It’s a game of chicken. If your arts organization yields, everyone loses.
Gerrymandering has been in the news of late. It’s a word I didn’t know until my eighth-grade history teacher, Mr. Ubick, gave us all a list of dangerous yet goofy-sounding political terms and phrases. “Gerrymandering” was at the top of a list that included “jingoism,” “filibuster,” “pork-barrel,” and “Tricky Dick.” “Gerrymander” comes from a portmanteaux of Gerry (the governor of Massachusetts in 1812) and salamander. Gerry personally redistricted a strange conglomeration of neighborhoods near Boston to favor his reelection in such an obtuse way that the district borders resembled a salamander.
Gerrymandering is an evil, non-democratic practice. As Jeff Jacoby of The Boston Globe opined in 2004:
“We tell ourselves that we live in the world’s greatest democracy, one whose government derives its powers from the consent of the governed. In fact we live in nothing of the sort, at least as far as our national legislature is concerned. Thanks to modern gerrymandering, most congressional districts have been turned into a Democratic or Republican monopolies — constituencies meticulously mapped to lock in one-party supermajorities and guarantee election results long before voters go to the polls. … the outcome of all but a handful of congressional races is a foregone conclusion: The incumbent will be re-elected.”
And yet, its malevolence is so widespread that it almost never makes the news. Now we have California leading a group of blue states against Texas and a group of red states to play a game of “gerrychicken.” There is no good result that could happen from this, except, of course, a decision by one of the sides to walk away (secede) and start their own country (or countries), as described in one of the latter chapters of (shameless plug alert) Scene Change: Why Today’s Nonprofit Arts Organizations Have to Stop Producing Art and Start Producing Impact, available at a bookstore near you.
If you run a nonprofit arts organization, you might have no idea why this applies to you. Or perhaps as a human being who believes in democracy for all, you also hate gerrymandering but you don’t see the connection to the nonprofit arts organizations you handle. There is only one connection that matters here: consequences.
The current administration and its cult followers have glommed onto the fact that fairness and justice are cute ideas that have nothing to do with their vision of America. Their majority of the populace championed real democracy as weak, inferior, and pathetic. That “your choice: we win or you lose” ethic — a zero-sum approach that precludes compromise — is why mean girls still exist, little kids get their lunch money taken from them, and half of all marriages break up. It’s also why countries break up.
The scars are deep and predate the founding of the country. The same cultist White hatred of non-Whites, non-Christians, and women that warped the constitution in the 1700s, caused the Civil War in the 1800s, killed Martin Luther King (and thousands of others) and denied housing, memberships, and eating at Woolworth’s counters in the 1900s, is thriving in the 2000s, because the owners of social media love it when the unwashed use free speech as weaponry against each other. As Lincoln said, presciently, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” He was right. It didn’t. Like a long marriage gone bad, we’re just going through the motions, too tired and enervated even to break it off. Too much trouble.
The consequences of this cult’s actions toward public broadcasting, nonprofit arts organizations, the national endowments of the arts and humanities, and non-White university programs have led some to capitulate and pay money directly to the cult (that’s you, Columbia). Adorably, they believe that paying off blackmail will solve the problem, having never watched any 1980s cop shows where the extortion just continues anyway.
Some or all of the above have granted you funding in the past. Some even had promised you funding for right now, only to have it clawed back by the current administration.
There have to be consequences. For example, let’s say that this year, your nonprofit opera company has loaded up your new season with “popular” fare: Madama Butterfly, La Traviata, La Bohème, and Carmen. You’re aware that money is scarce and you believe a season of best-sellers could increase the size of your (Whiter than White) audiences and garner your company more income.
At the same time, your charitable, inner-city apprenticeship program that identifies underserved, non-White singers at the high school level, trains them both as a group and as individuals, connects them with university and music school programs to enhance their potential, and integrates them into your company for your mainstage operas all year long, had received an NEA grant as its foundational support.
That NEA grant was rescinded after having been promised to you. You’ve appealed that decision but see the writing on the wall. Even if you have this year’s money reinstated, you’ll never see another dime again in the future.
The worst thing you can do is nothing. The obvious first reason is that a lack of funding adversely affects all your operations. The second, less obvious reason is that when you continue to do the unfunded program (no matter how poorly), your company is sending the message that it didn’t need the money in the first place.
You have several options to consider, none of which I believe you’ll find terribly attractive.
- Cancel the charitable program and, in doing so, reduce the cast size from the mainstage productions, potentially risking artistic excellence (and taking away a reason to donate to your organization);
- Keep the charitable program whole and find ways to increase funding for it by funneling donations for half your for-profit season;
- Keep the charitable program and eliminate some of the professional singers from your mainstage casts — cast the students in those roles (and, in doing so, risk artistic excellence);
- Eliminate the mainstage professional program and come back as a charitable arts organization.
Or, as several arts leaders in Washington, DC have done (and others across the country), you could just quit, take your ball, and go home. There’s no shame in that.
You have to do something. Doing nothing is not an option. You’ll get run over in this reactionary, anti-democratic, anti-art, anti-thought, kakistocratic right-wing game of cult-fantasy-come-alive chicken. Oh, and it is a game to the gerrymanderers, the MAGA cultists (you joined the cult when you voted for him), and the Project 2025-ers currently destroying American democracy for their own plunder. They’re in the process of rewriting the rules right now.
It’s not a game to the people who need help. That’s where you come in. Presumably.
This game of chicken depends on you backing down and feeling guilty about it. The cultists feel little guilt or shame about their actions, even when they adversely affect themselves (such as the shuttering of all those NPR stations across rural, red-state America). It’s all about personal grudges and perceived slights. They don’t want to be educated, engaged, or enriched (except by actual money). What they want is to be adored — adored without having done anything to deserve it. Doing nothing is the same as trying to be adored without having done anything to deserve it. As a charitable organization in America, which side are you on, anyway?
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