I Wanna Be an Artist!!!
Think a weird public/private secret whozis will give me the big bucks?
Time for an update on my application to be one of the artists selected—via super-secret process—to get some bucks from the super-secret Regional Arts & Culture Council. This the gang of fellow “citizens” who get the excess dollars dribbling down from the city’s most odious tax—the $35-per person “arts tax,” aka a poll tax, which is technically unconstitutional, but it’s for a “good cause,” so what the hell.
We wrote here and here about the RACC, which might interest some of our recent subscribers (and another tip ‘o’ the hat to PDX.Real); and may strike others as merely obsessive. Guilty as charged.
As we noted at the time…
We are about to meet a strange bird…or maybe it’s a sludge-like liquid, seeping into the nooks and crannies of government, then solidifying into something immovable, dense, and utterly opaque.
Awwww, c’mon, they only spend an estimated $745,000 on grants ranging from $1K to $5K to finance 193 of our budding Michelangelos. “Estimated,” because you will look in vain on the colorful, self-congratulatory RACC website for anything remotely resembliing a budget.
That’s because the city stupidly set up this organization as a 501c3 “non-profit.” Which means the only real public accounting is through something called IRS Form 990, which all non-profits must file yearly. Small problem: the IRS is slow in posting those documents…and in the case of RACC this means that the 2022 report (its numbers are for the prior year) is the most recent. In that pre-pandemic year, RACC got more than $7-million (your tax dollars!) and managed to spend $2.1-million of it on hired help. If anything, the payroll has continued to boom post-Covid. Just check out the “team” on their website…
The last person on the display above is Ms. Carol Tatch, whose main “external operation” seems to be telling inquiring citizens to pound sand. Here’s her reply to our emails asking for, like, facts and figures and hints about how they decide who gets the handouts…
“The completed applications for RACC grant and public arts programs are not available to the public (and yes, we do keep them). If you have specific questions, such as those regarding the demographics of our applicants and recipients, please let me know. We are able to provide such data and we do this as a matter of course for our contract reporting requirements.”
Short version: buzz off.
As we noted in our prior report, all of the grant recipients tend to fall into the progressive agitprop category, with the possible exception of funding for a few tattoo parlors—god knows what they’re inking on all those guilty white skins.
Around the time we wrote about the shrinking violets at RACC, they opened the process (highly secret) of inviting a new tranche of artists to vie for the freebies. We decided to take a shot; we love to doodle and since overtly political seems to be the key to the kingdom, we decided to go whole hog…
My primary goal is to enhance voices of dissent to the oppressive system of progressive culture in Portland. We believe in giving voice to the ethnic majority of the city's citizens through comedy, song, and speech.
We will celebrate our true diversity on the 4th of July in a stirring day-long "We Are Still Here" celebration of bravery and reimagination. We plan to focus on freedom of speech with a recitation of forbidden (but legal) words in a poetic series of public readings.
Our purpose will be to reaffirm the miracle of the US Constitution and its Bill of Rights. We plan on particular focus on freedom of speech.
One of our core events will consist of volunteers from the majority community gathering in public spaces for a mass recitation of the Bill of Rights and an affirmation of our nation's core values, the presentation of "Don't Tread on Me" banners and the symbolic dropping of tea into the Willamette River from each of the city's bridges as a way to portray our nation's rise from colonial repression.
Seems pretty simple. It has been logged and accepted by the RACC. But then we got a rather tart email…
…no surprise, since that would seem to be the main preoccupation of the RACC, which has said they put…
…particular emphasis on programs directed to communities who are underserved by local arts providers.
…which is standard-issue progspeak for “let’s move some races to the head of the line.”
So, my finger on the mouse trembled as I took the “demographic” survey, although a few questions bumped around my brain: why would the RACC care about this “demographic” stuff, given the 14th Amendment and the civil rights act of 1964 which outlaws discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, and national origin. Since that discrimination is outlawed, why ask the questions in the first place?
And why the ominous words about “reach and scope?” Quotas, anyone?
So I did my best to respond….
…and…
No response—yet—from the RACC. Expect things to move at a measured pace: after all, the Portland.gov website tracking RACC’s response to a scathing 2018 city auditor’s report, and its recommendations for action, (which led to a significant trimming of RACC’s wings) seems, well…leisurely…
You’ve got to hand it to the surreptitious artist who put together the city’s web page dealing with the clean-up of RACC’s problems…
Meanwhile, sometime—who knows when—I’ll be judged. If they give me the dough, you will be invited to the celebration. I’m stocking up on bunting and pom-poms. Hope springs eternal.
Mr. Cheverton has already shown how the RACC's turn in 2020 from funding the city's artistic mainstream to the funding the officially marginalized and underrepresented stiffed the Portland Art Museum, the Oregon Symphony, Oregon Ballet Theatre, Portland Opera, and Portland Center Stage, so I won't delve deeply into that here. One subsequent related development is worth a mention, though.
The heads of the Oregon Symphony and the Portland Art Museum were each guests on the June 6, 2023. episode of the podcast "Rational in Portland." https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/brian-ferriso-portland-art-museum-and-scott-showalter/id1579198261?i=1000615831207
In addition to explaining the many important ways their organizations and the arts in general contribute to a healthy Portland, the leaders inevitably turned to their companies' financial condition. One would expect individuals who shoulder such enormous responsibilities to count unwavering tact among the skills that allow them to succeed. One would not be wrong. When the stakes are high, as they are for the symphony and the art museum right now, a leader also needs to know how to wield understatement as a weapon. Hence, when it came to the discussion of public funding, what listeners heard from the guests was that local government "is not at the table." Let that sink in. And then remember: You're paying an arts tax. For what?
In contrast, the two were effusive in their praise of the small and large donors whose generosity is allowing the organizations to cover ever-increasing expenses, including an unconscionably sharp increase in the rent the symphony pays its public landlord.
Now, anyone who has listened to "Rational in Portland" will know that the host does not shy away from controversy. In fact, she is among the leading vocal critics of Portland's progressive politicians and the many profound crises they and their allies have created. Compromising the future of two of the city's oldest and most valuable arts institutions by diverting public funding to racial-, ethnic- and gender-identity agitprop certainly counts as a crisis. Still, even a muckraking podcaster knows when to employ tact. It is likely the host did not bring up the RACC's betrayal for the same reason the guests never mentioned it. It would have put these very public figures on the spot and given the vocal and well-connected critics of institutions they view as being too white and too mainstream (or is it elitist?) ammunition to use against the organizations they lead.
If the guests that day chose to maintain a strategic silence on the destabilizing impact the RACC's pointed withdrawal of support has had on their organizations, they were astute enough to ask that their listeners write their elected leaders and demand that they provide a level of funding comparable to that furnished by cities where support for mainstream arts is a considered pressing civic obligation. Please do!
In closing, I will say that I, too, have exchanged correspondence with the RACC's Carol Tatch.
When I looked at the list of the various documents the RACC's operations generate on a regular basis, I decided the category I'd most like to see is the final report submitted to the RACC by each grant recipient. Hence, I posed the following questions in an email note to an RACC official:
"Are final reports available to the public in whole or in part? What is the process for obtaining them? If the reports are not provided to the public, what is the reason and what is the legal basis?"
I won't bore readers with the entirety of Ms. Tatch's reply when this Kafkaesque gem says everything about the RACC's attitude toward the inquiring public:
"Please let me know your need for the information you are requesting with the understanding that we will not release these specific items to you."
Regarding those increasingly frequent demographic questionnaires - here is how I handle it:
Six generations back, my ancestors came to this country from Scotland and Sweden. If I were born in Germany, I would be a Native German. Since I was born in America, I self identify as Native American.
The cradle of civilization was in the Fertile Crescent, in the area now known as the Middle East. Therefore, I also identify as Middle Eastern. I have been filling out demographic forms with this information for at least five years and no one has yet questioned my self identification status.
I maintain that if Bruce Jenner can identify as a woman, I can identify as a Native American Middle Easterner. Problem solved.