Grassroots + Power IV: Corruption

I promised I'd get back to my thoughts about the relationship between the grassroots and power, which I started here and continued here and here. The point of those posts were to debunk anonymous comments of an extremely negative tone related to my approval of the 9/11 Day of Service collaboration between Americans for the Arts and Serve.gov (and, extremely indirectly, the National Endowment of the Arts).

To get onto the subject, I saw an article about Disney and the New Orleans Museum of Art from Real Clear Arts that was really a good look at the relationship between artists and corporate entities. The article takes a stance against their upcoming exhibit on the art of Disney animation. The heart of the allegation is here:

According to The Times-Picayune, "Lella Smith, the creative director of Disney's Animation Research Library...selected the art for the exhibit..."

And that was because? NOMA has no curators? (I see several listed on the website.)

NOMA appears to have suspended any critical involvement in the presentation of the exhibit, meaning that it really is a Disney exhibit, physically located in a museum. Will NOMA profit by it? Probably.

It reminded me of Lawrence Lessig's lecture on corruption (which if you haven't seen it, is here). One of the core points in Lessig's lecture is that the appearance of corruption to an institution can be as damaging to the institution as the existence of corruption itself.

So, say for instance, NOMA agreed to allow a Disney executive to curate the exhibit because, I don't know, she's a former NOMA curator herself, and they have a relationship bond that assures them that even though she works for a for-profit company, she'll select the right art for NOMA's exhibit while also satisfying her job for Disney. NOMA could stand by that, insist that although the appearance is corrupt, it isn't. It wouldn't matter. NOMA is an organization for the community, presumably (the first phrase on their website is "Your New Orleans Museum of Art"), so if they're trading their legitimacy even on the belief that their exhibit will be better, they're eroding their ability to reach out to their own audience.

So back to the 9/11 Day of Service. Some questions about the impact of collaborating with Serve.gov about the nature of the collaboration:

1. To what degree does the government exert power over the grassroots? None at all. The government cannot force any decisions or choices on the grassroots organization.
2. To what degree does the grassroots organization suspend its critical faculty? None explicitly. No leadership positions are replaced or made subordinate to government leadership (as opposed to NOMA allowing Disney to curate). It may be that starry-eyed liberal artists swallow Obama administration lines because of their belief in Obama's propaganda, and thus are suspending their critical faculties, but that's either happening already or it's not going to happen. Certainly, liberals are capable of criticizing the president. Obviously others aren't. But that has nothing to do with the 9/11 Day of Service.
3. To what degree does the government influence the grassroots? Clearly, there is some minor degree of influence. The government is trying to maximize the impact of certain organizations it finds beneficial, and it will not exert that influence on organizations it doesn't want to be associated with. An artistic needle exchange project--I don't know, one that collects used needles from drug addicts for use in an art project and gives drug addicts clean needles--will probably not ever appear on Serve.gov. Then again, that project probably won't find much private support either. It sounds like a bad idea. In a way, the government is really only competing in the free market, albeit the free not-for-profit market. The tools it is using are tools that a private foundation could use: a small amount of resources, a cloak of legitimacy, centralized promotion. FringeNYC uses the same tools.
4. To what degree does the impression of corrupt influence exist? This is a much more complicated question, because it brings in the notion of an organization's audience. If your organization has a mission statement that says something like "Our purpose is to stand up to the power structures that be, to speak truth to power..." then you should not be working with Serve.gov. But then again, you probably wouldn't be, and no one will make you. Remember that the 9/11 Day of Service is in the more limited realm of artistic community service organizations. It is typically thoroughly expected that an artistic community service organization would be working with government leaders to help organize their efforts, because their mission statements are aligned and the above questions can be easily answered with satisfaction.
   
   Now, I have seen productions that have failed this. For instance, one of my favorite theater companies, Witness Relocation, did a Passover show with a sizable grant from a Jewish organization (I wanted to look up the details but it's not in the "Shows" section of their website). I saw the show, and my first impression was, "Wow, they made this show because they could get money for it." It didn't seem to me that they knew why they wanted to do a show about Passover. The show failed, and it took a little bit of its legitimacy away. If I hadn't seen the show right before that, Bluebird (which also is not on the "Shows" section of their website), I might have written them off has having little-to-no integrity. Bluebird was an excellent show, and it felt like it was needed--even though it too had a cultural grant behind it (if I remember the information correctly).

So what I'm realizing is that a corrupt power relationship between a grassroots organization and a power organization is where:

• The power organization (government or private) can exert power over the grassroots without the grassroots being able to defend against it
• The grassroots organization cedes critical faculty or self-control to the power organization
• The power organization exerts too much indirect influence over the grassroots organization
• The two organizations have dissonance in their missions and/or audiences

Obviously, corruption is a sliding scale, and not all of these elements have to be present for corruption to begin. But if you're about to collaborate with a power organization, then those are the four points you should test your relationship by.

Grassroots + Power II: Copyright and Enforcement

I'll give one example about "government involvement" that is not "government power relationship." The other day, I filed copyright on a play that I am in the process of publishing. I joked online that this was "SOCIALISM IN ACTION".

The history of copyright is somewhat illustrative of the difference between involvement and power relationship. Originally, copyright was granted by the crown, and it was a way of creating a monopoly. Specifically, one particular company run by the Corporation of London (which is what they call their city council, illuminatingly) was given monopoly over the entire publishing industry.

This was a gross abuse of government power, that basically allowed the goverment to profit by all publishing.

Compare that to the scope of Copyright within the Constiution:

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

The way in which it was originally implemented in the United States--a notification of copyright to the US Copyright office giving you the right to protect your own work for a period of 7 years--gave benefit to people without giving the US Government rights over the work. It still required government enforcement, but the enforcement was a positive one--it came from the will of the people.

There isn't a "copyright division" of law enforcement that runs around enforcing the law, the law is invoked in civil suits, meaning that the government doesn't control how copyright suits are structured. The Bush Administration couldn't sue Shepard Fairey to block the Obama poster in an effort to hurt Obama's election chances. In fact, the US Government isn't allowed to have copyright, so that it can't manipulate the ways in which information is distributed.

If you want an example of how a law might be abused if it's enforced by government rather than civilly, look at this election news from NYC:

The City of New York has fined mayoral candidate Bill Thompson nearly $126,000 for putting up campaign posters on city property. City rules bar candidates from hanging posters and fliers on public property and the Sanitation Department says its workers regularly rip down unauthorized material.

So far, the Thompson campaign has been ticketed 1,677 times over such postings.

...

Bloomberg's campaign has been fined too, but just 70 times this year. That's a big drop from four years ago, when Bloomberg was fined nearly $308,000 for poster violations.

Now, I don't know for a fact whether or not Bloomberg was involved in this, or how that drop came to pass. It's very possible that there's another set circumstances. But even the appearance of corruption is a problem (that's something I learned from Lawrence Lessig). But the potential for abuse exists.

So if we're going to take a look at a government involvement in a sector, the question is, what enforcement methods do they have? Suppose you decide to strike out on your own. What tools for enforcement can the US Government bring to bear?

Healthcare: there are some provisions for enforcement in the healthcare bill. Ironically, these are the very bipartisan measures that seem to be commonly agreed upon by both parties. It regulates the insurance industry. It doesn't add much more regulation to the doctor-patient end of things (those are already well-covered by the FDA, in terms of their ability to jail doctors who perform unapproved treatments).

The FDA's power is a big, dangerous power, actually. Imagine if a really Fundamentalist Christian FDA chief decided that the current methods of abortion are "too risky." He could, by fiat, ban abortions. Would the Supreme Court intervene on that issue, saying it contravenes Casey v. Planned Parenthood? I'm not sure how that vote would go down.

On the other hand, what's the worst thing the US Government could do to an insurer? The regulations are defined, they're not so open-ended. They could force insurance companies to pay for lots of unnecessary procedures, and support lots of people who are very expensive. That might hurt their bottom line. Even that worst-case scenario doesn't sound terrible. Or they could levy millions of dollars of fines on the insurance companies. That's onerous, but not any more massive of an intervention than the FDA.

However, I'd probably want to read the provisions of the bill before I decide whether we've given reasonable regulation of insurance companies. There are some power issues there that need to be resolved.

As for the Public Option, it doesn't give the US Government new power, except over the people that choose to enroll in it. Now, some might find that a government mandate for healthcare and a lack of viable alternatives may force them into the Public Option. But even there, the power that the US Government will have over them will be no more than Blue Cross has over me today.

What it might give the US Government is leverage, in the way that Medicare does currently. It gets them lower rates, for instance, which makes doctors complain that they are underpaid by the US Government.

It is not, however, a Government-Run healthcare, for the simple reason that it doesn't give the US Government a direct control point.

Now the other example, the National Day of Service, is even clearer on that subject. Suppose I'm an arts charity, and I sign up for the National Day of Service. If I do something that the US Government doesn't like, the worst thing that can happen to me is that they won't list me on their site.

That's the worst that can happen. I might not get the boost of some free advertising by the government.

Considering all of the pressures on non-profit arts organizations, that seems like a fairly laughable threat. "I'm not gonna list you!" That doesn't even get to "The New York Times won't review your show" levels of terror. Not getting an NEA Grant is worse than that, and God only knows how few organizations actually rely on the NEA's grants. There's no real financial loss, no threat of punishment, or anything. You just might not get as much help. You'll live.

To compare that to Animal Farm is just laughable. After all, Napoleon isn't a dictator in Animal Farm until the dogs appear. Napoleon had direct articulation of policy backed up by enforcement. That's what made it power.

Grassroots + Power I: First, The Problem

Power, and the structures of power in society, interest me. I've written a play about the colonial power structure (based on Vaclav Havel, the history of Beirut, and the 2006 Lebanon War). I've written essays on art as the performance of political power, and theories on the masses (as they relate to the movie Dark Knight). If I wasn't going down the path of being an artist, I would be studying the Cold War (especially George F. Kennan, who I wouldn't go so far as to call a hero, but certainly an intriguing figure).

I say this because, in a strange way, this somewhat esoteric-sounding set of interests have become the center of our national dialog right now--a dialog that people in my generation take for granted as having been ended, but which a determined fringe continue to place at the center of discussion, the central ideological conflict of the Cold War: what are the responsibilities of the government?

Obviously, this is a genuinely interesting and complex set of issues. But in the Cold War, this became a Manichean conflict, wherein there were only two sides: Democratic-Capitalism and Authoritarian-Communism. For my generation, that Manichean conflict seems rather silly. Most people I come into contact with realize that since FDR, the US has been a socialist country, and that even at the height of Leninism was more capitalist then its ideals would admit (when I was young, I assumed that the Soviet Union had no currency, because why would a country that apportions goods equally need currency?)

This is what the problem is today: in the wake of the Cold War, we need right now to take a deep breath, step back, and really ask: What do we expect from the US Government? What are the responsibilities of government, what powers should it have, and which ones shouldn't it have?

In the last century, we've given the US Government broad powers over interstate commerce, and national surveillance. For instance:

• The US Government now has the right to track people's reading habits
• The US Government now has the right to measure the quality of foodstuffs
• The US Government now has the right to apportion radio wavelengths, deciding who has the ability to broadcast

Those are just three arbitrarily selected issues in which the 21st Century America has power, but the 19th Century America did not. I'm not passing judgment over that.

The problem is, we're not having a healthy discussion as to what our government should or should not be involved in. The Health-care Debate is a clear example of this. I have not yet heard a compelling, intellectual argument on either side as to why government should be involved in health-care. I've heard practical arguments on behalf of government intervention, and I've heard emotional arguments for and against.

It may seem like an academic exercise, but the fact that we're not bringing our critical thinking and intellectualism to bear on this issue is a problem. The Founding Fathers may have written the Constitution on largely practical grounds, but they made sure to explain everything intellectually.

Now, the reason I brought this conversation up is because I commented on a conference call I was on with Kalpen Modi about the 9/11 National Day of Service. This prompted a rather surreal backlash against me from people I've never heard of, who found my blog because of a Big Hollywood article (which I haven't read and am in no hurry to go out and find).

What I was curious about was that they had attacked me for being a naive artist who did not question the power relationship between grassroots organizations and the government that was interacting with them. For example, one of the closest to being a measured response (it starts off as a real comment, and then slides away at the end):

You wrote, "My sense...is this: the Obama Administration wants to create a grassroots arts policy..." This is a contradiction in terms. If the policy is created by the administration, it is not grassroots. "Grassroots," by definition, means coming from the bottom up, from the lowest possible level. What the administration intends is to create the illusion that the policy is grassroots and whoever buys into it is a willing tool of deception.

Partly, this comes from a mistatement on my part. The commenter sees me as advocating allowing the government to come up with a policy which we grassroots supporters will carry out as willing partisans. My meaning was not that. my meaning was that the Administration should come up with a policy that interfaces with the existing grassroots organizations, to help them in whatever they're already doing, rather than creating their own policy and imposing it.

In other words, instead of directly running an arts program, they just want to help arts programs that are already out there. In the same way that the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives doesn't run a church, it just helps existing faith-based programs (that's another good question: does helping existing faith-based programs violate church and state, if it turns out to be truly equal opportunity?).

What the commenters seemed unable to distinguish is what the relationship of power involved is. Here are some hypothetical relationships between government and artists:

• Government A buys art organizations and appoints NEA officers to run them.
• Government B gives the NEA powers to license performances: unlicensed performances are made illegal.
• Government C passes rules saying that the NEA can only fund Pro-America productions. The NEA evaluates grants based on their content.
• Government D creates a web listing of currently existing arts-charity programs, to help donors find them.

Can you spot which option does not involve the governments dictating content to the arts?

Now, Government D (which is the US Government, if you didn't catch my thinly failed allegory) is not controlling the arts. It might be subtly highlighting arts it likes over art it doesn't like, but that's not a gross abuse of power (if you want to see gross abuses of power, see parts one-three).

In the current anti-government liberatarian extreme climate, even the third is considered untenable. Because there is no examination of power going on, no real examination of how the government is getting involved. You just say "the government might be involved" and the response is "NO THAT'S AUTHORITARIANISM."

And in other debates, the same conflation is going on. The current health-care debate is so far centered around comparing the Public Option to Government-Run Healthcare. But it is not. There is currently no mechanism in the Public Option that allows the Government to run Healthcare. However, if the US Government had a public option and was given broad powers to interfere with its competition through regulation, there might be some trust issues to be raised. That's an argument I'd be interested in hearing.

The idea that the government will get between you and your doctor is valid. But only because insurers are already a step between us and our doctors. The current system does not allow you to simply accept whatever treatment your doctor proposes. And the argument that the government will tell your doctor whatever treatments they can or can't prescribe is silly because the FDA already does that.

Those are power relationships. The FDA's power to regulate what procedures are allowed is a power relationship. Having people rely on the US Government's money is a power relationship. The Insurance Companies, however, also have power relationships. They have the power to grant or deny care. We rely on them for their money. And we have very little power over either of them. Our democratic voice is a somewhat indirect check on the US Government (for a number of reasons), and our "consumer choice," in practice, is a rather poor check on insurance companies.

Instead, we need to pit them against each other, because their weapons against each other will be a much better check than our weapons against either of them. When Alexander Hamilton talked about political parties in The Federalist, he talked about how our government was designed on the assumption that government officials would be greedy and ambitious. The way he solved that was by trying to pit the different ambitions against each other.

Artists do need to be wary of the government. The government may propose partnerships in the future that are not so loose and free. But if we don't figure out how to talk about those power relationships, how to understand what really are the checks and balances involved, then we're just going to get into irrational arguments about the powers of government.

Conference Call with Kalpen Modi, Americans for the Arts, and Corporation for National and Community Service

Sat in on a conference call between Kalpen Modi (previously Kal Penn), Americans for the Arts, and the Corporation for National and Community Service.

Some notes/reactions:

1. Although the arts are important to the Obama Administration in and of themselves (which I got from Arne Duncan in a conference call last week), Kalpen Modi underlined the instrumental benefits of the arts to the economy, to education, and to tie together economy (you can tell from how they speak that they've internalized the Obama heritage of community organizers).
2. The Obama Administration is not out to make artists.
3. The crux of Obama's approach to the arts currently is based around the Edward Kennedy Serve America Act. The act added arts to the types of community service supported, increased the amount of support for community service in a number of ways--especially in numbers of volunteers supported--and declared 9/11 a day of national service.
4. The 9/11 Day of Service is the current focus of arts policy, bringing together not only the Corporation of National and Community Service with Americans for the Arts, but also bringing together every branch of government that cares about the arts - Kalpen mentioned the Department of State's cultural ambassadorship program, and arts within HUD and Transportation (the latter two are departments I hadn't heard of any arts coming from, but I'm glad that I'm wrong)
5. Other programs on their way include the Social Innovation Fund (from the White House Office of Social Innovation) and a Volunteer Generation fund (to help nonprofits increase their ranks of volunteers). The appropriates for this have been passed in the House (which decreased the number) and in the Senate (which increased the number). Kalpen said that they were "looking with interest" to see how those two bills would be reconciled.
6. The 9/11 Day of Service comes with two websites: one is the general volunteerism website at Serve.gov, the other is the arts-specific website that Americans for the Arts set up, at Serve.artsusa.org. Arts volunteer organizations are encouraged to list their events on both, so that people can sign up, and post about their experiences.
   
7. Serve.artsusa.org also has two significant other attractions: one is a petition for the addition of Artistscorps to the current Peacecorps/Americorps/etc. within the Corporation for National and Community Service. The other is the United We Serve: Arts Idea Kit which is intended to serve as a springboard for ideas of how to mix art and public service.

That's really what you need to know. My sense, both from this conference call and the one with Arne Duncan, is this: the Obama Administration wants to create a grassroots arts policy, rather than a centralized, NEA-led policy. Given the difficulty in Congress of getting support for the arts, that's pobably wise for the moment, especially as he's neck deep in criminal prosecutions, healthcare, cap-and-trade, getting Ben Bernanke re-authorized, closing Guantanamo Bay and shipping the inmates to Kansas, and his coming legal battles around DoMA.

However, they recognize that we're crucial and they're willing to help us try to get boots on the ground. Where they see something effective happening, they want to duplicate it--the philosophy is the same as his proposal to duplicate the Harlem Children's Zone in 20 cities around America.

In a way, he's trying to use tools in the free-market to try and help promote the arts: increasing the incentives for success (for instance, part of the appropriations is that the education grants to students who participate in Americorps or Seniorcorps will be pegged to the level of Pell Grants, so that the benefit doesn't lag).

I left it reasonably happy: I'd have liked more direct support, but the general feeling was, "We'll provide some big infrastructure for volunteerism, and we'll put all our support behind the good work you do. Now get out there and do it."

To put it another way: "If you build it, we will come."