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Author Ken Grossinger believes that art doesn’t just reflect the world but can help change it.
In his inspiring and informative book, “Art Works, How Organizers and Artists are Creating a Better World Together,” The New Press, 2023, Grossinger suggests that in the service of social movements, organizers use artists, artists create art, museums and art institutions engage with and promote these coalitions, and that funders, foundations and philanthropists support them. The book isn’t meant to be a history of activist art, instead, it widely samples cooperative partnerships furthering justice for Black people, women, labor, immigrants, farm workers, the environment, the incarcerated and others.
Music is a potent mover and shaker. Grossinger cites many examples from the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s to Black Lives Matter. Harry Belafonte’s songs and the money they made helped support Martin Luther King, Jr. Sweet Honey in the Rock, Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit,” Nina Simone’s anthems and those of Pete Seeger brought people together, empowering protesters. He credits jazz powerhouses, too, for creating protest in their music. Indeed, Charles Mingus’s “The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady” conveys more to me about being Black in America than most words.
Music still raises money, unifies and uplifts those in movements while changing the hearts of those outside them, as artists in rap and hip hop like Kendrick Lamar or Beyoncé inspire people to “cultural activism.” Grossinger documents how money, music and organizing came together beautifully when Alaskans used music — and mushers — to raise both awareness of the depredations of the Pebble Mine on pristine Bristol Bay, and concomitant funding, to continue political action which ultimately defeated the mine when the United States Army Corps of Engineers refused to deny a permit needed for it to operate.