The Trump administration has finally arrived where it always said it would: funding for the arts.
As TW4C, we’ve met with many theaters who were afraid to speak up for Palestine, even though their workers and community overwhelmingly supported the cause. Theater organizations didn’t take a stand for fear they’d attract the ire of the fascist MAGA agenda, or the so-called liberal Zionists in office before them. Now it’s plain to see that refusing to stand up to fascists and genocidaires only emboldens them.
We, & the movement in general, have tried to illustrate that Palestine is a domestic issue. That Palestine is related to struggles for immigrants, students, free speech, & the arts. Now there can be no other conclusion: We cannot hide from fascism. We can only fight it. We only can do that by being unafraid to stand up and speak out against its every lurch forward. This must include forceful condemnation of the unequivocal genocide & apartheid in Palestine.
This funding cut comes a mere 100 days into the 2nd MAGA administration. This war against the arts & working & oppressed people is just beginning. Many of us have relied on all the wrong tools, saviors, tricks. We are not our boards. We are not our ticket sales. We are our communities.
We are the working class & oppressed people who make this country tick, the vast majority of which have a clear moral conscience and imperative demand that we foster solidarity between disparate vulnerable groups. These are our audiences & they need us now more than ever to orient our institutional power & take up arms in this cultural war with them.
Our task is to build, talk to each other, make power from the ground up. To engage communities, gather their demands. Our theaters can be performance spaces, civic institutions, community sanctuaries all at once. This is the necessity of theater in dire times. There can be no business as usual. The Freedom Theater of Jenin is a shining example of how the show can go on in the midst of dire circumstances, but only if it is in cultural resistance. These are not simply defensive strategies. They are the way we fight our fascist foes.
ORGANIZE. FIGHT. WIN.
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