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AAAC Testimony on the Cultural Plan for NYC
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September 21, 2017
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AAAC Testimony at a City Hall Hearing on the completed Cultural Plan for NYC
Sept 20, 2017
Int.
No. 419 stated in 2014 in its opening statement, “It is important to understand the scope of
cultural services throughout the City, where these services are lacking and how
cultural service gaps may be filled.” Many sought to seize the opportunity
afforded by this visionary effort to address the problem of cultural equity in
NYC. After decades of a history of benign neglect, racism, and discrimination
suffered by the POC artistic and cultural community, a resolution to this
problem was sought through listening to the needs and concerns of all those
affected. Even the CIG started to worry publicly their funds might be shifted
to POC orgs, reversing 40yrs of documented inequity. With the completion of
CreateNYC that promise has now died.
 |
| Commissioner Tom Finkelpearl testifies at the Hearing. City Councilman Peter Koo are among those listening. |
Asian
American Arts Centre was one of those who saw in this an opportunity that had
been impossible for forty years. After nearly two years of listening to New Yorkers
and the publication of an extensive record of such interactions, the city has
demonstrated it fails to listen where listening counts. AAAC and a thousand
other arts organizations and the communities and boroughs they serve, our
voices go unrecognized. Instead the lions share of funding to CIG has been re-inscribed,
their funds assured, 67% of NYC as people of color their homes and their
neighborhoods, are left to the real estate developers. Opportunity in America
reigns - for developers, as the people get priced out of their homes and their
neighborhoods.
At
the Cultural Equity Conference held in April of 2015 sponsored by the Cultural Equity
Group of which I am a member, I stated the need to recognize the value of
multiple cultures, especially traditional “wisdom bearers” who should be
honored, and recognized, as well as the elder nonprofit cultural organizations
many of these begun in the Civil Rights era whose community infrastructure has
grown priceless in their value to the city of New York as a roadmap to cultural
transition.
At
a New York Community Trust gathering held at Museo del Barrio In November of
last year I spoke again of these elder community organizations how their need
for succession funding was crucial for their continued survival. City officials
including Tom Finkelpearl were present at both these events. The city listens, however it listens
selectively. Now today three of these elder POC organizations are dying as our
Mayor fiddles with the numbers of people of color on the staff of CIG
institutions.
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| CityCouncilman VanBramer, sponsor of the Int. No. 419 and chair of the Cultural Committee listens to all who testify at the Hearing |
Clearly this is just a ruse, the return of the
New Audiences program of the 90s in another guise. This was when the work of artists of color
became so prominent, funding was given to established institutions to ‘grow
their audiences’ instead of the POC organizations where these artists were
developed. Our Mayor cant seem to give
resources to organizations where POC are on staff and also in control of their
institutions.
Will
the CreateNYC plan fill cultural service gaps, or offer even a few glimmers, in
the next three to five and more years? Yes, however the challenge of a cultural
plan for NYC, meaningful to race and cultural relations in NYC will have been
lost. The question then becomes, how will 60-70% of NYC population deal with
the continuing tradition of cultural neglect, denial, tokenism,
misrepresentation, and suppression?
Perhaps
it should be no surprise that our Mayor, and all those to chose this time to
address cultural equity, could not rewrite a cultural policy that has been in
place for generations, consistent with domestic and international policies
going back to before the ideas of Manifest Destiny if not to slavery itself.
 |
| Marta Vega (far left, of the Caribbean Cultural Center) testifies pointing out flaws in the language, definitions that affect the validity of the whole plan. |
Waves
of immigrants have dreamed bringing their energy to these shores. The price
extracted, that their descendants pay is to leave behind who they were - a
truncated memory. The price we may all pay for this is a society rooted in
materialism, in dollars. Seeing the CIG
in this light, their role in maintaining NYC and the USA as head and shoulders above
all others, it is conceivable though not necessarily laudable why our Mayor has
chosen to re-entrenched them.
He
may claim New York as a sanctuary city, but there are limits to what our Mayor
means by it. POC can take greater clarity as to the reality of our status, our
difference, and those who dream can be forewarned - the social consequences
generated, regardless the rewards it offers, how they may be used.
In
speaking with artists who live in countries where limits to artistic freedom is
explicit, some council that their situation is not so bad, once as artists you
accept your role, and that desperate times require desperate measures.
 |
| Thuan Uyen Le recently spoke in Brooklyn on the censorship artists have learned to live with in Vietnam. |
This
is about insight, the vision of the arts and artists – their gifts given to us.
It is oddly from this room, this hall, that it is inappropriate to speak of art
as art, to even see or recognize such a horizon exists. Arts voice is where the
horizon speaks. For those of us who are
listening deeply, and there are many, this legislative process is quite
antiquated.
The
issue of a multicultural America under whatever revised terms it becomes known
by, will remain a question beyond my generation and perhaps for many
generations. It is likely to become increasingly central to what shapes this
country and the people who reside in it.
Robert Lee, Asian American Arts Centre
