Grants of $10,000 each to build the capacity of social justice organizations to use arts and cultural expression to achieve social change goals through partnerships with artists:
The API Women and Family Safety Center works to prevent domestic violence in the API community through organizing, education, and culturally relevant services. The Queer Network Project will partner with two local artists, Dean Jackson and Darius Morrison, to develop leadership in the queer people of color community that can challenge the many forms of violence that queer people of color experience, begin to envision a healthy community, and develop effective strategies for community accountability. The project will use anti-oppression trainings, popular education, theater performances, and community dialogue to surface and address issues of homophobia, racism, and violence for queer people of color, their allies, and the broader community. The project organizers hope to reach those who do not typically engage in political issues, not just activists, and to provide opportunities for ongoing work with the project organizers.
Unete is a volunteer-led movement of farmworkers and immigrants in rural Southern Oregon educating their community and advocating for worker rights, humane immigration policy, and full participation in the decision-making processes affecting their lives. This grant would support a project called Comunidad y Cultura, a project that would involve immigrant women in creating traditional handcrafts that would then be sold to generate income. In addition, the women would conduct workshops for immigrant youth to learn about traditional arts and culture in their home countries. This intergenerational dialogue will help build leadership and self-esteem among local Latino youth, who face discrimination and isolation in the school system, where only roughly 13% of students with limited English skills graduate. Unete will work in partnership with muralist Lorenzo Guel and El Paso-based musical group, CEIBA (named after the sacred tree of the Mayan people), and with La Mujer Obrera, an organization led by Mexican immigrant women in El Paso that develops cooperative businesses as economic alternatives to exploitative low-wage work along the US-Mexico border. These artists and groups will work with Unete to help develop the Comunidad y Cultura project. Unete is the only Latino-led non-profit in the Rogue Valley.
Voz Hispana Causa Chavista was founded in 1997 with the support of PCUN, Oregon’s farmworkers’ union, to promote recognition and respect for the achievements and values of Cesar Chavez and other Latino heroes, and to motivate Latino participation and leadership in the decisions that affect the community. They work toward deep social change through long-term strategies to undo institutional racism in Woodburn schools, and to build electoral power for immigrant communities. This grant would support Teatro Juvenil, a youth leadership development project that will educate Latino youth on the history of the farmworker movement using theater. Voz Hispana will partner with Rosa Floyd, a local elementary school teacher, and Teatro Milagro, a Portland-based theater group. The project will involve a five-week training course on theater performance, travel to Teatro Milagro to observe performances, development and rehearsal of performances that are expected to reach 6,000 people through the Cesar Chavez Day at Woodburn High School, various conferences and conventions, and local community gatherings.
Grants of $7,500 each to support projects that use the arts or cultural expression to promote progressive ideas, and/or to empower oppressed communities:
Community Alliance of Lane County is a 39-year-old human rights organization founded in 1966. CALC works to create a society that is free of bigotry and that upholds human rights and human dignity for all. CALC organizes and educates the community to promote public policies based on social and economic justice. This grant will support several arts and cultural projects that are integral to CALC’s core programs: a traveling theater piece promoting diversity and inclusion; two traveling photo exhibits (one on immigration and one on LGBT issues); an annual Dr. Martin Luther King Day celebration and student art/essay/poetry contest; and an annual Cesar Chavez event. Of these, the newest and most ambitious project is the theater piece on diversity and inclusion. CALC developed the script through interviews with local leaders and residents, and is using some of these individuals as actual performers. The piece is 30 minutes long, and CALC plans to use it in schools, churches, etc. as part of its ongoing program, Springfield Alliance for Equality and Respect (SAfER), to build support for diversity in the Springfield community.
The Duwamish Tribe exists to promote the cultural, social, political and economic survival of Seattle’s First People. The tribe works to revitalize and preserve Duwamish culture, and to share the history and culture of the Duwamish Tribe with all people. This project is a partnership with the Museum of History and Industry (MOHAI) to conduct seven monthly dinner theatre performances by local Native American actor and storyteller, Gene Tagaban (who appeared in Sherman Alexie’s The Business of Fancydancing). The performance would dramatize the history of the Duwamish Tribe, and of Chief Seattle. A concurrent exhibit and art gallery at MOHAI featuring authentic Duwamish tribal art will reinforce the theme and purpose of the theatre performances. This project will address the longstanding lack of awareness of the Duwamish people among Seattle residents– who they are, the history of their relationship with the first white settlers who landed at Alki Point, and the signing of the Point Elliott Treaty by Chief Seattle in 1855 on behalf of the Duwamish, Suquamish and Allied Tribes. The dinner theatre will feature ceramic dinnerware using authentic Duwamish patterns and designs, created by a member of the Tlingit Killer Whale clan. This project will generate revenue, build visibility, and increase support for the Duwamish Tribe, whose main goals are to complete the Duwamish Longhouse and Cultural Center, and to regain recognition by the US federal government, rescinded under the Bush Administration.
TASVEER is a grassroots, community-based, all volunteer-led organization founded by two local South Asian women, committed to bringing independent progressive films from South Asia and the South Asian Diaspora to the Pacific Northwest. Its goal is to increase awareness of all South Asian countries and cultures – Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. This grant would support the 3rd Independent South Asian Film Festival, a five-day film event featuring narrative films, documentaries, workshops, and forums to educate audiences about the social, political, personal, and international issues facing South Asia and its people. The festival uses film as a vehicle to promote ideas of equity related to race, class, gender, sexual orientation, religion, language, and other divisions – and partners with local community-based organizations to help frame dialogue and encourage activism among audience members. The long-term goal is to build a progressive South Asian community in Seattle by bringing people together, and by fostering dialogue and action around issues like gender justice, environmental justice, and religious tolerance.
The Western Prison Project is a grassroots community-based organization that works to build a progressive multiracial movement for criminal justice reform in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Utah and Nevada. Its primary base of support includes current and former prisoners and their family members, as well as crime survivors. This grant will support a Forum Theater Project for Violence Intervention to identify community-based solutions to end violence, without relying on the police or on the current criminal justice system. The Prison Project will go directly into communities affected by violence and by racism in the criminal justice system, and ask them to help develop a script based on their real-life experiences, in collaboration with Act for Action, a Portland-based theater group. The play will then be performed in these same communities as a tool to develop alternative community-based solutions to end violence. Audience members will be asked to interrupt the performance, replace one of the actors, and try to change the outcome of the situation. The project will partner with several organizations to reach various constituencies – LGBT communities, young women of color, African American communities, etc. This project is a way to move beyond defensive responses to the current criminal justice system, which is “disappearing” entire communities of poor people and people of color, and toward new visions for dealing with the very real issues of crime and violence outside of that system.