The petition
One Percent for the Arts Campaign
Congress will soon pass a stimulus package aimed at creating jobs and stimulating the economy. We ask that 1% of the stimulus support the arts. In the 1930s the Work Progress Administration created by Roosevelt created 3 million jobs. They built roads, streets, highways, bridges, parks, and public buildings. They also worked in the arts.
Our generation deserves no less.
The WPA employed 40,000 artists, writers, musicians, theater workers, and performers. Public support made it possible for people of modest means to dedicate themselves to their work. The WPA supported Jackson Pollock, Arshile Gorky, Saul Bellow, Zora Neal Hurston, John Steinbeck, Sterling Brown, Orson Welles, John Houseman, Burt Lancaster, and many other great talents, known and unknown. The WPA arts projects reached wide audiences and made the theater, music, and the arts accessible to low-income people.
An arts stimulus package could increase fellowship and scholarship money, create workplace arts and reading programs, foster cultural exchange programs, support artist-in-residency programs in schools and libraries, and more.
We are also calling for a cabinet level position for a Secretary of the Arts.
Please help us get the word out by forwarding this petition to friends and networks.
SIGNERS:
Susan Brennan
Sarah Browning
John Cavanagh
James Early
Sam Hamill
Barbara Ehrenreich
Daniel Heyman
Jaime L. Jarvis
Micheline Klagsbrun
E. Ethelbert Miller
Marcus Raskin
Andy Shallal
Melissa Tuckey
Click the Signatures tab above to see who else has signed. And click the links to the right to read more about this campaign.
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