blog by arwen

I’ve decided to start writing about people whom I feel are so important that everyone should know who they are. I begin with a woman who has become an amazing role model for me over the last year given her ability to speak truth to power eloquently and decisively.

Elizabeth Warren is a professor at Harvard Law School and Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel, the committee responsible for figuring out where the TARP (aka bailout) money went.

She has been warning about the “coming collapse of the middle class” for years. The first time I saw her speak was in this amazing video of the same name hosted and presented by UC Berkeley’s Graduate Council Lecture series in March 2007.

Below is a great interview with her about her life, what motivated her to study bankruptcy and the middle class and how she got involved in consumer issues. She has co-authored two important books on the subject with her daughter, The Two-Income Trap and All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan.

Most recently, she spoke in a great interview with Yahoo! Finance at The Economist’s Buttonwood Gathering and had this to say:

Warren pulls no punches when it comes to her criticism of former Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson for his failure to put any restrictions on or monitoring of the initial TARP funds, and for using the money for something other than “toxic asset relief,” as originally intended.”I have a real problem when we describe to taxpayers their money will be taken and used one way and in fact it’s used another way,” she declares.

And you can always check out how the COP is progressing by watching the quickie video updates summarizing each new report or if you are a true die-hard like me, checking out the full hearings (I listen to them while I cook).

I would call her the greatest living advocate for the middle class in the USA today. Having been born into the middle  class to parents who have struggled my whole life and destined to die in the middle class (assuming I don’t outlive it as a socio-economic strata in our society), I cannot put into words the anger and frustration I feel towards the leaders in big business and government who have chosen to capitulate and ultimately, serve institutions with giant lobbying budgets over  individual citizens. Smarter people than me have argued their complicity and collusion have systematically reduced this country to an oligarchy during my lifetime and I wonder every day where this nation will be in 5, 10 and 20 years unless we drastically change things for the better.

On behalf of our nation’s disenfranchised individuals, I want to thank you Elizabeth Warren for doing everything in your power to help us.

Having left the life of an employee to become a full time independent contractor, I thought I had it all worked out when I decided to work from home. I was so smart – I made a lovely little desk on the cheap out of found materials, bought a comfy new chair and set up my space exactly to my liking. I thought I was good to go as far as productivity and effectiveness were concerned. Oh, how I love to be proven wrong!

While everything within my control was running like clockwork, it was the forces beyond my control that created enough random, disastrous situations to warrant a reexamination of my choice.

Like the day Time Warner Cable had to replace the main cable to our entire street. My nightmarish neighbor whose backyard borders mine had a 2 hour temper tantrum (laced with bilingual obscenities and heard by folks in Staten Island), threw the guys out her yard, called the cops and then tried to get the workers charged with assault – classy, no? This caused me to miss an international conference call via Skype that pays the bills.

Or a few weeks ago, when my sweet-as-pie landlady returned from her summer abroad and decided (over my protests) to rip up my entire backyard by hand to replace our patchwork lawn with “good grass”.  That was five work days lost to intrusion I will never get back.

FORTUNATELY, I consulted my BFF Google and found an amazing place right near my home that was affordable, convenient, eco-friendly and run by some of the nicest people I’ve ever met. Brooklyn Creative League is a new co-working facility located (in their words) “between Park Slope and BoCoCa” or as I say, a stone’s throw from the Brooklyn Lyceum.

Brooklyn Creative League gives freelance professionals, small-shop companies, and nonprofits the tools they need to get their work done:  affordable, green, shared workspace and a community of professional colleagues. With all-inclusive monthly memberships starting at $225/month, our goal is to provide members with a space that pays for itself — with increased productivity, new business, and overall satisfaction.

They offer a beautiful converted warehouse space with tons of natural light, office machines & a giant conference room, free whole bean coffee, cheap soda & snacks on-site, a growing and impressive community of members, professional development and networking events and even more features and programs are currently in the works.

If you find yourself needing a workspace like I did, do yourself a favor and check them out!

Last weekend the financial crisis hit home in a different way when I found myself in the strange position of having to write a sizable check to the IRS for the first installment of my 2009 Estimated Tax. My first response was “barf” – it was a pain in the ass to calculate and represents a big chunk of cash I hate to part with. However, I got over it a bit when I realized that:

A. if there was ever a time that the US Treasury can use my paltry contribution to the nation’s coffers it is now; and

B. since this is the first year I am making a truly livable wage as an independent contractor, I want to avoid any IRS issues by paying on time (especially upon discovering that penalties can be applied for paying late).

In my research, I found this handy list of 101 Tax deductions for bloggers & freelancers that I wanted to pass along for those who are just starting out or in need of a refresher course. As always, internet advice does not replace individualized advice from a qualified professional and I recommend using an accountant who specializes in independent artists.

I just learned that two friends/colleagues have lost their jobs due to budget cuts and belt tightening at their respective nonprofit arts organizations. I am close to one of the orgs and I know how hard the loss will be on remaining staff. No surprise given the way our economy is shedding jobs, but painful to hear nonetheless.

Both jobs were leadership positions which have now been eliminated. While it is likely the positions will be reinstated if the budget woes subside (no guarantee they will),  it brings up the question: how will these organizations cope with the loss of key players at a time when they are more important than ever?

I think we know how they will cope. Current staff (and perhaps a few Board members) will pick up the slack to the best of their abilities, people will work longer hours, produce status quo results under more stressful and challenging situations and likely experience burn-out earlier than normal. The question in relation to coping is not how, but how long it can last.

I suppose the question really is: how can these organizations SUCCEED when dealing with the loss of key players, especially in the face of unending budget cuts and a resurgence of the culture wars?

While I don’t think it makes the strongest case, I do agree with this op-ed piece published last Thursday in the LA Times.

It inspired some early Saturday morning discussion over email between a few of NYC’s cultural wonks. I had additional thoughts that I wanted to make available here since it really got me thinking.

The questions posed were:

1. How do we get the arts disentangled from HHS (health & human services), Environment, and other Social Justice goods, so that we don’t have to compete against them for the same funding/grantors’ attention? Should the arts be disentangled? or Should the arts be posited as an integral part of the solution?”

2. What are we asking the arts community to value? And by inference, what are we asking audience members and a larger culture to value? What values are we evincing in our work? Should we even be evincing values? Talking about them?

My responses:

1. There is no way to compete against them given the current economic conditions, especially with rising unemployment numbers and bankruptcies, and I think we will lose in the long run if we position the argument that way. I think integration is the only way; however, to accomplish it will require buy-in from everyone in the NFP sector as a whole which might be in the impossible dream given how polarized and resource starved all the different factions are…

If I had the power, I would require artistic components to be integral to most of the other nonprofit sectors programs & services rather than being a separate faction, like an ugly orphan who gets fed last and only if there are scraps. I’ve seen studies that suggest using drama to rehabilitate prisoners lowers recidivism rates, children who learn classical music develop better math skills, and cities with lots of well maintained public parks have higher quality of life indexes for residents.

Why doesn’t a homeless shelter offer entertainment with their free meals? Why doesn’t every public park contain a work of art that engages the local community in the process to select?

We are soaking in endless opportunities to revolutionize the cultural sector alongside the other social systems that are broken – health care, education, criminal justice to name a few – we should be leading the integration charge, not creating further divisions by reinforcing the notion that the arts need or deserve special treatment.

The IRS doesn’t recognize “art” in granting exempt status determination, so every one in the art world has to make the “literary, scientific or educational” argument to get federal exempt status for a NFP arts org. Maybe we should stop hacking our way through the NFP sector, for-profit commercial world and all the gray areas that live in between and just become part of everything else that is charitable instead?

Why aren’t the bulk of nonprofit artistic programs produced by social sector nfps – aren’t they at their core social programs? If these orgs introduced such programs, they could then start hiring the millions of artists that live in this country and are looking for ways to put their creativity to good use. Maybe they could deliver the emerging/community based arts programs and the commercial sector could take over where they leave off with those who want to play in the big leagues.

Is it possible to combine artistic programs (for professional and emerging levels) in the same space as literacy development, affordable childcare, after-school & head start programs, community supported agriculture groups etc?

2. Value is a question I keep coming back to – usually when I am speaking to artists about valuing their work, time, IP, audience’s opinion & critical response etc. I think too often we worry about what we are (or aren’t) valuing instead of investigating what our audience values (or doesn’t) and responding to that – that is part of how the system is failing.

Cultivating and fostering a sense of value for the arts outside our community is possibly our biggest challenge as far as sustainability is concerned and where artists should focus our attention as much as possible in the coming days. To me, it seems that our national psyche is also wrestling with the question of value – quite literally (Madoff victims, slashed 401Ks and depreciated housing values) and more philosophically given the massive bailouts of the corporations at the expense of the taxpayer.

Who better than the artists to raise this question in the broadest sense: As the nation we are NOW – what do we value? Is it corporations over people? Is it health care over art? Is it status quo over revolution?

The artists I know personify many of the values now absent in our society – integrity, hard work, self-sacrifice, commitment (yeah I’m talking to you Sarah) – isn’t it time we lead by example and help fix the mess that’s been made at the hands of others who lack our character?

I started blogging about issues affecting the arts while working at Fractured Atlas.

I invite you to peruse my very first manifesto, originally published in the Fractured Atlas newsletter and republished by The Association of Teaching Artists.

Here is a sample menu of posts.

The question of relevancy

Shoestring budgets & demographic diversity on off-off-Broadway

when art falls apart

All arts organizations are NOT created equal

Fiscal Sponsorship can change the world!

Value vs measurement

Pleased to partner with National Performing Arts Conference

Pass the bailout, please.

Changing of the Guard

I plan to continue writing about arts related issues. I also hope to write about other topics that occupy space in my consciousness, including sustainable agriculture, independent theater production, financial and economic policy, thoughts on frugal living, recipes I like…you get the point.

Open for comments and discussion 24/7 – welcome to my blog.