

• 5.7 million full-time equivalent jobs
• $104.2 billion in household income
• $7.9 billion in local government tax revenues
• $9.1 billion in state government tax revenues
• $12.6 billion in federal income tax revenues

Let me emphasize again that this is only looking at the non-profit arts and culture economy and excludes the motion picture industry, Broadway and all other such for-profit arts and entertainment product.

Here.

for me.  Just started reading "Furious Improvisation: How the WPA and a Cast of Thousands Made High Art out of Desperate Times,"by Susan Quinn.

Having watched the NEA get decimated over the last 20 years, I greet this as good news, if it passes.

Give us bread, but give us roses.

... that the explosion of creativity supporting Obama during the campaign did not come from the campaign -- people just up and did it.  The ubiquity of tools like YouTube and Photoshop made it easy.

which was also part of the WPA. Perhaps its time for a Federal Bloggers Project!

For the FBP!

He who tells the stories rules the world. -- Plato

Obama knows what art does to kids in school and how it boosts their problem solving ability, and how music study has proven to raise IQs by 3 to 30 pts. Because. He said it at the first rally I went to in a smallish school gym about six weeks after he announced his candidacy. He said you can't just give kids math and science. You need to feed their souls. He talked about the effect it had on his two daughters.

Jayne Lyn Stahl wrote in her eulogy to Harold Pinter, who died around Xmas or New Years: In the end, there isn't a hell of a lot more to say except thanks for stopping by, Harold Pinter, and, in the words of Samuel Beckett, for working "to find a form that accommodates the mess" as "that is the task of the artist now."

Those people need to remember too, that supporting the arts has a manufacturing and technical component as well. From the makers of canvas, materials for props, to the lighting technicians with their electronic equipment, several industries exist to supply the arts.

The arts also include music, and musicians. They need props.and technicians, too.

There are cities like New York where the arts are one of the major attractions for tourists.

Stimulus I can believe in.

Our truest responsibility to the irrationality of the world is to paint, or sing, or write, for only in such response do we find the truth.

- Madeleine L'Engle

Quincy Jones has said he wants to ask B.O. to create a Secretary of the Arts...which of course is not as important as providing cash to creative individuals but which would be an important symbolic statement about the importance of the arts.

Here's the petition:

http://www.petitiononline.com/esnyc/petition.html

I went to two of the schools in the Bronx that Al mentions. The library murals were a constant source of wonder every time I entered either chamber. I might add that most, if not all, of the schools with the murals, were built as WPA projects, with the murals just one aspect.

Thanks for this post Al.  As usual you see the bigger picture (or painting) and have the heart of an artist.  This made my day...one more step toward healing this mess.  Art is so important in our society, and often the first to be left behind. Art is evidence of our history, and often documents the most crucial stories and feelings of a particular time. It is also a powerful tool for change, that is why many are skeptical, and miss the beauty and purpose of it.

Thank God you're posting right now, Al.  We're all frightened of events falling into the same old narratives (which will at times inevitably happen in the coming months) but helping us to see some of the thinking (hopefully!) behind President Obama's strategy is uplifting.  It is facinating and frightening to think that the severity of the problems we face will in fact give the President the opportunity to make the changes that will resonate for decades.

Meanwhile, the Republicans continue to s*ck donkey b*lls.  Oooh, tax cuts!  What a vision!  And so transparently craven.  Perhaps they can revive America's sagging spats industry next.

How long is a generation?  I know they use to be 20 years or more, but it seems change occurs much quicker and a generation can be as short as 10 years now.  When someone refers to the word generation, how many years are they referring too?

Can you all provide my your two cents and the logic behind your answers?

Thanks

Jack Lang, a former Minister of Culture for France said, "Economie et culture; meme combat." Economy and culture; it's the same fight.

Please sign to the petition to help create a Secretary of the Arts...

http://www.petitiononline.com/esnyc/petition.html

Steffany - Here's one description from Wikipedia:

A familial generation is defined as the average time between a mother's first offspring and her daughter's first offspring. This makes a generation around 25 years in length give or take a few years. Cultural generations are significantly shorter, as noted below. Many experts now believe, partly because of the acceleration of culture, that cultural generations are approximately 10-15 years long. This trend of shorter generations is increasing, so that it is most relevant for recent generations.^[1] 

What I was referring to was Roosevelt's New Deal beginning in 1933 and basically being the dominant paradigm in US politics through the 1980 election of Reagan (i.e. 47 years). Had the Democratic Party not intervened so bloodily in Vietnam, that might still be the paradigm today, but that tore the social fabric apart in ways that provided an opening for the hyper-right to take over. And the Reagan "government of, by, and for the rich" paradigm has basically lasted until now, another 28 years.

I do believe that historians will look back at yesterday's Stimulus vote as the official end of the Reagan era, or at least the beginning of the end.

tktk

Thanks Al for your post.  As a former dancer and teacher of the performing arts, I am pirouetting for joy that you are making the case for supporting the National Endowment of the Arts.

This is also a wonderful day for people who love equality.  I watched the President sign Lily Ledbetter Equal Pay for Equal Work into law and thought of all the women, like my mother, who worked so hard for this.

I am also enjoying watching the swirling action around the stimulus package.  Anybody else think the President wasn't referring to the school snow day when he talked about bringing "flinty Chicago toughness to Washington"?

So, fist jabs all around and now I'm hitting the phones again to my two "moderate" Republican Senators.

Thanks Al, the wiki info was exactly what I needed to help in my understanding of the term.  Much clearer now.

I tune into Rush Limbaugh from time to time, and today I was suprised to hear him name-check not only Saul Alinsky, but also "Rules for Radicals." Apparently, Limbaugh has been talking about Alinsky for the last week. Limbaugh claims that he has been targeted by the President according to Alinsky's 13th rule: "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."

Is this yet another attempt to stigmatize Alinsky and community organizing a la the GOP convention speech that Matthew Scully wrote for Sarah Palin? As for Limbaugh decrying the tactics of personalization and polarization...

Forgive me this digression, but I couldn't resist, given the role that the topic of Saul Alinsky has played in the history of this blog.

This means a lot when some one like Q steps up to the plate making it known we need leadership and protection for the arts as meany other countrys have. Just think in the begining there was the breath then the word which was a sound and vibration. Then came a tone and rhythm There is nothing in this world which is not the instrument of God. We must protect what is sacred and universal, that we all love music and entertainment look around many of use make our living in this field or enjoy it!