When the NEA recently canceled a bunch of grants to theatre companies, I upset some of my friends by pointing out that we shouldn't have applied for grants in the first place. "But without that grant money, we might lose our jobs," was a commonly expressed fear. And I sympathize; precarity sucks. However. If you are really a true antiracist, antifascist, anti-USA artist, then how can you take blood money from the empire? Can you imagine Thomas Mann or Walter Benjamin applying for a grant from the Nazi regime?
When the NEA recently canceled a bunch of grants to theatre companies, I upset some of my friends by pointing out that we shouldn't have applied for grants in the first place. "But without that grant money, we might lose our jobs," was a commonly expressed fear. And I sympathize; precarity sucks. However. If you are really a true antiracist, antifascist, anti-USA artist, then how can you take blood money from the empire? Can you imagine Thomas Mann or Walter Benjamin applying for a grant from the Nazi regime?
This was great read. It would be depressing if literally everything wasn't so much worse now.