April 30, 2024 • 47 mins
Join our journey through the captivating world of art and its profound influence on societal transformation with Ken Grossinger, a strategist and documentary producer with a wealth of experience. This episode promises to reveal the often underestimated power of art to incite and sustain meaningful change. We reminisce about the civil rights movement and the United Farm Workers, where anthems and theatrical performances weren't just acts of expression but were essential to the courage and unity of those fighting for justice. Ken provides insights into how these artistic endeavors have left an indelible mark on our society.
Our conversation takes an exciting turn into the realm of cinema, where we unpack the extraordinary impact of films like "The China Syndrome" and "Nine to Five" and "Chasing Ice" on public awareness and activism. These cultural landmarks demonstrate the unique ability of movies to inform and mobilize, creating ripples of change that extend far beyond the silver screen. We also discuss the evolution of environmental activism's artistic expression. From silent landscapes to resonant songs in the campaign against Alaska's Pebble Mine, we see how art has become an integral voice in the chorus for environmental preservation.
The episode rounds off with a look at the transformative role of museums and foundations in community activism and social justice. Museums are stepping out of the shadows to become beacons of progress, taking an active stance on pressing issues by engaging with the stories and struggles of the communities they represent.
Through the lens of initiatives like the Art for Justice Fund and the JPB Foundation's integrated funding approach, we uncover how strategic collaborations between artists, philanthropists, and activists are crafting a new narrative for social change, proving that the brush, the lens, and the pen are mightier than ever before.
For more info: https://www.artworksbook.com
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Episode Transcript
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Osha Hayden (00:10):
How can we magnify our efforts to create a better
world?
This, I think, is a questionmany of us have been asking.
So on today's show, you'lllearn about the power of art in
the service of humanity and howartists and organizers working
together can become a powerfulforce for change.
(00:30):
This is Aspire with Osha, art,nature, humanity and I'm your
host, Osha Hayden.
My guest, Ken Grossinger, hasbeen a leading strategist in
movements for social andeconomic justice for 35 years in
community organizations andunions and as director of Impact
(00:53):
Philanthropy in DemocracyPartners.
He co-executive produced theaward-winning Netflix
documentaries the Social Dilemmaabout social media and the
Bleeding Edge on medicalimplants.
Welcome to the show, KenGrossinger.
Ken Grossinger (01:12):
Thanks, Osha.
Thank you for having me.
Osha Hayden (01:14):
So how do you believe that collaborations
between organizers and artistscan help widen the reach and
success of social movements?
Ken Grossinger (01:24):
There are two points to be made about that
question.
The first is just that art isnot just a reflection of or a
reaction to social conditions,but it's a contributor to social
change and one of its values.
In making that contribution hasto do with addressing the
(01:45):
narratives that underliepolitical fights, so that we
know, through organizing,through lobbying, through
advocacy campaigns, throughsocial movements, sometimes it's
possible to win legislative andpolicy victories.
But what happens is that whenpower changes hands, those
victories get rolled back and sothere's nothing long-lasting.
(02:09):
It's the pendulum swinging fromthe left to the right.
What art has the capacity to dois to penetrate popular culture
, those of us that have doneorganizing all our lives.
We know how to appeal to therational side of the brain, what
Bill McKibben says, the side ofthe brain that likes charts and
graphs and things like that,but we don't know how to
(02:31):
emotionally prime the pump forsocial change, and art has the
capacity to do that.
So I think it plays asignificant role in advancing
our agenda by having somelong-term sustainability.
Osha Hayden (02:47):
It's very powerful when you see it in person, but
what you're saying is, you canreally extend the impact and
make it last much longer.
Ken Grossinger (02:57):
Yeah.
Osha Hayden (02:58):
So you've been a community and labor organizer
for 35 years, but what promptedyou to write a book that focuses
as much on art and culture asit does on organizing now, at
this time?
Ken Grossinger (03:11):
Yeah, so I very much come from outside of the
art world, having done this workfor 30, 35 years.
When I learned how to thinkabout my craft, art and culture
were never a part of what Ilearned, and so when I practiced
it, it's not what I did.
And when I began to teachyounger organizers how to think
(03:32):
about their work, it's not whatI taught.
And then I married an artistand I realized how big a boat I
missed.
And I learned something.
I learned that it wasn't justorganizers that didn't think
strategically about the use ofart and culture in their work,
but it was artists themselvesthat often didn't see their work
(03:53):
in the service of socialmovements, but rather thinking
about their work as individualforms of political expression.
And so I think that marriage isso important that I wanted to
write a book that draws on someof the best examples that we
know.
Most of the book focuses on thelast 20 years, but it does
(04:17):
start with the civil rightsmovement, because in some ways,
the civil rights movement reallylaid the blueprint for
collaboration between organizersand artists today.
Osha Hayden (04:28):
Yeah, it was, because music was really a key
element of the civil rightsmovement, correct?
Ken Grossinger (04:36):
Yeah, can I read a small couple of quotes from
the book about that?
Osha Hayden (04:40):
For sure.
Ken Grossinger (04:59):
So James Foreman , the fourth person that he
hired when he ran SNCC, theStudent Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee, was a woman namedBernice Johnson Reagan, who at
that time helped to start theFreedom Singers but is now known
as the founder of Sweet Honeyand the Rock.
So James understood what musichad to offer.
James understood what music hadto offer.
And in talking about the civilrights movement, somebody else,
a reverend named Wyatt T Walker,who at that time was the head
of the faith-based SouthernChristian Leadership Conference,
talked about the power of WeShall Overcome, and that's the
quote I'd like to read.
(05:20):
And he says One cannot describethe vitality and emotion this
one song evokes across theSouthland.
I've heard it sung in greatmass meetings, with a thousand
voices singing as one.
I've heard a half a dozensinging it behind the bars of
the Hines County Prison inMississippi.
I've heard old women singing iton the way to work in Albany,
georgia.
I've heard the students singingit as they were being dragged
(05:42):
away to jail.
It generates power that isindescribable and commenting not
just on We Shall Overcome butmusic in general.
During the civil rights movement, a writer named Bruce Hartford
said the following "For us,freedom songs were the psychic
threads that bound the movementinto a tapestry of purpose,
solidarity, hope and courage.
(06:04):
The songs spread our message.
The songs bonded us together.
The songs elevated our courage.
The songs shielded us from hate.
The songs forged our discipline.
The songs protected us fromdanger.
That is really powerful, and Imean, no one listening to the
(06:24):
show today has not heard andexperienced the power of that
song, We Shall Overcome.
Let's switch to the United FarmWorkers.
The co-founder, Dolores Huerta,said that the primary aims of
their El Teatro Campesino wereto keep up the spirits of the
workers who were already onstrike and to try to reach the
(06:48):
people who were the growers whowould bring in the strike
breakers.
So you consider that among thefirst important joint labor and
cultural initiatives of the 20thcentury.
So how did it work?
How was it so powerful?
What made it so powerful is that it wasn't
professional actors.
(07:08):
These were skits and they wereperformed by workers in the
field picking the grapes.
And it draws upon anothertradition, one other really
important cultural and laborinitiative In 1939, there was a
union called the InternationalLadies Garment Workers Union at
the time, and they created aplay to shift how the public
(07:34):
thinks about working families,and it was called Pins and
Needles.
It became the most popular playon Broadway for its time, and
it was not performers orprofessional actors or actresses
, it was the workers in thecenters where they were
producing different types oftextiles.
(07:54):
And so this adds just sort of awhole other dimension and it
makes it a lot easier for peopleto relate, because these are
people that are actually doingthe work that they're talking
about.
They're not just performing.
Osha Hayden (08:09):
Yes, so there were two really important movies of
the late 1970s, the ChinaSyndrome about nuclear energy,
and Nine to Five, about genderdiscrimination.
So can you talk about the powerof film when it's linked to
organizing and the differencesbetween how those two films were
leveraged?
Ken Grossinger (08:29):
Great question.
One film, the China Syndrome,was focused on lifting
consciousness about nuclearpower, and the other film was
focused on supporting organizingfor equity for office women
workers, organizing for equityfor office women workers.
So the China syndrome, you mayremember, is a Jack Lemmon,
Richard Dreyfuss, MichaelDouglas, Jane Fonda.
(08:50):
Jane Fonda and Michael Douglasportray reporters who go into a
nuclear power station on theverge of a nuclear meltdown, and
ostensibly the film focuses onwhether it's possible to have a
nuclear power plant that wassafe and profitable at the same
time.
Ten days after that film cameout, three Mile Island happened,
(09:14):
the largest release ofradioactive material this
country ever experienced.
It was five on a seven-pointRichter scale in terms of its
seriousness, and so box officesales were now nine times the
production costs of the film,and it gave organizers a handle,
(09:35):
a way to think about this.
Ted Turner said it turned himagainst nuclear power, but it
was not directly tied to theanti-nuclear movement, and so it
was an important film.
It raised important questions,but it was not directly tied to
the anti-nuclear movement, andso it was an important film.
It raised important questions,but it stopped.
I compare and contrast that tothe film 9 to 5.
(09:55):
So 9 to 5, you remember,everyone remembers the song that
Dolly Parton wrote 9 to 5.
That's also with Lily Tomlinand Jane Fonda.
And Jane, after the Vietnam War,started working on women's
equity issues and she called upa woman named Karen Nussbaum who
started an organization alsocalled Nine to Five.
Nine to Five, the organization,proceeded to film Nine to Five,
(10:18):
and Jane said to Karen I wantto learn what women office
workers are thinking.
And so Karen takes Jane aroundto different affiliates in the
country, and Karen is based atthat time in Cincinnati, Ohio,
and they have a big mass meetingin Ohio.
Two or three hundred women cometo, and at the end of the night
(10:40):
Jane has this throwaway line,which was does anybody ever have
any revenge fantasies abouttheir boss?
And the place lit up and onewoman stood up and said "eah, I
want to grind his bones intocoffee beans and serve it to the
other managers in the company.
And so right then and there,Jane understood that this
(11:04):
shouldn't be a film that can betagged as quote, a feminist film
, unquote.
But it needed to be a comedyand it can penetrate popular
culture in that way.
And what she did is work withKaren and Karen's staff.
They organized a 20 city tourwith the film.
That film led to doubling thenumber of chapters in 9 to 5,
(11:32):
the organization, and Jane saidshe could always hold in her
heart that her movie was marriedto a movement, and so that's
really the difference between animpact campaign 9 to 5, and a
film that's meant to put outissues and lift up consciousness
but not go beyond, and so boththings are quite important.
But if you're focused on socialchange, you've got to be
(11:55):
focused on organizing, and ifyou're focused on organizing,
you've got to think about impactproduction.
Osha Hayden (12:01):
Gotta love Jane Fonda.
She got it in one, right?
The early environmentalmovement didn't know much about
art.
It just hadn't come on theirscreen, right?
I mean, what was going on withthat?
Ken Grossinger (12:18):
Essentially, the early portion of the
environmental movement wasdriven by scientists and, as I
was saying earlier, scientistsknow how to appeal to the right
side of the brain, to the sidethat deals with graphs and
charts and data, and so theyweren't thinking about what was
emotionally resonant for people.
Bill McKibben, the founder of350.org, lifted up this issue
(12:41):
and he said where are thegoddamn operas?
Where are the goddamn theaters?
Where are the paintings?
Where are the songs?
Where is the art in ourmovement?
And that slowly, not becauseMcKibben lifted it up, but it
slowly began to take hold andnow what we're seeing is an
amalgam of this, and it's becomevery, very important for the
(13:02):
future of our work on climatechange.
Osha Hayden (13:11):
So let's go back to the beginning of the century.
The Canadian multinationalcorporation sought to dig the
world's largest open pit minenear the salmon spawning
headwaters of Alaska's BristolBay.
Activists resisting the projectquickly realized that what the
campaign needed was a soundtrack.
So how did a theme song and analbum come to make a difference?
Ken Grossinger (13:31):
So you've really read this book and understand
it.
These are great questions, solet me set the stage.
We're talking about a sectionof Alaska called Bristol Bay.
Bristol Bay is a 65% indigenouscommunity in the area, and the
extractive mining industrieswere attempting to build the
(13:53):
largest open pit gold and coppermine in the country and the
second largest in the world.
That pitted them against thefishing industry.
So these are the two mostpowerful industries in Alaska
fishermen that fished forsustenance, for sport, and who
fished commercially.
(14:13):
Turns out, many of the fishermen, not surprisingly, are also
musicians, and they came to thisrealization that they lack a
theme song, an anthem if youwill.
And they called a guy named SyKahn, who has spent his life
working in the civil rights andlabor movement, doing organizing
and taking his artisticskillset and applying it there.
(14:36):
He's written plays, he'swritten books and he's produced
20 plus CDs of his music.
And so Sy goes up to BristolBay and the mine that they want
to create is called the PebbleMine.
And so the fishermen begin totake him around town, and one of
(14:58):
the first stops is a thirdgrade class, which was known as
Rebels to the Pebble class,which was known as Rebels to the
Pebble and Sy said, however youtalk to third graders, I will
be your musical messenger if youwill give me the message.
And from that encounter hewrote a song called Abundance.
And what was really importantwas not just it's a great song,
(15:26):
was not just the song itself,but what he did with it and
others that he wrotesubsequently, which is that he
took these songs into communityhomes, small gatherings of 10,
15, or 20 people, and he wouldperform these songs for them and
he would say did you like thissong?
Do you think it carried theright message?
Do you want me to take out aline?
Do you want me to jettison thesong altogether?
(15:48):
And that process created anenvironment of trust between the
indigenous community that werehosting these meetings and Sy
and some of the fishermen.
And eventually the fishermensaid to Sy, we've got Alaska
covered, what we need your helpwith is in the lower 48s.
And so Sy created anorganization called Musicians
(16:11):
United to Protect Bristol Bayand used his song to raise money
for the Pebble Mine fight.
And it illustrated thatmusicians are not just
performers.
They have mailing lists, theyhave social media contacts, they
have the capacity to raisemoney, particularly celebrity
(16:34):
musicians.
And so thinking about the musicis one thing, but thinking
about the musician is slightlydifferent, and it's why it's an
example of how the collaborationbetween artists and organizers
are so important.
We get fixated all the time, Ido too about the power of art
and how important it is, but itisn't just the art, it's the
(16:57):
person driving the art, and inthis case, Sy was driving it
with the organizers.
That campaign has now beengoing on 20 years and they've
gotten nowhere.
The Biden administration nixedpermits, and so they've not yet
started digging the mine, butit's an open question depending
on what happens in November 2024, about whether or not that will
(17:18):
hold.
Osha Hayden (17:20):
Mm-hmm.
And it's important because theeffects of the gold mining are
really toxic, toxic, waste.
Ken Grossinger (17:27):
It was to be built 150 miles from where there
(17:51):
was an earthquake at the turnof the century that killed
people, that caused 28 tsunamisthat devastated the land, and
there was no toxic waste inthere.
Had there been toxic waste atthe time in an earthen dam, that
entire community not only wouldhave been wiped out, but the
food sources, the fish, thewater sources, the streams and
(18:14):
the ocean, the bay, they allwould have been contaminated,
and so, rationally speaking,this just makes no sense, but
it's what the extractiveindustries were up to.
Osha Hayden (18:25):
Well, I hope it holds.
I hope it holds and they arenot able to.
So, Bristol Bay, people, if youhear Bristol Bay coming up, you
know who to contact.
First let's take a break andthen we'll come back in a moment
and we're going to talk aboutBlack Lives Matter.
So stay tuned and we'll be backin just a few moments.
So, in case you're just joiningus, this is Aspire, with Osha,
(18:59):
Art, Nature, Humanity, and I'myour host, Osha Hayden.
I'm here with Ken Grossingerand we are talking about the
power of art to create positivechange in the world.
So let's talk about Black LivesMatter, because that movement
(19:23):
has gone beyond the conventionalart-centered organizing of the
20th century, creating what youcharacterize as the largest
multicultural movement in fivedecades.
How have they added to whatcame before?
Ken Grossinger (19:35):
Much of what Black Lives Matter did was built
upon the artwork of the civilrights movement, but there were
some new elements to it thatplayed key roles.
One of them was social media.
Social media didn't exist inthe 60s, and we know that
through social media, peoplelistened to songs about Black
(20:00):
Lives Matter tens of millions oftimes.
They had tens of millions oflisteners, and it was not just
national, it was international,so it amplified, if you will a
sense in the way that music cannurture people.
It also critically targetedpublic monuments.
(20:20):
We all know that publicmonuments make good local
targets because they're in thecommunity, and all know that
public monuments make good localtargets because they're in the
community, and we know thatpublic monuments are basically
white Confederate generalslooking down from 16 feet high
on people passing by.
So an artist named KehindeWiley subverted that image.
(20:40):
He made his own monument and hepulled down the white
supremacist sitting on the horseand put up a black horseman in
braids and sneakers.
And so he not only mocked it,but now, if you're a little
child and you're walking pastlooking up at a 16-foot monument
(21:00):
, instead of looking up at awhite supremacist, you're
looking up at a different kindof hero, an earnest hero, and so
it was through the targeting ofpublic monuments and it was
through social media that BlackLives Matter was able to add
things to the work that had goneon before.
(21:20):
There was still much in common,you know.
Murals were a big part of BlackLives Matter, as they were in
the 60s.
Thousands of George Floydmurals were created not just in
the United States but in Europeand Palestine and Syria,
throughout the world, and thesemurals became centers.
(21:41):
They became centers forgrieving, they became centers
for holding each other and theybecame centers for activating
and calling to account peoplethat were responsible, the
police in particular, for theassault on Black lives, and so
(22:01):
it both built upon andcontributed to the work, and
that's sort of the narrative arcbetween the two.
Osha Hayden (22:24):
And Ai Weiwei, who did the Alcatraz exhibit, which
was amazing, and they did haveat the Kehinde Wiley exhibit, a
room where you could go and youcould write in response to what
you just experienced with theart, and they did have pamphlets
and things that gave youorganizations that you could
connect to if you wanted to takeit further.
(22:46):
But I'm wondering how you couldapply some of the things that
you're talking about to theseart exhibits to make them even
more lasting.
Ken Grossinger (22:56):
Museums are either going to become community
action targets or communitybuilding institutions.
We all know the targetingthat's going on right now.
Probably the most famous is thetargeting that Nan Golden had
done.
Nan Golden is a photographerwho got addicted during the
(23:17):
opioid crisis to OxyContin aftersurgery and she was furious and
began to do some research aboutwho was driving the opioid
crisis.
And the world came to know thatit was the Sackler family, and
she did what she knew how to do,which was to organize celebrity
artists to demandinternationally that the Sackler
(23:41):
name be pulled down frominstitutions, cultural
institutions around the world.
Even in the Tate London Museum,so pervasive were the
art-washing efforts of theSackler family that there was an
escalator that had a plaquecalled the Sackler Escalator.
So it was not just thegalleries, it was not just the
(24:03):
names of the museums, it was notjust the donor walls as you
walk into a museum.
It was pervasive.
And so it's an example of theway that museums will become
community action targets ifthey're not responsive to the
times.
But, getting more to your point, I just wanted to contextualize
it.
There's a lot that museums arenow doing that make them
(24:26):
community building institutionsand sustain organizing, and I'd
like to share two examples.
The first is from the NationalMemorial for Peace and Justice.
The National Memorial for Peaceand Justice is in Montgomery,
Alabama, and it's essentially806 cotton steel beams that are
(24:46):
hanging, and at the bottom ofeach beam is a large rectangular
block that evokes a coffin, andthe names of people who had
been lynched are inscribed inthat box, and the city and
county in which the lynchingtook place is inscribed, so that
if you're from Richmond,Virginia, and you happen to pass
(25:10):
one of those hanging steelbeams, you can bring back to
Richmond a life-size replica anddemand that a marker be put
down in Richmond to acknowledgethe lynching and to use it to
fuel social justice.
So Brian Stevenson, the founder, understood that museums have
(25:31):
to be as much about today andtomorrow as they are about
yesterday, and so it was adirect link to community
activism.
There is a similar kind ofexample that I want to share in
a totally different context, andthis is an example that grew
out of Louisville, kentucky.
(25:52):
So Louisville, of course, iswhere Breonna Taylor was killed,
and Ta-Nehisi Coates calls upthe artist, portraiture artist,
Amy Sherald, who did theportrait of Michelle Obama
that's in the National PortraitGallery, and says to Amy can we
commission you to do a portraitof Breonna Taylor for the cover
of Vanity Fair magazine?
(26:13):
And Amy Sherald says yes, andI'd like it shown in Louisville,
kentucky.
And so the director of the SpeedMuseum, which is the largest
and oldest cultural institutionin Kentucky, asked himself a guy
named Stephen Riley, what itmeant to be a museum director in
(26:34):
the times of Black Lives Matter, at a time when the fight was
right at your doorstep and whathe did was to empty out three or
four of his galleries withinthree or four months of the
killing.
Now, those of your listeners whofollow museums know that it's
usually a three to five yearexhibition runway to put up.
(26:56):
So to pull down in such a shortperiod of time is quite
stunning.
But Stephen Reilly went waybeyond that.
He then created two advisoryboards, and this is so different
than how museums function today.
He created a national advisoryboard made up of artists who had
(27:17):
family members killed or maimedby the police, and he created a
local community advisory boardmade up of mental health workers
, community advocates, economicdevelopment folks, and he tasked
both advisory boards, alongwith Tamika Palmer, who's
Brianna Taylor's mother, to comeup with the content for the
(27:40):
show.
They did, in fact, hire acurator, but it's the idea of,
rather than using, anindependent curator that has the
power to decide what it is theythink the community wants to
see.
This was an exhibition informedby the community, and Sadiqa
Reynolds, who was the CEO of theLouisville Urban League, said
(28:03):
at the time this is the firsttime that my people felt
comfortable coming into themuseum.
And fundamentally changed therelationship between her
community in Louisville and themuseum which is now used for
community meetings almost on adaily basis.
Osha Hayden (28:20):
Oh, you know, the Kehinde Wiley exhibit that was
here at the DeYoung also waspulled together pretty quickly
from what I understand, muchmore quickly than usual and so
praise to the director there fordoing that.
But I don't know if they wentto the extent you're talking
about at the Speed Museum interms of working with the
(28:43):
community to develop it.
Ken Grossinger (28:45):
It's really critical for museums to do that.
It can't be museums trying toengage the community around what
they want to get thecommunities that they want into
the museum.
There needs to be an authenticpartnership between the two, and
another example that the bookdescribes is the Queens Museum
(29:07):
of Art in New York, and what'srelevant about that to this
discussion is that the QueensMuseum was situated in the 65%
Latino community, and thedirector of the Queens Museum at
that time, a guy named TomFinkelperl, who went on to
become the New York CityCommissioner of the Arts,
realized that while he had lotsof attendants at his shows, none
(29:31):
of them was from the community,and so what he did which is
unheard of at the time was tohire a community organizer.
So he actually created a lineitem in his budget for a
community organizer, and hehired a community organizer
because he knew that what theorganizers could do is what they
have done in the past, which isthey can knock on doors and
(29:55):
they can ask people what it isthat they want from a museum in
their community.
And so, in addition to the doorknocking and the community
meetings, finkelperl began tohold focus groups at the Queens
Museum to really get at thisquestion in more depth.
Turns out, what people wantedwas a safe place where their
(30:16):
children can go.
That was fused with art, and so, with the help of the city,
with some of the budget from theQueens Museum and other sources
of funding, they created aplaza called the Corona Plaza
that, to this day, is infusedwith mariachi bands, with all
types of knitting, quilting, alldifferent forms of art, and
(30:41):
it's really contributed a lot.
So this idea of an authenticpartnership is just that.
It's not like well, we need tofigure out how to get them here.
It's like we need to be inconversation with them about
what they want.
Osha Hayden (30:56):
And this is really in pretty stark contrast to the
way some museums and foundationswork.
Do you want to talk a littlebit about that?
In terms of the donors and theboard members can have interests
.
They're often very wealthy andthey may have interests that
(31:18):
conflict with having sociallyrelevant exhibits at the museum.
Ken Grossinger (31:22):
So cultural philanthropy has a very troubled
past.
We know that it was whitephilanthropists investing in
elite art institutions that wereshowing white male artists, and
so, when you look at thisquestion, there's a whole set of
(31:43):
issues related to race, class,gender and identity embedded in
the history of culturalphilanthropy that we need to
pull ourselves out of.
There's one great story in thebook about an organization
called the Art for Justice Fund,which describes one way to pull
ourselves out.
The Art for Justice Fund wasstarted by a philanthropist
(32:07):
named Agnes Gunn.
Her friends called her Aggie.
Aggie was the chair of theMuseum of Modern Art, was an
arts benefactor, and she hadread Bryan Stevenson's book Just
Mercy and had seen the film.
And then she went to see AvaDuVernay's film 13th, which
traces the Atlantic slave traderight up through mass
incarceration, and connects thedots.
(32:28):
After seeing that film.
She calls up Darren Walker, whois the president of the Ford
Foundation, and says Darren, weneed to do something to end mass
incarceration.
And Darren then convenes ameeting of other foundation
executives to talk about whatthey might do.
Aggie comes up with an idea sheowns one of Roy Lichtenstein's
(32:49):
paintings and she calls up Roy'swife, dorothy, who's still with
us and says to Dorothy howwould you feel if I sold Roy's
painting that's above myfireplace, man, because I want
to raise money to end massincarceration?
Aggie sold that for $160million, and $100 million of
that $160 million went into anentity that she called the Art
(33:13):
for Justice Fund and, like Steveand Riley at the Speed Museum
in Louisville, kentucky, whatthey did was to engage people
who were incarcerated and thefamilies of people who were
incarcerated.
So not only did they get 50% ofall the grants that the Art for
(33:33):
Justice Fund was making, butthey were helping to inform the
decisions about who else,because who else than someone
that's close to the problem andis on the ground has a better
understanding of what'snecessary, and so it's those
types of partnerships that willenable philanthropy to break out
(33:54):
of the silos that they're in,and they're in very deep silos
in some cases.
You know, the largerfoundations have policy
departments on one side and theyhave art and culture
departments on another, and thatcan become very problematic.
So if you're an artist, aconceptual artist named Mel Chin
(34:16):
, Mel goes down to Louisianaafter Katrina and wants to do
something to remediate, lead inthe soil that Katrina uncovered
and quickly realized, afterconvening meetings of scientists
and public health advocates,that he was never going to raise
enough money to remediate leadin the soil and I'll get to the
(34:37):
point in a second.
And so what Mel did was createan art show.
And so what Mel did was createan art show and he created
something called fundreds, whichwere customized $100 bills made
by children, and he hired aBrinks armored truck, decked it
out and, with a 6,000-mile looparound the country, made stops
(35:00):
in cities around America to pickup these funders that his staff
that he had hired were helpingto organize not only students
but PTAs and other civicorganizations, and the idea was
to bring it back to the capitalto demand funding to deal with
lead remediation.
Now here's the point, if you'rea Mel Chin, do you go to the
(35:22):
foundation's advocacy and policydepartment for funding or do
you go to their art and culturedepartment?
And so that causes a schism inthe field between artists and
organizers, because foundationsare not set up in a way that
they're able to look at thewhole, that they can embrace the
two together.
They keep them siloed and theykeep their funding siloed.
(35:45):
So one of the things that weneed to do is what JPB
Foundation did was they began tofund artists working in the
environmental community, andwhen I asked them why this woman
, Dana Borland, said it'sbecause the organizers are
telling us we can't do our jobswithout them, and so they now
(36:07):
have an integrated program.
Osha Hayden (36:09):
Well, let's go to a short break and we'll be back
in just a moment with more KenGrossinger and the power of art.
Stay tuned, we'll be right back.
In case you're just joining us,this is Aspire, with Osha, Art,
(36:33):
nature, humanity, and I'm yourhost, Osha Hayden.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
I'm here with Ken Grossingertoday and we are talking about
the power of art to createlasting social and cultural
change and to create movements.
So let's talk a little bitabout filmmaking, because there
(36:56):
have been some very powerfulfilms that have come out.
One of them I'm thinking of isChasing Ice, by filmmaker Jeff
Orlovsky and his team, and theydid that to help shape the
public opinion about climatechange, and I think they did it
in the home district of aclimate denying congressman.
So how effective was it?
Ken Grossinger (37:19):
So the climate denying congressman his name is
Representative Tiberi, it was inOhio and Jeff Orlovski, by the
way, is the same filmmaker whomade the Social Dilemma.
He made several environmentalfilms , one is Chasing Ice,
which you referenced, the otheris Chasing Coral, and he just
did a short called Chasing Time,which I haven't seen yet but
(37:40):
I'm sure is going to be as greatas the other two.
And so Jeff wanted to test theproposition.
That film could have impact.
He wanted empirical data tosupport it, and so Jeff hired a
poster, a national polster namedMark Millman, to do a before
and after study.
And what Jeff did is he held 90screenings that collectively
(38:04):
brought together 9,000 peoplefrom Tiberia's district.
He also distributed 5,500 DVDsof the film.
In the before and after study,Millman found that on a range of
questions such as is climatechange man-made?
Does climate change exist?
(38:26):
He found the 15 to 25% jump inthe number of people that said
yes, and said that it was agreat concern, and so it really
did have a very strong impact.
Osha Hayden (38:40):
So let's talk about the new thinking and funding
sources of philanthropy.
You've talked a little bitabout this, but let's go a
little bit more into depth aboutwhere we can take it from here,
the funding and philanthropyand donors, and how do we get
past the fact that some of themmaybe have vested interest in
(39:01):
fossil fuels, for example.
What do you see as the criticalthings that we need to do in
the future?
Ken Grossinger (39:07):
What I think we need to do is build upon our
successes, and so if we look tothe philanthropic sources that
are funding good work, it's verydifferent than being critical
of foundations that are notdoing it, because foundations
have a lot of money and so theyhave a lot of power and they can
(39:29):
decide which organizations getthe money and which
organizations don't.
So if you want to move afoundation, or even an
individual philanthropist, theway to move them is not by
saying you're doing this wrong,this is really not working, but
you move them by example, and Ithink that's what we've got to
do.
And so we've got to point toorganizations like the Art for
(39:52):
Justice Fund, like the PopCulture Collaborative.
There's a foundation.
It's not a foundation, it's afund in the Bay Area connected
to the Center for Cultural Power.
It's a $23 million fund, andwhat the staff to the Center for
Cultural Power it's a $23million fund and what the staff
of the Center for Cultural Powerdid was to convene a community
advisory body, but it wasn'treally advisory, it was a
(40:14):
decision-making body.
So the staff of the Center forCultural Power didn't decide who
was getting the money, but itwas people in the community.
Osha Hayden (40:30):
So if we lift up examples like that.
We have the capacity todemonstrate that this is how it
works.
How are some of thecollaborations that you explore
in the book shifting how weorganize and think about
building and sharing power?
Because we're really talkingabout artists of all kinds
musicians, artists, filmmakers,theater, every aspect of art,
(40:55):
bringing them into the culturalchange movements.
Ken Grossinger (40:59):
I think that artists in many ways are already
a part of these movements, andthe organizers.
They also very much embrace art, but things break down along
organizational lines becauseartists and organizers think
differently about their work.
So, for example, if you're theLeague of Conservation Voters,
(41:25):
you're spending tens ofthousands of dollars on
poll-tested messaging so thatyou can communicate with the
public in the most effective wayas possible.
If you embrace artists on yourboard and on your staff, you're
then throwing up the possibility, because artists don't want
(41:45):
their creativity stifled.
They're artists about sendingout a different message, and so
we need to reconcile that, justas we need to reconcile the
timeline orientation.
So organizers want things doneyesterday, they want it done
today, they want it donetomorrow.
Artists feel the same urgency,but on their horizon.
(42:08):
Hank Willis Thomas, thephotographer based in Brooklyn,
said on his timeline, changehappens in 10, 20, 30, and 40
years.
And that's because Hank WillisThomas is talking about changing
the narratives, not justtalking about changing the
levers of power, but whatunderlies the leverage of power.
And so the way to mitigatethose problems is simply to have
(42:33):
an upfront understandingbetween the organizations and
the artists about what theycould expect from each other,
and it takes risk.
You have to be willing to riskthat an artist is not going to
do something which is going tonegatively impact your campaign.
And artists also have to takethe risk of entering into those
(42:56):
organizations, believing thatthey're not going to have their
creativity stifled that they'renot going to have their
creativity stifled.
Osha Hayden (43:07):
Yes, I mean, when you think about how people
develop trust and develop thosealliances so that they can work
together to create this kind ofchange, it's really pretty deep
and important work, and we'veprobably never needed it quite
so much as we do now, and Ithink that my listeners, I'm
guessing here, but I think mostof my listeners are pretty
(43:29):
interested in how they canbecome more effective in helping
to create change and helping tosave the environment and
protect the earth upon which welive.
So what would you say to mylisteners?
Ken Grossinger (43:45):
Change doesn't happen because one person does
it.
Change is a collective process.
You can be an artist, you canbe an organizer on your own, so
you can just boycott whomever,or you could create your own
individual artwork, and that'sfine.
But if you want social change,you've got to work in
(44:08):
collaboration, and so I thinkthe notion of artists who want
to think about and use theirwork in the service of social
movements, approachingorganizations that have the same
agenda and same outlook, is avery important thing for them to
be doing, just as if yourlisteners are part of an
organization like the League ofConservation Voters or others.
(44:32):
It's important to bring artistsinto the mix.
Artists need to be at thestrategy table.
That's what makes HarryBelafonte so effective.
That's what made HarryBelafonte so effective.
He was not just somebody whowas an activist that realized
that his art could propel thecivil rights movement, but he
was at the strategy tables.
He helped design the March onWashington in 1963.
(44:54):
He was really embedded, and sowe need to look at both things,
both approaches, and when we cando that, we can have some
victories.
Osha Hayden (45:06):
Excellent.
Well, thank you so much.
Just one other thing I want toask you is how do we do this at
scale, the collaboration betweenactivists and artists?
How do we scale it up to meetthe challenges of today?
Ken Grossinger (45:20):
Yeah, that's a powerfully important question
which will probably take anotherradio show, because there's no
easy answer.
Obviously, resources are key tothat, and so then the question
becomes where do those resourcescome from?
Who's going to fund it?
Who's going to fund the Leagueof Conservation Voters to hire
(45:41):
artists?
Who's going to talk to artistsabout?
So scaling it up is our nextstep.
That's why I wrote the book,because I wanted to scale it up,
and my next book may be how todo it.
Osha Hayden (45:53):
Excellent.
So when we build collaborationbetween artists and organizers,
political activists andphilanthropists, we can
basically power up our effortsand create dynamic social
movements.
You've been an inspirationtoday, Ken Grossinger, thank you
so much.
And your book again is calledArtworks.
(46:15):
Do you want to tell people howthey can get that?
Ken Grossinger (46:19):
Sure, there's a website, of course.
The website is artworksbook.
com.
You can review what's in thebook, you can see who commented
on the book and if you want toorder the book, you can order it
right there.
Again, it's artworksbook.
com, and I just want to saythank you to you, Osha, for your
years of service to thecommunity through this radio
(46:40):
show and for having me on aswell.
Osha Hayden (46:44):
Well, thank you.
Thank you so much for being onthe show today and - to my
listeners.
Have an inspired week and liveyour joy.
Until next time!
How can we magnify our efforts to create a better
world?
This, I think, is a questionmany of us have been asking.
So on today's show, you'lllearn about the power of art in
the service of humanity and howartists and organizers working
together can become a powerfulforce for change.
(00:30):
This is Aspire with Osha, art,nature, humanity and I'm your
host, Osha Hayden.
My guest, Ken Grossinger, hasbeen a leading strategist in
movements for social andeconomic justice for 35 years in
community organizations andunions and as director of Impact
(00:53):
Philanthropy in DemocracyPartners.
He co-executive produced theaward-winning Netflix
documentaries the Social Dilemmaabout social media and the
Bleeding Edge on medicalimplants.
Welcome to the show, KenGrossinger.
Ken Grossinger (01:12):
Thanks, Osha.
Thank you for having me.
Osha Hayden (01:14):
So how do you believe that collaborations
between organizers and artistscan help widen the reach and
success of social movements?
Ken Grossinger (01:24):
There are two points to be made about that
question.
The first is just that art isnot just a reflection of or a
reaction to social conditions,but it's a contributor to social
change and one of its values.
In making that contribution hasto do with addressing the
(01:45):
narratives that underliepolitical fights, so that we
know, through organizing,through lobbying, through
advocacy campaigns, throughsocial movements, sometimes it's
possible to win legislative andpolicy victories.
But what happens is that whenpower changes hands, those
victories get rolled back and sothere's nothing long-lasting.
(02:09):
It's the pendulum swinging fromthe left to the right.
What art has the capacity to dois to penetrate popular culture
, those of us that have doneorganizing all our lives.
We know how to appeal to therational side of the brain, what
Bill McKibben says, the side ofthe brain that likes charts and
graphs and things like that,but we don't know how to
(02:31):
emotionally prime the pump forsocial change, and art has the
capacity to do that.
So I think it plays asignificant role in advancing
our agenda by having somelong-term sustainability.
Osha Hayden (02:47):
It's very powerful when you see it in person, but
what you're saying is, you canreally extend the impact and
make it last much longer.
Ken Grossinger (02:57):
Yeah.
Osha Hayden (02:58):
So you've been a community and labor organizer
for 35 years, but what promptedyou to write a book that focuses
as much on art and culture asit does on organizing now, at
this time?
Ken Grossinger (03:11):
Yeah, so I very much come from outside of the
art world, having done this workfor 30, 35 years.
When I learned how to thinkabout my craft, art and culture
were never a part of what Ilearned, and so when I practiced
it, it's not what I did.
And when I began to teachyounger organizers how to think
(03:32):
about their work, it's not whatI taught.
And then I married an artistand I realized how big a boat I
missed.
And I learned something.
I learned that it wasn't justorganizers that didn't think
strategically about the use ofart and culture in their work,
but it was artists themselvesthat often didn't see their work
(03:53):
in the service of socialmovements, but rather thinking
about their work as individualforms of political expression.
And so I think that marriage isso important that I wanted to
write a book that draws on someof the best examples that we
know.
Most of the book focuses on thelast 20 years, but it does
(04:17):
start with the civil rightsmovement, because in some ways,
the civil rights movement reallylaid the blueprint for
collaboration between organizersand artists today.
Osha Hayden (04:28):
Yeah, it was, because music was really a key
element of the civil rightsmovement, correct?
Ken Grossinger (04:36):
Yeah, can I read a small couple of quotes from
the book about that?
Osha Hayden (04:40):
For sure.
Ken Grossinger (04:59):
So James Foreman , the fourth person that he
hired when he ran SNCC, theStudent Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee, was a woman namedBernice Johnson Reagan, who at
that time helped to start theFreedom Singers but is now known
as the founder of Sweet Honeyand the Rock.
So James understood what musichad to offer.
James understood what music hadto offer.
And in talking about the civilrights movement, somebody else,
a reverend named Wyatt T Walker,who at that time was the head
of the faith-based SouthernChristian Leadership Conference,
talked about the power of WeShall Overcome, and that's the
quote I'd like to read.
(05:20):
And he says One cannot describethe vitality and emotion this
one song evokes across theSouthland.
I've heard it sung in greatmass meetings, with a thousand
voices singing as one.
I've heard a half a dozensinging it behind the bars of
the Hines County Prison inMississippi.
I've heard old women singing iton the way to work in Albany,
georgia.
I've heard the students singingit as they were being dragged
(05:42):
away to jail.
It generates power that isindescribable and commenting not
just on We Shall Overcome butmusic in general.
During the civil rights movement, a writer named Bruce Hartford
said the following "For us,freedom songs were the psychic
threads that bound the movementinto a tapestry of purpose,
solidarity, hope and courage.
(06:04):
The songs spread our message.
The songs bonded us together.
The songs elevated our courage.
The songs shielded us from hate.
The songs forged our discipline.
The songs protected us fromdanger.
That is really powerful, and Imean, no one listening to the
(06:24):
show today has not heard andexperienced the power of that
song, We Shall Overcome.
Let's switch to the United FarmWorkers.
The co-founder, Dolores Huerta,said that the primary aims of
their El Teatro Campesino wereto keep up the spirits of the
workers who were already onstrike and to try to reach the
(06:48):
people who were the growers whowould bring in the strike
breakers.
So you consider that among thefirst important joint labor and
cultural initiatives of the 20thcentury.
So how did it work?
How was it so powerful?
What made it so powerful is that it wasn't
professional actors.
(07:08):
These were skits and they wereperformed by workers in the
field picking the grapes.
And it draws upon anothertradition, one other really
important cultural and laborinitiative In 1939, there was a
union called the InternationalLadies Garment Workers Union at
the time, and they created aplay to shift how the public
(07:34):
thinks about working families,and it was called Pins and
Needles.
It became the most popular playon Broadway for its time, and
it was not performers orprofessional actors or actresses
, it was the workers in thecenters where they were
producing different types oftextiles.
(07:54):
And so this adds just sort of awhole other dimension and it
makes it a lot easier for peopleto relate, because these are
people that are actually doingthe work that they're talking
about.
They're not just performing.
Osha Hayden (08:09):
Yes, so there were two really important movies of
the late 1970s, the ChinaSyndrome about nuclear energy,
and Nine to Five, about genderdiscrimination.
So can you talk about the powerof film when it's linked to
organizing and the differencesbetween how those two films were
leveraged?
Ken Grossinger (08:29):
Great question.
One film, the China Syndrome,was focused on lifting
consciousness about nuclearpower, and the other film was
focused on supporting organizingfor equity for office women
workers, organizing for equityfor office women workers.
So the China syndrome, you mayremember, is a Jack Lemmon,
Richard Dreyfuss, MichaelDouglas, Jane Fonda.
(08:50):
Jane Fonda and Michael Douglasportray reporters who go into a
nuclear power station on theverge of a nuclear meltdown, and
ostensibly the film focuses onwhether it's possible to have a
nuclear power plant that wassafe and profitable at the same
time.
Ten days after that film cameout, three Mile Island happened,
(09:14):
the largest release ofradioactive material this
country ever experienced.
It was five on a seven-pointRichter scale in terms of its
seriousness, and so box officesales were now nine times the
production costs of the film,and it gave organizers a handle,
(09:35):
a way to think about this.
Ted Turner said it turned himagainst nuclear power, but it
was not directly tied to theanti-nuclear movement, and so it
was an important film.
It raised important questions,but it was not directly tied to
the anti-nuclear movement, andso it was an important film.
It raised important questions,but it stopped.
I compare and contrast that tothe film 9 to 5.
(09:55):
So 9 to 5, you remember,everyone remembers the song that
Dolly Parton wrote 9 to 5.
That's also with Lily Tomlinand Jane Fonda.
And Jane, after the Vietnam War,started working on women's
equity issues and she called upa woman named Karen Nussbaum who
started an organization alsocalled Nine to Five.
Nine to Five, the organization,proceeded to film Nine to Five,
(10:18):
and Jane said to Karen I wantto learn what women office
workers are thinking.
And so Karen takes Jane aroundto different affiliates in the
country, and Karen is based atthat time in Cincinnati, Ohio,
and they have a big mass meetingin Ohio.
Two or three hundred women cometo, and at the end of the night
(10:40):
Jane has this throwaway line,which was does anybody ever have
any revenge fantasies abouttheir boss?
And the place lit up and onewoman stood up and said "eah, I
want to grind his bones intocoffee beans and serve it to the
other managers in the company.
And so right then and there,Jane understood that this
(11:04):
shouldn't be a film that can betagged as quote, a feminist film
, unquote.
But it needed to be a comedyand it can penetrate popular
culture in that way.
And what she did is work withKaren and Karen's staff.
They organized a 20 city tourwith the film.
That film led to doubling thenumber of chapters in 9 to 5,
(11:32):
the organization, and Jane saidshe could always hold in her
heart that her movie was marriedto a movement, and so that's
really the difference between animpact campaign 9 to 5, and a
film that's meant to put outissues and lift up consciousness
but not go beyond, and so boththings are quite important.
But if you're focused on socialchange, you've got to be
(11:55):
focused on organizing, and ifyou're focused on organizing,
you've got to think about impactproduction.
Osha Hayden (12:01):
Gotta love Jane Fonda.
She got it in one, right?
The early environmentalmovement didn't know much about
art.
It just hadn't come on theirscreen, right?
I mean, what was going on withthat?
Ken Grossinger (12:18):
Essentially, the early portion of the
environmental movement wasdriven by scientists and, as I
was saying earlier, scientistsknow how to appeal to the right
side of the brain, to the sidethat deals with graphs and
charts and data, and so theyweren't thinking about what was
emotionally resonant for people.
Bill McKibben, the founder of350.org, lifted up this issue
(12:41):
and he said where are thegoddamn operas?
Where are the goddamn theaters?
Where are the paintings?
Where are the songs?
Where is the art in ourmovement?
And that slowly, not becauseMcKibben lifted it up, but it
slowly began to take hold andnow what we're seeing is an
amalgam of this, and it's becomevery, very important for the
(13:02):
future of our work on climatechange.
Osha Hayden (13:11):
So let's go back to the beginning of the century.
The Canadian multinationalcorporation sought to dig the
world's largest open pit minenear the salmon spawning
headwaters of Alaska's BristolBay.
Activists resisting the projectquickly realized that what the
campaign needed was a soundtrack.
So how did a theme song and analbum come to make a difference?
Ken Grossinger (13:31):
So you've really read this book and understand
it.
These are great questions, solet me set the stage.
We're talking about a sectionof Alaska called Bristol Bay.
Bristol Bay is a 65% indigenouscommunity in the area, and the
extractive mining industrieswere attempting to build the
(13:53):
largest open pit gold and coppermine in the country and the
second largest in the world.
That pitted them against thefishing industry.
So these are the two mostpowerful industries in Alaska
fishermen that fished forsustenance, for sport, and who
fished commercially.
(14:13):
Turns out, many of the fishermen, not surprisingly, are also
musicians, and they came to thisrealization that they lack a
theme song, an anthem if youwill.
And they called a guy named SyKahn, who has spent his life
working in the civil rights andlabor movement, doing organizing
and taking his artisticskillset and applying it there.
(14:36):
He's written plays, he'swritten books and he's produced
20 plus CDs of his music.
And so Sy goes up to BristolBay and the mine that they want
to create is called the PebbleMine.
And so the fishermen begin totake him around town, and one of
(14:58):
the first stops is a thirdgrade class, which was known as
Rebels to the Pebble class,which was known as Rebels to the
Pebble and Sy said, however youtalk to third graders, I will
be your musical messenger if youwill give me the message.
And from that encounter hewrote a song called Abundance.
And what was really importantwas not just it's a great song,
(15:26):
was not just the song itself,but what he did with it and
others that he wrotesubsequently, which is that he
took these songs into communityhomes, small gatherings of 10,
15, or 20 people, and he wouldperform these songs for them and
he would say did you like thissong?
Do you think it carried theright message?
Do you want me to take out aline?
Do you want me to jettison thesong altogether?
(15:48):
And that process created anenvironment of trust between the
indigenous community that werehosting these meetings and Sy
and some of the fishermen.
And eventually the fishermensaid to Sy, we've got Alaska
covered, what we need your helpwith is in the lower 48s.
And so Sy created anorganization called Musicians
(16:11):
United to Protect Bristol Bayand used his song to raise money
for the Pebble Mine fight.
And it illustrated thatmusicians are not just
performers.
They have mailing lists, theyhave social media contacts, they
have the capacity to raisemoney, particularly celebrity
(16:34):
musicians.
And so thinking about the musicis one thing, but thinking
about the musician is slightlydifferent, and it's why it's an
example of how the collaborationbetween artists and organizers
are so important.
We get fixated all the time, Ido too about the power of art
and how important it is, but itisn't just the art, it's the
(16:57):
person driving the art, and inthis case, Sy was driving it
with the organizers.
That campaign has now beengoing on 20 years and they've
gotten nowhere.
The Biden administration nixedpermits, and so they've not yet
started digging the mine, butit's an open question depending
on what happens in November 2024, about whether or not that will
(17:18):
hold.
Osha Hayden (17:20):
Mm-hmm.
And it's important because theeffects of the gold mining are
really toxic, toxic, waste.
Ken Grossinger (17:27):
It was to be built 150 miles from where there
(17:51):
was an earthquake at the turnof the century that killed
people, that caused 28 tsunamisthat devastated the land, and
there was no toxic waste inthere.
Had there been toxic waste atthe time in an earthen dam, that
entire community not only wouldhave been wiped out, but the
food sources, the fish, thewater sources, the streams and
(18:14):
the ocean, the bay, they allwould have been contaminated,
and so, rationally speaking,this just makes no sense, but
it's what the extractiveindustries were up to.
Osha Hayden (18:25):
Well, I hope it holds.
I hope it holds and they arenot able to.
So, Bristol Bay, people, if youhear Bristol Bay coming up, you
know who to contact.
First let's take a break andthen we'll come back in a moment
and we're going to talk aboutBlack Lives Matter.
So stay tuned and we'll be backin just a few moments.
So, in case you're just joiningus, this is Aspire, with Osha,
(18:59):
Art, Nature, Humanity, and I'myour host, Osha Hayden.
I'm here with Ken Grossingerand we are talking about the
power of art to create positivechange in the world.
So let's talk about Black LivesMatter, because that movement
(19:23):
has gone beyond the conventionalart-centered organizing of the
20th century, creating what youcharacterize as the largest
multicultural movement in fivedecades.
How have they added to whatcame before?
Ken Grossinger (19:35):
Much of what Black Lives Matter did was built
upon the artwork of the civilrights movement, but there were
some new elements to it thatplayed key roles.
One of them was social media.
Social media didn't exist inthe 60s, and we know that
through social media, peoplelistened to songs about Black
(20:00):
Lives Matter tens of millions oftimes.
They had tens of millions oflisteners, and it was not just
national, it was international,so it amplified, if you will a
sense in the way that music cannurture people.
It also critically targetedpublic monuments.
(20:20):
We all know that publicmonuments make good local
targets because they're in thecommunity, and all know that
public monuments make good localtargets because they're in the
community, and we know thatpublic monuments are basically
white Confederate generalslooking down from 16 feet high
on people passing by.
So an artist named KehindeWiley subverted that image.
(20:40):
He made his own monument and hepulled down the white
supremacist sitting on the horseand put up a black horseman in
braids and sneakers.
And so he not only mocked it,but now, if you're a little
child and you're walking pastlooking up at a 16-foot monument
(21:00):
, instead of looking up at awhite supremacist, you're
looking up at a different kindof hero, an earnest hero, and so
it was through the targeting ofpublic monuments and it was
through social media that BlackLives Matter was able to add
things to the work that had goneon before.
(21:20):
There was still much in common,you know.
Murals were a big part of BlackLives Matter, as they were in
the 60s.
Thousands of George Floydmurals were created not just in
the United States but in Europeand Palestine and Syria,
throughout the world, and thesemurals became centers.
(21:41):
They became centers forgrieving, they became centers
for holding each other and theybecame centers for activating
and calling to account peoplethat were responsible, the
police in particular, for theassault on Black lives, and so
(22:01):
it both built upon andcontributed to the work, and
that's sort of the narrative arcbetween the two.
Osha Hayden (22:24):
And Ai Weiwei, who did the Alcatraz exhibit, which
was amazing, and they did haveat the Kehinde Wiley exhibit, a
room where you could go and youcould write in response to what
you just experienced with theart, and they did have pamphlets
and things that gave youorganizations that you could
connect to if you wanted to takeit further.
(22:46):
But I'm wondering how you couldapply some of the things that
you're talking about to theseart exhibits to make them even
more lasting.
Ken Grossinger (22:56):
Museums are either going to become community
action targets or communitybuilding institutions.
We all know the targetingthat's going on right now.
Probably the most famous is thetargeting that Nan Golden had
done.
Nan Golden is a photographerwho got addicted during the
(23:17):
opioid crisis to OxyContin aftersurgery and she was furious and
began to do some research aboutwho was driving the opioid
crisis.
And the world came to know thatit was the Sackler family, and
she did what she knew how to do,which was to organize celebrity
artists to demandinternationally that the Sackler
(23:41):
name be pulled down frominstitutions, cultural
institutions around the world.
Even in the Tate London Museum,so pervasive were the
art-washing efforts of theSackler family that there was an
escalator that had a plaquecalled the Sackler Escalator.
So it was not just thegalleries, it was not just the
(24:03):
names of the museums, it was notjust the donor walls as you
walk into a museum.
It was pervasive.
And so it's an example of theway that museums will become
community action targets ifthey're not responsive to the
times.
But, getting more to your point, I just wanted to contextualize
it.
There's a lot that museums arenow doing that make them
(24:26):
community building institutionsand sustain organizing, and I'd
like to share two examples.
The first is from the NationalMemorial for Peace and Justice.
The National Memorial for Peaceand Justice is in Montgomery,
Alabama, and it's essentially806 cotton steel beams that are
(24:46):
hanging, and at the bottom ofeach beam is a large rectangular
block that evokes a coffin, andthe names of people who had
been lynched are inscribed inthat box, and the city and
county in which the lynchingtook place is inscribed, so that
if you're from Richmond,Virginia, and you happen to pass
(25:10):
one of those hanging steelbeams, you can bring back to
Richmond a life-size replica anddemand that a marker be put
down in Richmond to acknowledgethe lynching and to use it to
fuel social justice.
So Brian Stevenson, the founder, understood that museums have
(25:31):
to be as much about today andtomorrow as they are about
yesterday, and so it was adirect link to community
activism.
There is a similar kind ofexample that I want to share in
a totally different context, andthis is an example that grew
out of Louisville, kentucky.
(25:52):
So Louisville, of course, iswhere Breonna Taylor was killed,
and Ta-Nehisi Coates calls upthe artist, portraiture artist,
Amy Sherald, who did theportrait of Michelle Obama
that's in the National PortraitGallery, and says to Amy can we
commission you to do a portraitof Breonna Taylor for the cover
of Vanity Fair magazine?
(26:13):
And Amy Sherald says yes, andI'd like it shown in Louisville,
kentucky.
And so the director of the SpeedMuseum, which is the largest
and oldest cultural institutionin Kentucky, asked himself a guy
named Stephen Riley, what itmeant to be a museum director in
(26:34):
the times of Black Lives Matter, at a time when the fight was
right at your doorstep and whathe did was to empty out three or
four of his galleries withinthree or four months of the
killing.
Now, those of your listeners whofollow museums know that it's
usually a three to five yearexhibition runway to put up.
(26:56):
So to pull down in such a shortperiod of time is quite
stunning.
But Stephen Reilly went waybeyond that.
He then created two advisoryboards, and this is so different
than how museums function today.
He created a national advisoryboard made up of artists who had
(27:17):
family members killed or maimedby the police, and he created a
local community advisory boardmade up of mental health workers
, community advocates, economicdevelopment folks, and he tasked
both advisory boards, alongwith Tamika Palmer, who's
Brianna Taylor's mother, to comeup with the content for the
(27:40):
show.
They did, in fact, hire acurator, but it's the idea of,
rather than using, anindependent curator that has the
power to decide what it is theythink the community wants to
see.
This was an exhibition informedby the community, and Sadiqa
Reynolds, who was the CEO of theLouisville Urban League, said
(28:03):
at the time this is the firsttime that my people felt
comfortable coming into themuseum.
And fundamentally changed therelationship between her
community in Louisville and themuseum which is now used for
community meetings almost on adaily basis.
Osha Hayden (28:20):
Oh, you know, the Kehinde Wiley exhibit that was
here at the DeYoung also waspulled together pretty quickly
from what I understand, muchmore quickly than usual and so
praise to the director there fordoing that.
But I don't know if they wentto the extent you're talking
about at the Speed Museum interms of working with the
(28:43):
community to develop it.
Ken Grossinger (28:45):
It's really critical for museums to do that.
It can't be museums trying toengage the community around what
they want to get thecommunities that they want into
the museum.
There needs to be an authenticpartnership between the two, and
another example that the bookdescribes is the Queens Museum
(29:07):
of Art in New York, and what'srelevant about that to this
discussion is that the QueensMuseum was situated in the 65%
Latino community, and thedirector of the Queens Museum at
that time, a guy named TomFinkelperl, who went on to
become the New York CityCommissioner of the Arts,
realized that while he had lotsof attendants at his shows, none
(29:31):
of them was from the community,and so what he did which is
unheard of at the time was tohire a community organizer.
So he actually created a lineitem in his budget for a
community organizer, and hehired a community organizer
because he knew that what theorganizers could do is what they
have done in the past, which isthey can knock on doors and
(29:55):
they can ask people what it isthat they want from a museum in
their community.
And so, in addition to the doorknocking and the community
meetings, finkelperl began tohold focus groups at the Queens
Museum to really get at thisquestion in more depth.
Turns out, what people wantedwas a safe place where their
(30:16):
children can go.
That was fused with art, and so, with the help of the city,
with some of the budget from theQueens Museum and other sources
of funding, they created aplaza called the Corona Plaza
that, to this day, is infusedwith mariachi bands, with all
types of knitting, quilting, alldifferent forms of art, and
(30:41):
it's really contributed a lot.
So this idea of an authenticpartnership is just that.
It's not like well, we need tofigure out how to get them here.
It's like we need to be inconversation with them about
what they want.
Osha Hayden (30:56):
And this is really in pretty stark contrast to the
way some museums and foundationswork.
Do you want to talk a littlebit about that?
In terms of the donors and theboard members can have interests
.
They're often very wealthy andthey may have interests that
(31:18):
conflict with having sociallyrelevant exhibits at the museum.
Ken Grossinger (31:22):
So cultural philanthropy has a very troubled
past.
We know that it was whitephilanthropists investing in
elite art institutions that wereshowing white male artists, and
so, when you look at thisquestion, there's a whole set of
(31:43):
issues related to race, class,gender and identity embedded in
the history of culturalphilanthropy that we need to
pull ourselves out of.
There's one great story in thebook about an organization
called the Art for Justice Fund,which describes one way to pull
ourselves out.
The Art for Justice Fund wasstarted by a philanthropist
(32:07):
named Agnes Gunn.
Her friends called her Aggie.
Aggie was the chair of theMuseum of Modern Art, was an
arts benefactor, and she hadread Bryan Stevenson's book Just
Mercy and had seen the film.
And then she went to see AvaDuVernay's film 13th, which
traces the Atlantic slave traderight up through mass
incarceration, and connects thedots.
(32:28):
After seeing that film.
She calls up Darren Walker, whois the president of the Ford
Foundation, and says Darren, weneed to do something to end mass
incarceration.
And Darren then convenes ameeting of other foundation
executives to talk about whatthey might do.
Aggie comes up with an idea sheowns one of Roy Lichtenstein's
(32:49):
paintings and she calls up Roy'swife, dorothy, who's still with
us and says to Dorothy howwould you feel if I sold Roy's
painting that's above myfireplace, man, because I want
to raise money to end massincarceration?
Aggie sold that for $160million, and $100 million of
that $160 million went into anentity that she called the Art
(33:13):
for Justice Fund and, like Steveand Riley at the Speed Museum
in Louisville, kentucky, whatthey did was to engage people
who were incarcerated and thefamilies of people who were
incarcerated.
So not only did they get 50% ofall the grants that the Art for
(33:33):
Justice Fund was making, butthey were helping to inform the
decisions about who else,because who else than someone
that's close to the problem andis on the ground has a better
understanding of what'snecessary, and so it's those
types of partnerships that willenable philanthropy to break out
(33:54):
of the silos that they're in,and they're in very deep silos
in some cases.
You know, the largerfoundations have policy
departments on one side and theyhave art and culture
departments on another, and thatcan become very problematic.
So if you're an artist, aconceptual artist named Mel Chin
(34:16):
, Mel goes down to Louisianaafter Katrina and wants to do
something to remediate, lead inthe soil that Katrina uncovered
and quickly realized, afterconvening meetings of scientists
and public health advocates,that he was never going to raise
enough money to remediate leadin the soil and I'll get to the
(34:37):
point in a second.
And so what Mel did was createan art show.
And so what Mel did was createan art show and he created
something called fundreds, whichwere customized $100 bills made
by children, and he hired aBrinks armored truck, decked it
out and, with a 6,000-mile looparound the country, made stops
(35:00):
in cities around America to pickup these funders that his staff
that he had hired were helpingto organize not only students
but PTAs and other civicorganizations, and the idea was
to bring it back to the capitalto demand funding to deal with
lead remediation.
Now here's the point, if you'rea Mel Chin, do you go to the
(35:22):
foundation's advocacy and policydepartment for funding or do
you go to their art and culturedepartment?
And so that causes a schism inthe field between artists and
organizers, because foundationsare not set up in a way that
they're able to look at thewhole, that they can embrace the
two together.
They keep them siloed and theykeep their funding siloed.
(35:45):
So one of the things that weneed to do is what JPB
Foundation did was they began tofund artists working in the
environmental community, andwhen I asked them why this woman
, Dana Borland, said it'sbecause the organizers are
telling us we can't do our jobswithout them, and so they now
(36:07):
have an integrated program.
Osha Hayden (36:09):
Well, let's go to a short break and we'll be back
in just a moment with more KenGrossinger and the power of art.
Stay tuned, we'll be right back.
In case you're just joining us,this is Aspire, with Osha, Art,
(36:33):
nature, humanity, and I'm yourhost, Osha Hayden.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
I'm here with Ken Grossingertoday and we are talking about
the power of art to createlasting social and cultural
change and to create movements.
So let's talk a little bitabout filmmaking, because there
(36:56):
have been some very powerfulfilms that have come out.
One of them I'm thinking of isChasing Ice, by filmmaker Jeff
Orlovsky and his team, and theydid that to help shape the
public opinion about climatechange, and I think they did it
in the home district of aclimate denying congressman.
So how effective was it?
Ken Grossinger (37:19):
So the climate denying congressman his name is
Representative Tiberi, it was inOhio and Jeff Orlovski, by the
way, is the same filmmaker whomade the Social Dilemma.
He made several environmentalfilms , one is Chasing Ice,
which you referenced, the otheris Chasing Coral, and he just
did a short called Chasing Time,which I haven't seen yet but
(37:40):
I'm sure is going to be as greatas the other two.
And so Jeff wanted to test theproposition.
That film could have impact.
He wanted empirical data tosupport it, and so Jeff hired a
poster, a national polster namedMark Millman, to do a before
and after study.
And what Jeff did is he held 90screenings that collectively
(38:04):
brought together 9,000 peoplefrom Tiberia's district.
He also distributed 5,500 DVDsof the film.
In the before and after study,Millman found that on a range of
questions such as is climatechange man-made?
Does climate change exist?
(38:26):
He found the 15 to 25% jump inthe number of people that said
yes, and said that it was agreat concern, and so it really
did have a very strong impact.
Osha Hayden (38:40):
So let's talk about the new thinking and funding
sources of philanthropy.
You've talked a little bitabout this, but let's go a
little bit more into depth aboutwhere we can take it from here,
the funding and philanthropyand donors, and how do we get
past the fact that some of themmaybe have vested interest in
(39:01):
fossil fuels, for example.
What do you see as the criticalthings that we need to do in
the future?
Ken Grossinger (39:07):
What I think we need to do is build upon our
successes, and so if we look tothe philanthropic sources that
are funding good work, it's verydifferent than being critical
of foundations that are notdoing it, because foundations
have a lot of money and so theyhave a lot of power and they can
(39:29):
decide which organizations getthe money and which
organizations don't.
So if you want to move afoundation, or even an
individual philanthropist, theway to move them is not by
saying you're doing this wrong,this is really not working, but
you move them by example, and Ithink that's what we've got to
do.
And so we've got to point toorganizations like the Art for
(39:52):
Justice Fund, like the PopCulture Collaborative.
There's a foundation.
It's not a foundation, it's afund in the Bay Area connected
to the Center for Cultural Power.
It's a $23 million fund, andwhat the staff to the Center for
Cultural Power it's a $23million fund and what the staff
of the Center for Cultural Powerdid was to convene a community
advisory body, but it wasn'treally advisory, it was a
(40:14):
decision-making body.
So the staff of the Center forCultural Power didn't decide who
was getting the money, but itwas people in the community.
Osha Hayden (40:30):
So if we lift up examples like that.
We have the capacity todemonstrate that this is how it
works.
How are some of thecollaborations that you explore
in the book shifting how weorganize and think about
building and sharing power?
Because we're really talkingabout artists of all kinds
musicians, artists, filmmakers,theater, every aspect of art,
(40:55):
bringing them into the culturalchange movements.
Ken Grossinger (40:59):
I think that artists in many ways are already
a part of these movements, andthe organizers.
They also very much embrace art, but things break down along
organizational lines becauseartists and organizers think
differently about their work.
So, for example, if you're theLeague of Conservation Voters,
(41:25):
you're spending tens ofthousands of dollars on
poll-tested messaging so thatyou can communicate with the
public in the most effective wayas possible.
If you embrace artists on yourboard and on your staff, you're
then throwing up the possibility, because artists don't want
(41:45):
their creativity stifled.
They're artists about sendingout a different message, and so
we need to reconcile that, justas we need to reconcile the
timeline orientation.
So organizers want things doneyesterday, they want it done
today, they want it donetomorrow.
Artists feel the same urgency,but on their horizon.
(42:08):
Hank Willis Thomas, thephotographer based in Brooklyn,
said on his timeline, changehappens in 10, 20, 30, and 40
years.
And that's because Hank WillisThomas is talking about changing
the narratives, not justtalking about changing the
levers of power, but whatunderlies the leverage of power.
And so the way to mitigatethose problems is simply to have
(42:33):
an upfront understandingbetween the organizations and
the artists about what theycould expect from each other,
and it takes risk.
You have to be willing to riskthat an artist is not going to
do something which is going tonegatively impact your campaign.
And artists also have to takethe risk of entering into those
(42:56):
organizations, believing thatthey're not going to have their
creativity stifled that they'renot going to have their
creativity stifled.
Osha Hayden (43:07):
Yes, I mean, when you think about how people
develop trust and develop thosealliances so that they can work
together to create this kind ofchange, it's really pretty deep
and important work, and we'veprobably never needed it quite
so much as we do now, and Ithink that my listeners, I'm
guessing here, but I think mostof my listeners are pretty
(43:29):
interested in how they canbecome more effective in helping
to create change and helping tosave the environment and
protect the earth upon which welive.
So what would you say to mylisteners?
Ken Grossinger (43:45):
Change doesn't happen because one person does
it.
Change is a collective process.
You can be an artist, you canbe an organizer on your own, so
you can just boycott whomever,or you could create your own
individual artwork, and that'sfine.
But if you want social change,you've got to work in
(44:08):
collaboration, and so I thinkthe notion of artists who want
to think about and use theirwork in the service of social
movements, approachingorganizations that have the same
agenda and same outlook, is avery important thing for them to
be doing, just as if yourlisteners are part of an
organization like the League ofConservation Voters or others.
(44:32):
It's important to bring artistsinto the mix.
Artists need to be at thestrategy table.
That's what makes HarryBelafonte so effective.
That's what made HarryBelafonte so effective.
He was not just somebody whowas an activist that realized
that his art could propel thecivil rights movement, but he
was at the strategy tables.
He helped design the March onWashington in 1963.
(44:54):
He was really embedded, and sowe need to look at both things,
both approaches, and when we cando that, we can have some
victories.
Osha Hayden (45:06):
Excellent.
Well, thank you so much.
Just one other thing I want toask you is how do we do this at
scale, the collaboration betweenactivists and artists?
How do we scale it up to meetthe challenges of today?
Ken Grossinger (45:20):
Yeah, that's a powerfully important question
which will probably take anotherradio show, because there's no
easy answer.
Obviously, resources are key tothat, and so then the question
becomes where do those resourcescome from?
Who's going to fund it?
Who's going to fund the Leagueof Conservation Voters to hire
(45:41):
artists?
Who's going to talk to artistsabout?
So scaling it up is our nextstep.
That's why I wrote the book,because I wanted to scale it up,
and my next book may be how todo it.
Osha Hayden (45:53):
Excellent.
So when we build collaborationbetween artists and organizers,
political activists andphilanthropists, we can
basically power up our effortsand create dynamic social
movements.
You've been an inspirationtoday, Ken Grossinger, thank you
so much.
And your book again is calledArtworks.
(46:15):
Do you want to tell people howthey can get that?
Ken Grossinger (46:19):
Sure, there's a website, of course.
The website is artworksbook.
com.
You can review what's in thebook, you can see who commented
on the book and if you want toorder the book, you can order it
right there.
Again, it's artworksbook.
com, and I just want to saythank you to you, Osha, for your
years of service to thecommunity through this radio
(46:40):
show and for having me on aswell.
Osha Hayden (46:44):
Well, thank you.
Thank you so much for being onthe show today and - to my
listeners.
Have an inspired week and liveyour joy.
Until next time!
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