What's Going On Here?

Obama Poster Artist Arrested and Arts Excised From Senate's Economic Stimulus Bill
Coincidence or Not? 

According to a Boston Globe story
Shepard Fairey, whose street art poster for the Obama campaign flooded the internet and local street corners, storefronts, apartment windows and battered bumpers across the nation, was arrested Friday prior to the opening of a major show of his work at the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art. Some accounts say he was arrested for outstanding warrants alleging illegal "tagging" related to the Andre the Giant street art campaign

Kudos to the museum for sticking up for him (sort of), "We're very disappointed," said Paul Bessire, deputy director of the Institute of Contemporary Art."Shepard Fairey is a wonderful artist who created some positive work and we were very pleased to present his work here and around the city. We feel he is an influential artist."

A few days earlier a story broke that Associated Press is in dispute with him, claiming he illegally used a photo owned by AP as the basis for the Obama poster. AP wants compensation. Fairey claims fair use. The copyright lawyers are having a heyday.

(A side note that demonstrates just how far gone copyright law is from the creatives it was meant to protect is that AP claims compensation while Manny Garcia, a freelancer no longer with AP, doesn't even figure in the case--he gets squat from the AP. Indeed, Garcia is on record as being pleased that his photo was used by Fairey.) 

Fairey has been arrested before, including at the DNC in Denver last year for hanging posters illegally, but one has to wonder about who dug up the old warrants and why now. There has been much activity by arts advocates to include money to provide jobs for artists in the economic recovery bill making its way through the US Senate. The House version included a $50 million infusion to the National Endowment for the Arts, that institution political pundits like Rush Limbaugh love to hate. Just about the same time the artist who helped make President Obama look really cool was being arrested again, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) added museums, theaters and arts centers to the list of projects prohibited from receiving any money from the bill. Your read right--the amendment says NO MONEY of any kind from anywhere in the bill to arts groups. The rest of the Senate gave it to him, including Minnesota's only seated Senator Amy Klobuchar, by a margin of 73 to 24.

The Inextricable Whole of Culture and Place

(First published November 30, 2008 on www.onthecommmons.org.)

Dedicated to an old friend: you welcomed me to the circle many times and fed me from an endless pot of homemade soup. To you I give thanks.

The young don’t seem to question the provenance of the bit of earth they stand on. It is up to the rest of us to teach the story of people and place—but first we must learn the most truthful account for ourselves.

Here in Minnesota on the occasion of the 150th Anniversary of Statehood, in the United States of America at the national holiday called Thanksgiving, I have been given a challenge to unlearn and learn again how I came to be in this physical place at this time. How the land on the banks of two great rivers, once held in common by indigenous tribes, was snatched and parceled out amongst settlers and state; how language, culture and a collective way of life was destroyed; how people were starved, imprisoned, executed and exiled from their homeland.

Actions by my predecessors and my government separated Native Americans in many ways—from their lands, from each other and from their culture. Tribalism was equated with “barbarism” and judged to be in direct opposition to self-reliance, self-determination and Christianity.

Native artists, historians and scholars are increasingly finding ways to share the story of their homeland. I recently reconnected with producer/media artist Mona Smith (Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota Oyate) of Allies: media/art. Smith has a portfolio of audio, video and media exhibits and presentations that evoke and enhance understanding of Native ways of being. She addresses the invisibility of Native people in their homeland and seeks to deepen the sense of place for all Minnesotans. She uses media to “enhance learning FROM Native people” and is piloting an interactive media website called the “Bdote Memory Map.” Bdote means the joining place of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers.

CLICK HERE for the pilot Memory Map at Allies:media/art

I feel specifically connected to these two rivers and was eager to

learn more about the bones of the earth buried beneath concrete, brick and steel of the cities, highways, and railroads located alongside the water. I was curious about the story of rural villages, farms, and processing plants on the rich, alluvial land.

Smith told me about the 2008 Dakota Commemorative March, the fourth such event which traces the deadly, 150-mile forced march of Dakota prisoners from southern Minnesota to the site of their 2-year imprisonment near Fort Snelling at the joining of the two rivers. Being reminded of this March was a poignant moment for me—causing me to access powerful childhood memories.

A few weeks ago, on the evening of November 13, when I thought the marchers had probably arrived at Pike Island after their four day trek, I walked to the bridge over the Mississippi River in my neighborhood and looked southward. It was a warm, misty night. The full moon disappeared frequently in the clouds and would then shine out again illuminating the trees on the banks of the gorge and glimmer back up at me up from the brown water 60 feet below. I was pensive and sad. Somewhere inside I was regretting that I had lived so long in this place but knew so little about the first inhabitants and the violence perpetrated on them.

And so I have spent the last weeks learning about the March and other events of the US-Dakota War. From Smith’s media art website and others I pieced together the story I was never told.

**********
I was born and raised in and near Mankato, in the Minnesota River Valley. My childhood holds memories of floods, bridges, rapids, cliffs, the smell of dense vegetation on bottom roads, and good times swimming in the river shallows, tributaries and quarries.

School day afternoons my siblings and I walked across the bridge to North Mankato to be tended by my aunt until dinnertime. Vaguely I remember a bronze plaque somewhere on my route that said, “Here were hanged 38 Sioux.”

The county historical society produced a booklet that was prominently displayed in the Carnegie Library. Mankato’s preferred claim to fame was Maud Hart Lovelace’s Betsy-Tacy book series, however the Blue Earth County booklet devoted some space to early settlers and mentioned Indian conflicts. I was fascinated with place names based on Indian words: Minneopa, Kasota, Watonwan, Winnebago. I did not notice that Native Americans as real people were absent from community life. I have no recollection of meeting anyone identified as Native American until college. I had no understanding of the history, tribal structure, or culture of the first people of the river valley I loved. I did not understand what “Indian reservation” or “removal” meant.

“Here were hanged 38 Sioux” was a phrase from the past that conveyed little to me. I have since understood the ignominy of the largest execution in US history that took place on December 26, 1862 on the banks of the river of my hometown.

The causes and effects of the US-Dakota War were deep and the conflict never ended until the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. A series of events including treaties that were unfair and destructive of Native American culture, and payments or food withheld dishonestly by corrupt agents created the conditions for the beginning of the War in summer of 1862.

In September, two groups of Dakota people surrendered, expecting by many accounts to be treated as prisoners of war—but that was not to happen. Instead Dakota warriors were separated out and tried for murder or other crimes against civilians at the Lower Sioux Agency near Morton, Minnesota.

The trials were conducted at lightening speed, nearly 400 trials in six weeks, some no more that 5 minutes each. 303 Dakota were sentenced to death and transported to Mankato. There 264 of the prisoners were pardoned (historical accounts say by intercession of President Lincoln, who questioned the validity of the war crimes charges but did not pardon all for fear of the consequences with the white settlers) and one reprieved but they spent the winter in prison nonetheless and were then sent by river to another prison in Illinois. The survivors of this group were finally released in exile four years later in Nebraska.

The 38 Dakota whose death sentences stood were executed December 26 en masse on a large platform and quickly buried in the riverbanks. The bodies were later unceremoniously dug up and distributed for medical study, including to the famous Mayo brothers.

On November 7 the other group that had surrendered, 1700 mainly women, children and elderly, were force marched 150 miles from the Lower Sioux Agency to a prison encampment at Fort Snelling in Saint Paul, where they spent two winters. Those who survived the harsh conditions were shipped to St. Louis and finally exiled to a reservation in South Dakota.

After the War some Dakota people stayed in Minnesota, keeping a low profile to avoid danger. Others left for familiar territory outside of the States. Subsequently the US Congress cancelled treaties and took back reservation land. The Governor placed a bounty on the head of any Dakota found in Minnesota—in other words the intention was annihilation of an entire people.

I live now in Minneapolis near the Mississippi River, close to where it is joined and fed by the Minnesota. Native American people live here also. Some city families maintain connections with their “home” reservation—ironically often lands in the Northern US or Canada where their ancestors were sent or migrated. Like me they may not know the story of this earth we walk and drive on everyday or the rivers that cut through Minneapolis and Saint Paul.

Allies: media/art

According to some creation stories this place is the center of the earth—where their people began. Now, almost 150 years later an organized education effort is burgeoning.

Smith’s Memory Map and other media works provide a rich, interactive mix of natural sounds and images, Dakota voices, historical photos and contemporary commentary. This living history has taught me more than any teacher or textbook about the people who lived here before me (pre-colonial, pre-industrial and pre-enclosure of commonly held land) and their enduring connection to the physical surroundings.

Several times in the pilot of Memory Map and related audio tracks I heard the words “we are here” and “we are home” intoned by Dakota voices.

I am home, too. I am here and more at peace for Smith’s gentle guidance through the loss and remembrance of the indigenous culture that lingers in this place. In her 2004 “Cloudy Waters: Dakota Reflection on the River” video, a Native voice says “we are all related, and if we look at it the world that way, things become simpler.” Yes, that’s true. Thank you for teaching me so.

******

For more on Native Americans as invisible commoners and severalty see Lewis Hyde on the On the Commons website. He draws historical connections between British property laws, the US Congress “allotment” of Native American lands in the 1880s and current legal aggression against other contemporary commons. He talks about the Dawes Act and other government action. Those who were willing to be separated from their commonly held lands were recognized as citizens and all other Native Americans became “invisible” in the eyes of the law.

On the Dawes Act and other topics see also the downloadable videos of Waziyatawin, Ph.D, Wahpetunwan Dakota from the Pezihutazizi Otunwe (Yellow Medicine Village) in southwestern Minnesota on the Minnesota Humanities Center Responses to Statehood
project site.

Caught in a Money Trap

(First published on July 10, 2008 on www.onthecommons.org)

The demise of an acclaimed, inimitable theater company gives pause for reflection on the history and future of arts infrastructure in America.

Gosh, you go on vacation and bad things happen to artists. I ran into a colleague after a few weeks away with my family and she told me that one of our most beloved, Tony Award winning, Minnesota theater companies, Theatre de la Jeune Lune is going out of business. “It’s dying time for the arts,” she said. She told me that her own organization, a spunky, definition-defying place that supports individual artists of all disciplines and cultures, is suffering too. She expects to cut her paid time back and will be looking for more non-arts work to support her creative life. “Yeah, its dying time again,” I said.

I lament this ongoing loss of the cultural commons. Once more, when times are bad and the potential pot of contributed dollars shrinks, the arts are dying on the vine. However, it is not the economy that needs fixing—but the arts system that is dependent upon and trapped in a tenuous relationship with it.



Theatre de la Jeune Lune -- CARMEN, performer Christina Baldwin © 2003 Michal Daniel

We need a vital arts sector. Artists are symbol creators who tell stories and create images that bring meaning to our lives. They show us beauty and evil. Through metaphor and narrative they expose and challenge the status quo. They have the courage to speak of unspeakable wrongs. They express what is complex, controversial, contested and timeless. And they also have the ability to help us envision a better world.

Yet here are the economic pressures placed on arts groups today and it is no wonder they falter. Cut staff. Trim expenses. Do more with less. Earn more income. Diversify your contributed income. Hone your brand identity. Target your audience. Get out there and “sell” corporate sponsorships. And in the meantime you better know how to comply with the IRS, foundation guidelines and state and local tax rules. The business side of the arts grows fat to keep up with all this complicated revenue raising and reporting while the creative side grows thin. Seasoned and wannabe arts workers fork out tuition for colleges and universities that offer degrees in “arts administration.” Service organizations hold filled-to-capacity workshops on donor relations and audience development—as if there is some secret to prosperity that the professionals know. If only we were in on it we could roll in the dough.

How long can we continue to erode the base and tinker with the system of (non)support for the symbol makers, the truth tellers, and the seers among us? Whenever the economy goes south so do government and private funds for artistic work, never to return to previous levels. Economist Ann Markusen, in her studies of the arts labor force, art centers and regional economies has shown the significant “arts dividend” reaped by arts rich communities. However, the sector depends on discounted labor by artists. The human capital they invest, by working other jobs to support their creative work, is never fully compensated. Flagship institutions’ costs, both the bricks and mortar and their ongoing operations, might be adequately supported by civic and philanthropic sources with the Herculean efforts of elaborate and specialized staff. However the community dividend doesn’t make it into the pocket of most artists—most certainly not the edgy, the grassroots, the hard to define or the locally based ones.



Theatre de la Jeune Lune – FISHTANK – Conceived by Steven Epp, Nathan Keepers, and Dominique Serrand, Created and performed by Steven Epp, Nathan Keepers, Dominique Serrand, and Jennifer Baldwin Peden, February 16 – March 22, 2008. Photo © 2008 Michal Daniel

In a report on the demise of Theatre de la Jeune Lune, City Pages, a Minneapolis/Saint Paul arts and entertainment weekly, says “[artistic director] Dominique Serrand’s eyes widen in consternation when he describes how administration-heavy arts organizations have become, with the grinding apparatus of raising donations essentially becoming a monster that feeds on itself.”

Theatre de la Juene Lune is a groundbreaking Minneapolis based theater troupe—not your average regional repertory company. Founded in France in 1978 by Parisians Dominique Serrand and Vincent Gracieux and Minneapolis native Barbra Berlovitz, they began by splitting the season between countries. Minneapolitans Robert Rosen and Stephen Epp joined later and eventually the group settled permanently here in 1985. They created significant new works and unique adaptations of contemporary and classic plays. Known for originality, humor, razor sharp satire and a tempestuous creative process, they are a zany, zesty, very serious artist collaborative of stature. Of course they had their financial ups and downs. The scuttlebutt about money trouble was there on and off, especially after they stuck their necks out to buy and renovate a large warehouse space. The plays, however, were consistently first rate. American theater is much the richer for their existence. Now the building is up for sale. The staff is laid off. And a few board volunteers are left to pay off debts and close the operation down.

This system of nonprofit arts organizations dependent on contributed support is an invention of the 20th Century. In Industrial America the non-amateur arts were commercial proprietorships and/or patron supported—mostly homegrown. Artists could make a modest if perhaps second class living performing, teaching, touring, composing, conducting, publishing or otherwise selling their work.

Times changed. Popular art and fine art parted ways with popular art mainly following the commercial path of new technologies like sound recording, film, television and the entertainment business. The era of private, tax deductible and government subsidy for museums, orchestras, dance companies and the like began. The beast called the arts grant, initiated to grow the “high art” sector, started big time with the Ford Foundation in the 1950s, followed thereafter by a flood of other foundations, corporations and government agencies looking to invest, leverage and increase output of arts organizations. The National Endowment for the Arts (a Kennedy Administration idea to propel the country into a position of world class cultural prominence) began in 1965 and seeded a network of state and local government grant makers focused as the Ford Foundation was on leveraging other contributions and growing the arts infrastructure.

The nonprofit arts sector (indeed all nonprofits) grew exponentially—for many reasons including the baby boom, societal changes like embracing free expression, and a good economy. Three side effects of all this philanthropy and taxpayer benevolence run deep in the current nonprofit arts system and are evident in the final story of Theatre de la Jeune Lune and many others.

One, the spread of the arts grants phenomenon started the professionalization of both the grant giving and the grant getting. In the past (and still sometimes today) an arts patron would support an individual artist or group of artists in a personalized way. Patrons and artists found each other somehow. No “development department” or “grants officers” needed. A proprietor of one’s own arts concern was unfettered with regulations and reporting. Not so in the nonprofit world today. Getting and managing contributions is hard work.

Two, labor and art products were devalued even further than before. Arts offerings for the public exploded but the growth was and continues to be dependent on the willingness of individuals (with the exception of a few “stars”) to work for a fraction of the worth of their labor and sell their goods for a fraction of their cost.

Three, the hole in contributed support that was to be filled by leveraging Ford Foundation-style and NEA matching grants never manifested to the degree needed to support a full grown sector. Sometimes it was there, sometimes not, like a shell game—turn over the shell and look for the coin. Ooops. Guess not. Now we are hooked and just keep playing the game.

Some people apply a supply and demand model and say the attrition of nonprofit groups during tough times is a necessary adjustment. We have all heard someone sometime say: “ if these artists can’t earn enough from their work then nobody wants it and they should just give up.” This free market logic denies the intangible, priceless value of the arts to society. It perpetuates the abuse of human capital that artists contribute to keep art alive and available. And it provides little or nothing to effectively replenish the collective well of human creativity.

We are at a crossroads of the commons today in many ways, including the arts. We have ourselves to blame if, complicit in our martyrdom and blind in our ignorance of the systemic flaws, we continue to claw for the same resources in the same old way. The economy has failed the arts, not vice versa. There is more dying to come.

Again from the City Pages article: “Our mistake was flirting with the existing system. It backfired,” he [Serrand] says. “What we need to do at a national level, if we want to have artists and real art, is look at the system. We’d be better off taking a portion of taxes and public money to fund art. Because the amount of bureaucracy that it takes to fundraise for an organization is a gigantic effort. And it takes away from the work, from the purpose of the work, and the results. Nationally right now the business is more important than the art, and that’s wrong.”

If we don’t start treating the arts differently who will be the risk takers and visionaries tomorrow? Many young people don’t see themselves following their elders’ footsteps into the enclave of the nonprofit arts—too much work for too little reward and they aren’t falling for it. Plus the division between commercial, entertainment, pop culture and the nonprofit arts seems arbitrary to them. In fact some don’t see a division at all. They move freely between both kinds of venues as musicians, spoken word, media and visual artists taking advantage of whatever opportunity they find in their quest to express themselves. Life, art, streaming music, hanging out at a street front gallery and YouTube meld together for them. I find such young people to be hopeful harbingers of change.

Theatre de la Jeune Lune – Amerika, Or the Disappearance – inspired by Kafka, originally produced with the American Repertory Theatre, text by Gideon Lester, adapted for Jeune Lune by Steven Epp and Dominique Serrand, featuring Sarah Agnew, Steven Epp, Nathan Keepers, Luverne Seifert and Suzanne Warmanen. Photo copyright 2006 Michal DANIEL

The creators of the nonprofit theater organization formerly known as Theatre de la Jeune Lune give me hope also. They are aware of a system crumbling of its own weight around them and ready to start again in a new way. Here are the farewell remarks from their website:

Starting today, we begin imagining a new way of working. What should a theatre-generating organization of the 21st Century look like? How can artists create truly groundbreaking art in a fast changing world? Times have changed and so have we. Building upon our artistic legacy, and facing a different future, we are exploring ways to reinvent an agile, nomadic, entrepreneurial theatre with a new name. One that can embrace the concentric circles of artists we have worked with over the years. Together we will create essential and innovative theatre for today’s changing audience. It’s an exciting new journey and we hope you’ll join us with your support, with your presence, with your belief. Fear not: the art is alive and coming soon to a theatre near you. Keep in touch.

******
Afterthoughts:

I told a colleague that it took 30 years for me to write this--20+ years in the arts trenches producing and fundraising; several years to study the recurring crises in the system from a birds eye perspective; and then the epiphany that this is a commons issue.

The latter revelation changes everything. Recognizing the arts as part of the commons removes the need to justify their monetary value or to be pitted against social service needs. The commons--whether natural, socially created or cultural-- is of immense intrinsic and monetary value. No part of the commons should be depleted; indeed resources should be poured back in. If so, arts and cultural groups need not go begging for subsistence.

Do you think the next step is to start dreaming--to imagine a new way? It would be a courageous and breakthrough act to question the hands that feed the non-profit arts. Is anybody up for that dangerous discussion?

Notes: 

Photos by Michal Daniel used with permission.

For an overview of the rise of the nonprofit arts see “Leverage Lost: The Nonprofit Arts in the Post-Ford Era” by John Kriedler. This 1996 article is available to download from In Motion magazine

Many thanks to Professor Ann Markusen at the University of Minnesota Humphrey Institute for Public Affairs for introducing me to a world of research and scholarly writing about the arts economy. She opened my eyes to the big picture.

Thank you to Theresa Sweetwater, Artistic Director of Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis, and soon-to-be new mom, for discussing and working through this theme with me.

Thank you to Mankwe Ndosi, Marcus Young, and Rachel Breen for back and forth dialogue also.

Commons à la Mode

First published in March 2008 on www.Onthecommons.org

The ice is out. All ice shacks had to be removed from Minnesota lakes several weeks ago and a tight group of hardy souls packed up the 5th Annual Art Shanty Project on Medicine Lake for another year.

I grew up on the shore of a Minnesota lake and remember well the first wonder and fright of walking on frozen water. Hearing the advancing and receding “ping” of cracks opening through miles of black ice. Peering down an ice crusted, manmade hole into the blue-black water and imagining fish in darkness and numbing cold. Walking all day in double layered clothing, looking at the shoreline from a novel perspective only possible in the dead of winter.

Commons rise up from the ice all over the North Country every year. There used to be more hand built icehouses like my Grandpa’s, fashioned out of scrap lumber and perhaps fitted out with sled runners or decorated with hubcaps and shiny bits. Now ice fishing is an industry. Entire villages of collapsible, high tech structures, portable grills, generators and concession stands are towed on to the ice by fleets of SUV’s for sponsored events and contests. Some people spend a lot of money at sporting goods superstores on gear they think they need to catch a little bitty sunfish from a hole.

The Art Shanty Project is no such ready-made and commercial endeavor. It is my favorite kind of public art project: egalitarian, community driven, participatory and site-specific. For an added interest this art takes place outdoors in a very harsh climate. Temperatures dropped to minus ten and twenty degrees for many days running in 2008.

In a matter of hours the Shanties are dragged out on the ice or assembled on the spot. A cozy, impromptu camp appears in a place that belongs to no one and belongs to everyone. Artists and friends take up residence for about five weeks and create a working community in the middle of the lake. Each year some new Shanties are built and some old ones return. They are beautiful, ugly, funny, satirical, functional, whimsical, and experimental. Some tell a story. Some host events and performances. None of them are actually for fishing.

Everybody is invited to come and take part in the fun for free. You can drop into the Knitting Shanty and learn to cast on and bind off. You can take part in the B-icicle Races, fill up in the Soup Kitchen (cream of tomato, bring your own bowl and spoon), and pick up some tips on hypothermia in the S.U.R.V.I.V.A.L. Shanty.

Interested in the science of ice? Try the underwater listening station or attend Ice AID at the Ice Museum Shanty–proceeds to benefit the last cold places on earth. How about the intersection of ice and time travel? The (tongue in cheek) Institute for the Advancement of Metatemporal Education and Research (IAMER) Field Museum Shanty is for you. And then there is the U of Minnesota Limnology Shanty where core samples from the lake bed are brought up for all to examine.

For families there is the Shanty of Misfit Toys, constructed of semi-transparent walls stuffed with discarded toys. It serves as a diaper-changing, breast-feeding, play and community space.

You can post your mail from the Postal Shanty—“It’s important to note that this service is in no way affiliated with the similar service offered by the U.S. government.”

You can take in some music or puppetry or political satire in the Black Box Shanty or do karaoke in the Norae Shanty.

After dark there is the Drive Out movie show.

This year there was a real Art Shanty Wedding on Ground Hogs Day. All were invited.

For a short time each year, like Brigadoon, this fantasy community comes alive. On a piece of frozen water, a chunk of not-real estate, a commons is created. Come summer, when the air conditioner is whirring and you sip a cool glass of ice tea, you might glance up at the refrigerator door, see that post card you sent to yourself with its distinctive “mailed from the ice” stamp and remember.

Photo by Willis Bowman, used with permission.

Art Shanty Projects 

Looking for Walt Whitman

Published on May 1, 2008 on onthecommons.org.

While channel surfing a few weeks ago I stumbled across a PBS American Experience program about Walt Whitman touched me and took me back to my first experience of his poetry.

As a teenager I precociously chose part of “I Sing the Body Electric” for a junior high recitation. The nuns were a bit conflicted. The literal way to interpret this piece from Whitman’s famous Leaves of Grass as a celebration of the sensual, physical human body had them worried. But I, in my youthful beneficence and eagerness to embrace humanity, went for the big metaphor. I loved the image of a body made up all people, connected and charged. I could see sparks leaping tiny gaps of space between ganglia and bone, igniting each other, lighting up and giving life and spirit to a body politic. I was particularly intrigued with the second line—to be surrounded and surround at the same time, to be an individual and yet be part of something else. Here is the first stanza from the 1887 edition of Leaves of Grass:

I SING the Body electric;
The armies of those I love engirth me, and I engirth
them;
They will not let me off till I go with them, respond
to them,
And discorrupt them, and charge them full with the
charge of the Soul.

Whitman saw himself as the national poet and set out to repair great divisions and moral tensions in a time of unrest just before the Civil War. He thought he could inspire Americans to put right the great experiment of democracy.

In this PBS program they used the phrase “urban affection" to describe Whitman’s fascination, appreciation, wonderment, even love for the immigrant citizenry of a young nation. His unabashed, expansive, free flowing poems illuminated the multitudes in intimate detail in hopes of uniting the nation.

Whitman did not see the country unite—in fact he witnessed the deepest sadness and misery of war. But his work continued and the poetry written over the course of his lifetime is timeless and magnificent.

I can’t help but wonder if we are at another critical point in history. My On the Commons colleague Harriet Barlow speaks of this as a time of “unraveling,” and that is how it feels to me. What has happened to our affection for each other? Affection is different than compassion and more than pity. It surpasses tolerance. It is fondness and tender feeling. Why do we no longer have this fondness for or even recognize the body we are part of? We are literally coming apart. Our connections to nature, to spirit, and to opportunities to develop fondness for each other are eroded. How can the heart know the head or the hand? How can the “I” recognize the “we” when everyday life numbs us and separates us into economic classes, political factions and target markets? The American Dream in this era is to possess for oneself and withdraw.

In one of his last writings Whitman spoke to us, the future generations of Americans:

If you want me again look for me under your boot soles…Missing me one place search another. I stop somewhere waiting for you.

I am looking for you Mr. Whitman. We need poets of the commons and we need them now—to introduce us to each other and restore tender feelings for ourselves. We need poets to knit the bones and stitch the tissue of our body back together, then charge it with the charge of the soul.

Studs Terkel’s Conversation with America Comes to a Close

Lee, Russell, 1903-, photographer. Homesteader and his children eating barbeque at the Pie Town, New Mexico Fair, 1940 Oct. Library of Congress, no known copyright restrictions, from Flickr.

Originally published on onthecommons.org Nov. 3, 2008

Studs Terkel died at age 96 on Friday October 31, 2008 at the end of a long career in television, radio and writing. His stock in trade was oral history—the original knowledge commons.

The articles I read on his passing mentioned that he was a great supporter of Barack Obama. What outcome did he miss on this election day?

I think that Studs Terkel loved this country and it's commoner citizens very much. But he was not so hopeful as he once was and said "the United States of Alzheimers. People have forgotten their own history."

History lives in the telling as much as it does in the textbook. I can only hope that a new generation, with readily available, inexpensive digital recording and distribution technologies, will continue to collect stories that make up our cultural heritage. The Studs Terkel website housed at the Chicago Historical Society, includes educational tools about collecting your own oral histories.

Library of Congress, no known copyright, from Flickr.



I remember my first encounter with Terkel—an audio recording of Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression. This recording helped establish my love of audio books. A voice without images (we are so used to visual imagery in this decade) is a powerful stimulant to the imagination. Close your eyes and truly listen—what can the tone, the diction, the prideful, defiant or trouble-laden human voice convey? Terkel’s quest for stories was not a scientific, ethnological survey approach. There was no attempt to dissect, quantify and theorize. He listened, asked questions and conversations unfolded. In Hard Times extraordinary everyday people spoke in their own voices, telling stories of hardship and joy more wrenching than fiction. The interviews yielded unscripted, diamond bright gems that sounded like lines from plays. But this dialogue could never be created by fiction writers. It was too iconic to be anything but real.

Terkel also interviewed famous people of his day. Whether his subjects lived lives in obscurity or fame his books and broadcast interviews include stories by the hundreds that are the stuff of all human experience. Common people in shared circumstances that contain the epic themes of the ages: the struggle for dignity, food and shelter, meaning and a place in the sun.

Terkel was a champion of the working class and gave me insight into my family history. My father and his brother left home during the depression looking for work. They traveled from Minnesota to California “on the rails.” They seldom talked about this—it was painful and perhaps they thought best forgotten. But Hard Times provided me a glimpse of what they went through. The voices in the book had such similarity to my father and my uncle's I could see them in the same situations—in the same struggle for work and sustenance.

This NPR page includes several interviews with Terkel over the years including his reading of selections from Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath that seem poignantly pertinent today.

And a February 2008 interview on BBC gives a different perspective of another country’s veneration for Terkel and his look back at America over a lifetime.

This Is Home

To watch this vlog on "YouTube":

On the occasion of countless numbers of home owners ignored in the Wall Street bailout.

The me-bodies don’t have enough of anything.

Nameless, faceless, in dwellings that don’t touch the ground.

There is no we where they live.

No front porch for passing the time.

Down dark halls, big locks on the door. Nobody there but me’s.

They do not remember, poor souls, the sweet smell, breathing the day in and out.

The me-bodies have traded loan papers but they do not know us.

A letter used to come every month from somewhere within the skyscraper.

Now it comes from another skyscraper next door.

“Hello,” I say.
Option 1

“Could I speak to…?”
Option 2

“Do you know our house and our pretty little neighborhood? It is just enough of everything.”
Option 3

“Would you like to come and see what you own? We could sit on the porch and visit with the passersby?”
Disconnect.

How To Dance in the Streets at a National Political Convention and Not Get Arrested

It’s September 1, 2008, day two of the Republican National Convention in Saint Paul, Minnesota. I am positioned on Kellogg Boulevard within the “soft perimeter” where no cars or bikes are allowed. I stand next to a heavily guarded pedestrian gate to the “hard perimeter” encircling the immediate conference site. Delegates, credentialed media and workers hustle in and out of the gate. I am listening with earphones to an mp3 player, dancing and smiling. I have been doing this solo dancing for 90 minutes. Soon I will join the rest of the "Don’t You Feel It Too?” dancers for another hour in Rice Park near one of the TV show stages.

My community is under siege. Warring forces have occupied Saint Paul. War-like language dominates conversation and reporting. Troops. Soldiers. Marching. Clashing. Tear gas. Helicopters. Blockades.

My community is a pass through for the commerce of politics. Millions raised and millions spent. The everyday occupants of public places and spaces called home are displaced while the convention takes over. Saint Paul and nearby Minneapolis politicians were promised lots of money would be spent in our local economy. They took the bait.

Security is big business too. When an operation like the RNC comes to town the locals loose the right to keep peace in their own way. Government and private funds flowed from somewhere. Forces were amassed and riot gear was stockpiled. A city block was surrounded with steel fences and security checkpoints. National Guard and city police officers were sent in from other states to help lockdown the convention site. Extra highway patrol cars cruise both Minneapolis and Saint Paul and are stationed at exits and entrances on the interstate highway, roadblocks at the ready to cut off and reroute traffic.

My community is awash with protestors of every ilk. Some have connections here and have been welcomed by brethren with local roots. Others act in their own interest only, believing their cause is holier. And others are just plain angry with everybody and everything.

My community is a media destination. From major networks to the tiniest stations here to cover their home state delegates, from self-appointed pundits to the satire juggernaut the Daily Show, they are here with cameras, crew, lights, microphones, logos and minivans. Some are interested in covering the convention itself, but others swarm to show interaction between police, protestors and delegates outside. They fan the flame of conflict. They broadcast snippets, snappy sound bites and print attention-getting headlines that give an inaccurate portrayal of my community. I take some of our Minnesota independent media makers and citizen journalists to task for feeding the hysteria also—for not being thoughtful, thorough and persuasive to rest of the country.

How did this happen? When we weren’t looking the business of electing a President grew so large it may be unstoppable. The personal was removed from national politics. People have abdicated responsibility for politics to a horde of corporate professionals. The possibility of democracy as a messy, vital, imperfect but redemptive tussle between people intimately connected through a mutual need to govern is a dim memory.

Protesting has become something many citizens are not willing to do. It takes money to get here, and an infrastructure to pull off a protest march—permits, legal expertise, transportation, lodging, computers, cameras and Internet access. It is risky to life, limb and a future career. It is the domain of the well financed, the almost fanatically dedicated, those with green cards and clean records, or those who think they have nothing to lose.

It’s about the commons again. We’ve lost more of what we once had together--a precious, tenuous legacy for peaceful self-governance tended and passed on from citizen to citizen over hundreds of years. The smell of money, hate and potential violence permeates. Fear follows and the very thin line between expression and oppression is crossed.

But what can I do? I am going to dance.

Don’t You Feel It Too? is a public art project by Marcus Young and his group called The Bird in the Sky Primary School of Behavioral Art. He calls it dancing where dancing doesn’t belong—a joyful protest against so much that is scripted or prescribed in our lives. He did not create the project specifically for the RNC convention but we are here as a collective force during The UnConvention determined to create disruption for joy.

Any one can take part. We practice to perfect the form but the premise is brilliantly simple. Each dancer has earphones and an mp3 player loaded with her or his favorite music. We start out individually and then come to a prearranged place to dance together. We don’t break any laws. We move if someone asks us to. We have no costumes or buttons or signs. We can fade in or out of the crowd because we are indistinguishable until we start dancing.

Our behavior is non-standard because it is joyful and unfettered. We smile. We dance our own kind of dance and make eye contact with viewers if they seem willing. We try not to interact verbally with people who want to know what we are doing except to say “don’t you feel it too?”

We practice balancing our interior and exterior environment—just enough into our tunes that we can find the confidence to look foolish, yet still aware and connected to the passers by.

By reading the energy and circumstances of a place we find a level of dancing that intrigues people but does not cause suspicion.

Many people can’t believe that we are not for or against anything. They can be quite insistent in their questioning: who is paying you? Who do you represent? What candidate or cause do you support? They really want to categorize us in the political spectrum. They press literature and buttons and hats on us. Some think we are advertising iPods. Some try to get us to pose for pictures with their McCain hats, Obama posters or pro- or anti-something signs.  For a funny example of such an encounter go to KRMG Tulsa Oklahoma.

Minutes before our first full out “action” at the convention on September 1, there had been a confrontation of police and pedestrians—some protestors, some agitators and some people just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Many were detained and eventually arrested. Our photographer was among this group of innocents. She never did get to join us that day. See her photos of the Shepard Road Arrests at Flickr.

As we walked into the conference zone tear gas was still clearing from the air. Police cars and troops in minivans were zooming up and down the usually quiet streets, sirens blaring and lights flashing in a show of force. Foot patrols in body armor with shields and clubs stood in formations on street corners and at the gates to the delegate-only areas.

Helicopters circled over and over.

I was frightened. Would I be arrested for dancing on a street corner? Would I be guilty by association with troublemakers?

Then I was angry at the excessiveness of power.

I soon became curious about the people on the street—delegates? Downtown workers? Transferring busses? Tourists? Just passing through? When I plugged in my earphones and started dancing I felt empathy. These people are scared too, I thought. They have been inconvenienced and bombarded with noise. They have just had a nasty taste of violence—on both sides—barely contained.

I set my intention. I can dance. I can smile. I can change this place by breaking out of the prescribed behavior. I can help people feel better, and be connected to me and to each right now.

I knew Marcus and the other dancers were out there somewhere. I switched to my second playlist and hiked over to one of the most heavily guarded gates for media and delegates. With Marvin Gaye’s sweet voice cranked up to drown out the sound of the sirens I danced my heart out for the return of humanity to this place and time. Nobody else could hear what I was listening to. They just watched and sometimes smiled or gave me nod or thumbs up. Joyfully, hopefully, peacefully I imagined a better day for democracy.

If you remember the end of the Vietnam War you probably know the song. Hum it and get up and dance.

Mercy, Mercy Me (the Ecology)

Mother, mother, there's too many of you crying
Brother, brother, brother, there's far too many of you dying
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today, hey

Father, father, we don't need to escalate
War is not the answer, for only love can conquer hate
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today

CHORUS #1:
Picket lines and picket signs
Don't punish me with brutality
Talk to me, so you can see
Oh what's going on, what's going on
Yeah, what's going on, ah, what's going on
Ahhh....

Mother, mother, everybody thinks we're wrong
Ah but who are they to judge us
Simply 'cos our hair is long
Ah you know we've got to find a way
To bring some understanding here today

CHORUS #2:
Picket lines and picket signs
Don't punish me with brutality
Talk to me, so you can see
What's going on, yeah what's going on
Tell me what's going on, I'll tell you what's going on

By Renaldo "Obie" Benson, Al Cleveland, and Marvin Gaye from the 1971 Album What’s Going On

Some stories from the dancers...
A man came up to me after the dancing on Monday and very gently asked about what we were doing, who we were with, etc... to which I only replied 'Don't you feel it too?' and told him there was a small group of us. He then said, "Well...I don't care about the details. I think its just wonderful.

I have rarely felt so elated or free of inhibition in a public place. My involvement in your piece has allowed me to exercise my public-muscles to transmit joy and that is great gift. I was dancing to a piece of music that changed rhythm a lot and I made a movement a bit like a robot (by accident), the people sitting around the pond laughed and giggled. It made me feel good and made them feel good, so mission accomplished!

A man selling DVDs about how the Muslim world is out to destroy the West tried to put his DVDs at my feet and take pictures of me dancing joyfully with them. Not wanting to serve as an "endorsement" of his product, I just kept dancing out of frame, and he kept moving the DVDs in front of me. After a while, I decided to dance toward him as an invitation to dance with me. I must have gotten too close because he kicked me in the shin. After an initial shock, I was determined to keep dancing and smiling and kept dancing toward him. He kicked me three more times, and even though part of me wanted to kick him in the face, I resisted, and eventually he was too embarrassed or something to stick around. What a test!

Photos by Avye Alexandres, Creative Commons license BY/NC/SA from Flickr.