Welcome

Welcome to my blog. It has taken me a while to come up with a concept, but after watching anti-war and war films, I  thought a blog about art that protests war seemed like an under-covered and interesting subject.

I have worked as an arts reporter in both print and radio for a number of years, covering the GLBT and multicultural movements. The anti-war movement was introduced to me by several dear friends that I met while producing radio at KOOP 91.7FM in Austin www.koop.org. Angela Keaton (presently Development Director of antiwar.com, and producer of The Scott Horton Show on Antiwar Radio http://antiwar.com/radio/), and Rodney Garza (actor, director, writer and former producer/host of Pieces of Peace) took the Bush Administration and its War on Terror (empire building) to task. I too was angry at the administration's decision to engage in a war that was clearly about profiteering and deceiving the American people, but I was more focused on the Administration's threats to cut funding for public broadcasting and the arts. Then came the Administration's slaughter of hate crime legislation on the federal level, and the ridiculousness of the Defense of Marriage Act, which meant no progress in the absence of federal civil rights laws for gays and lesbians.

What I learned from Keaton and Garza was we have to be vigilant. We have to pay attention. We have to care about all of the parts and how they affect the whole of our condition as human beings.

In 1994 I moved to Austin, and enlisted with Austin Downtown Arts Magazine, produced by Diversearts Production Group www.diversearts.org, a nonprofit multicultural arts organization. My mentor, Harold McMillan, challenged me to learn how deeply embedded prejudice and racism were in our community's arts infrastructure. The beginning of cultural segregation stemmed from the construction of a major freeway that runs through the city's center (IH-35) which was planned to literally segregate the city. White folks lived on the west side. Black folks lived on the east. Following that, the city unnaturally developed culturally and separately. I became curious to find out if in the deep south, where perhaps the worst physical acts of racism occurred in this country, the arts had taken a similar path of development. I hopped in my automobile and drove through southwestern Mississippi and the Louisiana border. I walked the plantations, and visited local artists. Sure enough the same disproportion was there, as public funding goes to preserving plantations, while folk artists (or aptly named "outsider artists") are left to display works of art in their front yards.

As a journalism student, I hope this blog will serve my further development as a writer, but more importantly, I hope it will be of interest to those who read it. I would like to clarify something about art, and my opinions, because I think it is important to do so. There are folks who view art purely as entertainment, and for them, that is the sole purpose of art. There are a lot of newspaper editors and television assignment editors, who, in doing what they are paid to do, giving the public what they predict they want, take this general view into consideration when deciding what kind of stories to cover. There is nothing wrong with this kind of audience, or coverage, I will admit I have been paid to participate a few times. But I do think this kind of thinking does not serve to further art, because in my view it is assumptive, and inaccurate. It leaves out a whole lot of folk whose interest in art is cerebral. Who is out there creating works of art to engage us? What do they have to say? How might their view be different, or similar to our own?

If you were to visit a Blockbuster, or Netflix online, I am sure you would not be hard-pressed to find a legion of war films. But if you were to do the same while seeking an anti-war film, I'd bet my last penny you would likely have trouble. This holds true for many of the artistic disciplines, who struggle under a government that is repeatedly compared to the Roman empire, censors and all. It is for these reasons, I am compelled to blog.

Peace,
Sandra Reed
Houston, Texas