We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people. Dr. Martin Luther King In the Hebrew calendar, this is the time of t’shuvah, literally turning, but often translated as repentance. In preparation for the new …
It’s hard not to have an ambivalent relationship with political power, no matter how modest. There’s some truth to the notion that the people who most crave it are least reliable when they have it; but no more truth than there is to the idea that those who are negatively oriented to power will never …
What is the extent of our capacity for imaginative empathy? When is it easy to put oneself in the place of other, and when is the stretch too far to manage? I don’t have much trouble imagining how Henry Louis Gates felt earlier this week when he was arrested at the door of his own …
The radio is blasting Michael Jackson features. All of them end with the same note, that he was planning a “comeback tour.” It appears he had to leave to come back, as befits a figure whose early dive into the oceanic adoration of celebrity turned his life inside out. I find myself thinking this morning …
This is the first section of a talk I gave on 19 June 2009 at the National Summit of Ensemble Theaters, meeting at the University of San Francisco. Click here to download the full text. I’ve just moved back to California, part of a big life-change for me. Whenever I come here, I touch down …
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote briefly about the May 12th White House Briefing on Art, Community, Social Justice, National Recovery I had helped to organize. Now, a detailed report on the briefing has been released. You can download it from the Cultural Recovery page of my Web site. The report is the next …
I have some advice for Rocco Landesman, the newly appointed Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, but first I have to convince myself it is worth offering. In case he reads this, I’ll summarize my advice up front: Rocco Landesman, the intelligence, risk-taking and independence for which you are admired on Broadway will …
I’m on the road with time for just a quick note to tell you that on May 12th, more than sixty activist artists, community artists, creative organizers and uncategorizable fellow travelers took part in a White House briefing I helped to organize. Actually, it was two meetings in one: I’d proposed a meeting of community …
The most-forwarded article award for this week goes to “The Creativity Stimulus” by my friend Jeff Chang, which appears in the May 4, 2009 edition of The Nation. It’s a concise and compelling argument for the vital role that artists and artists-activists can play in democratic renewal and national recovery: Every moment of major social …
By now, I know my tribe: like Lewis Mumford, “I’m a pessimist about probabilities; I’m an optimist about possibilities.” (Or like Gramsci: “Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.”) If you’re a member too, perhaps you also watched Battlestar Galactica, a sci-fi series that just ended (but will certainly be available in one form …