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ART WORKS: HOW ORGANIZERS AND ARTISTS ARE CREATING A BETTER WORLD
TOGETHER: A REVIEW  
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Chris Garlock
July 11, 2024
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_ We cannot pin our hopes on one election, person, victory. What we
can do is dig in for the struggle ahead. Art Works provides a reminder
of our history of art and activism, the inspiration of past struggles,
and the tools for what lies in our future. _

,

 

What happens after Election Day 2024? The best answer I’ve seen
comes from _Art Works_, by longtime organizer and strategist Ken
Grossinger ([link removed]).

Let me hasten to assure you that _Art Works_ is not your usual
political book, as evidenced by its subtitle, _“How Organizers and
Artists Are Creating a Better World Together.”_   This slim
volume, I would argue, is the perfect handbook for the battles that
are sure to come, no matter who wins in November.

Published just a year ago, _Art Works _is an inspirational read,
deftly weaving together on-the-ground stories into Grossinger’s
overall theme of the necessity of “fusing politics and culture.”
Artist-activists, says Grossinger (who’s a longtime personal friend,
dating back to when we both worked for the AFL-CIO), “tap popular
culture to tell important truths” and have “played pivotal roles
in virtually all movements for a more just and equitable society.”
Among other cultural projects, he’s co-executive produced the
award-winning Netflix documentaries _The Social Dilemma_ and _The
Bleeding Edge_. He was also director of Impact Philanthropy at
Democracy Partners.

This idea of the power and central importance of art and culture is
the animating spirit behind the Labor Heritage Foundation
[[link removed]], which is celebrating its
40th anniversary this year, and where I serve as Executive Director.
Yet when fundamentals like our very democracy are on the line, the
arts can feel like a luxury and a distraction from life-or-death
battles at the ballot box, in Congress, at the Supreme Court.  

In just six gripping chapters replete with fascinating tales from the
frontlines, Grossinger vividly illustrates how art and culture can
actually have a more profound impact on society, noting that “The
political pendulum keeps swinging, but a shift in public attitudes can
make the gains harder to undo.” As the nation seems to be lurching
toward another such swing, _Art Works _provides a timely reminder
that a movement’s music, film, theater, and, yes, even our museums,
are not “extras” to be set aside, but the very tools and weapons
we need most. It nicely illustrates Margaret Mead’s maxim, "Never
doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals can
change the world. In fact, it's the only thing that ever has."

The first chapter, “Freedom Is a Constant Struggle”, launches the
book beautifully, quickly drawing the links from the Civil Rights
movement six decades ago directly to today’s Black Lives Matter
movement. Grossinger, who’s been a leading strategist in movements
for social and economic justice for thirty-five years, writes like an
organizer, with an impressive depth of knowledge that’s always used
to move the story – and the argument – forward. A good example is
the quote he uses to open the chapter, from Southern Christian
Leadership Conference (SCLC) director Wyatt Tee Walker, describing the
classic civil rights anthem _We Shall Overcome._

_“One cannot describe the vitality and emption this one song evokes
across the Southland. I have heard it sung in great mass meetings with
a thousand voices singing as one; I’ve heard a half-dozen sing it
softly behind the bars of the Hinds County prison in Mississippi;
I’ve heard old women singing it on the way to work in Albany,
Georgia; I’ve heard students singing it as they were being dragged
away to jail. It generates power that is indescribable.”_

Without bogging down in historical minutia, Grossinger nimbly moves
through the labor movement’s use of music in movements like Cesar
Chavez’ farmworker organizing and Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger
performing in migrant worker camps, to the Black Arts Movement founded
by Amiri Baraka, which “blended activism with poetry, theater and
music to lift up Black revolutionary culture and Black pride,” and
carrying through the Black Lives Matter movement, from which blossomed
a thousand street murals of George Floyd and other victims of police
brutality.

Perhaps nothing proves Grossinger’s argument about the lasting power
of art than the proliferation of BLM pavement murals across the
country, which in Washington, D.C., on 16th street across from both
the White House and the AFL-CIO, is now etched, not in sidewalk chalk
but stone letters that defiantly fill the street, which has been
renamed “Black Lives Matter” plaza.

And that’s just the first chapter. Chapter 2, “Singing for Our
Lives, covers “Music and Anthems for Our Planet”; the third
chapter (which, as director of the annual DC Labor FilmFest
[[link removed]] I
of course turned to first) is a terrific exploration of “The Power
of Film in Political Mobilization, starting with the impact of _The
China Syndrome _on the anti-nuclear movement, and then of course the
hit 1980 film _9 to 5, _starring Jane Fonda, Dolly Parton and Lily
Tomlin, which helped build union power for women workers. In a telling
echo of our own times, though, Grossinger notes that 1980 also brought
Ronald Reagan and an ascendant right wing to power, “point(ing) up
the need for organizations to defend their gains by advancing their
electoral interests.”

Chapter 4 dives into “Cultural Strategies for Migrant, Immigrant and
Refugee Justice, starting with the National Day Laborer Organizing
Network (NDLON), “whose unique approach to organizing places art and
culture at the heart of their strategies,” including hiring poets,
musicians, a cartoonist and an illustrator for their staff.

Leisure and Labor, 1858 Frank Blackwell Mayer, Corcoran Collection
(Gift of William Wilson Corcoran)

 

Through dozens of stories of local and national movements that
successfully used music, film, theatre and art to advance their
causes, Grossinger makes a convincing argument for the power of the
arts. But I was skeptical of Chapter 5’s inclusion of museums in his
brief; for most of us they’re places we obediently trekked through
on school field trips, full of art we don’t understand and objects
we’re forbidden to touch or distanced from us behind glass. 
Grossinger suggests another possibility, that museums and social
justice advocates can work together and that “these new alliances
can be a powerful driver of social justice narratives and can spur
social change.”  His lead case study is the New York-based Queens
Museum of Art, which in 2006 hired an organizer to connect with the
local community. The result was the transformation of Corona Plaza
from a site for “small one-off museum-sponsored events and street
fairs into a renovated public space and central location for the
museum’s public art projects, community festivals, parks and
advocacy work.” More crucially, the Plaza, in addition to art and
culture, would offer community and health services.”

Another example is the Arizona State University Art program, which
looks to build a “’sense of place,’ by reprioritizing people and
their stories and giving objects the supporting role.” This reminded
me that for many years, as part of the annual DC LaborFest, I
organized tours of DC museums that revealed workers’ role in
society, including depictions of work and workers in paintings like
Frank Blackwell Mayer’s 1858 _Leisure and Labor
[[link removed]]_ at the
National Gallery of Art. Those were not possible during the pandemic,
of course, but this chapter reminds me of how exciting it was to
discover how much working life was hidden in plain sight in what I had
thought were musty institutions. To Grossinger’s point, I also
discovered a community of museum staff who were thrilled to build
working-class connections to a new audience. _Art Works_ reminded me
it’s time to restart those tours; like I said, it’s an activist
handbook.

All this art and activism takes money, a cold hard fact that
Grossinger never loses sight of. The Student Non-violent Coordinating
Committee’s photography department cost $34,055 in 1964 (roughly
$323,192 in 2022). In the chapter on music, he notes that “Musicians
have a loyal following, a strategic contact list, and fundraising
prowess.” In Chapter 6, “Toward Art, Activism, and Transformative
Philanthropy,” Grossinger not only makes the case for funding art as
a social justice commitment, but provides a roadmap for those of us in
the field, struggling against the odds on shoestring budgets. “The
overlapping relationships among funders, artists and community allies
are key to successful organizing and narrative shift programs,”
Grossinger writes. “They form an essential and necessary
infrastructure through which change can be won.”

“Any form of art is a form of power,” said Ossie Davis, in Jeanne
Noble’s _Beautiful, Also, Are the Souls of My Black Sisters_. “It
has impact, it can affect change – it can not only move us, it makes
us move.”

These are tough, hard times, not just here in the United States, as
reactionary forces are on the rise around the world. It can be easy to
lose hope, as fundamental linchpins of society are undermined by those
who exploit our fears for profit and power.  We know we cannot pin
our hopes on one election, one person, one victory. What we can do is
dig in for the struggle ahead, and _Art Works_ provides the reminder
of our rich history of art and activism, the inspiration of past
struggles, and the tools for what lies in our future. And, perhaps
mindful of Emma Goldman’s insistence on dancing at the revolution,
Grossinger’s Art Works Spotify playlist
[[link removed]] is
pretty handy, as well.

_Chris Garlock is Executive Director of the Labor Heritage Foundation
(click here
[[link removed]] for
labor arts events listings across the U.S.), and co-host of LHF’s
weekly radio show The Labor Heritage Power Hour
[[link removed]] on WPFW in Washington, DC, as
well as the Labor History Today
[[link removed]] podcast. He’s a former
radio producer for Jim Hightower, and lives in Takoma Park, Maryland,
with art therapist Lisa Raye Garlock and kittens Bear and Monkey.
Reach him at [email protected]
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_Thanks to the author for submitting this to xxxxxx._

* Culture
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* Working class art
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* Music
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* labor films
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