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Want to take a second to mourn & honor the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. It is nothing like it was a decade ago, or two decades ago. We are reminded today by Miguel Algarin's death, but it has had so many deaths b/c of lack of funding, lack of institutional visibility & loss of community
Our cultural institutions are being left behind. Since I've been in the game, I've seen the loss of institutions like Calalloo, shuttering of youth arts & writing programs, even the Bowery Poetry Club was torn down and replaced by something whiter and fancier that no one goes to
It feels like art is somehow, through social media and digital distribution, becoming less accessible as physical spaces are eliminated and consolidated. We need spaces like the NUYO so young writers can learn to understand meter without paying $50K for an MFA.
We need orgs like Calalloo and @cavecanempoets and @kundimanforever and @CantoMundo to help poets of color connect to literary legacy & tradition (can't be part of the canon if you don't know it), we need spaces like @urbanwordnyc so that young writers have a way 2 see each other
We need to fund and support curators of these physical arts spaces and make sure they have grants and capital to construct and sustain new spaces with fresh life cycles, we need to fund cultural curatorial pipelines outside of museum studies and fine arts.
The arts have been and will remain the bedrock of any functional society, and in the U.S. we treat the arts like an option. It's the last thing considered in any budget. U.S. artists can go to Europe and get more funding and more opportunities than we do here. It is embarrassing.
Fund the arts here. Prioritize the arts here. Build more physical space. Let the young people run it. It's not rocket science, it's just fucking culture.
Happy #GivingTuesday 
! As a start, I hope you'll support all of the orgs I named today: @NuyoricanPoets, @cavecanempoets, @CantoMundo, @kundimanforever, @TheLannanCenter
! As a start, I hope you'll support all of the orgs I named today: @NuyoricanPoets, @cavecanempoets, @CantoMundo, @kundimanforever, @TheLannanCenter
