Development of Arts and Culture Working Group
Read the DiversCity plan for protecting the Lowcountry’s seven hummocks of influence.
Why We Must Move to Protect Lowcountry Art and Culture Now
Among the seven “Mountains of Influence” they seek to place under the control of “Christ centered” people is Art and Culture. We invite you to investigate online what similar groups have done to the art and culture of their community elsewhere. Their strategies include defunding arts groups they don’t control, depriving organizations of performance spaces, legal actions, disrupting the memberships of arts organizations, online attacks and imposing content objectives on artistic groups or their funding.
We only began the fight against Moms for Liberty when we discovered they had captured a five member majority on the Charleston County School Board. They also established near complete control of the Berkeley County School Board. They’re seeking full control of the Dorchester Board this fall. It’s far harder to organize resistance and protect freedom when these people are already in control.
We have a massive, critical arts and culture sector in the Lowcountry to protect. It’s full of vulnerable people and programs sustained by sacrificial efforts which often last lifetimes. The color and beauty of our lives here could be destroyed in months. It does not have the institutional barriers the school district has. The fight for artistic freedom and diversity will be very personal.
DiversCity defines Art and Culture to include theater, graphic arts, music, dance, performance art, creative play, history, museums, archives (libraries of regular contemporary materials are grouped with education), Gullah geechee culture, African American culture, Latinx culture, other ethnic and cultural activities, art and cultural festivals and the performance and activity spaces associated with these activities as well as their funding. This working group also includes tourism activities focused on historic education outside of educational institution contexts, that is to say directed to tourists and the general public, as opposed to enrolled students.
National Significance of A Historic Colonial City in a Red State
Contrary to online accounts, there was no KumbaYa moment. The eleven women and one man who led the strike did not live happily ever after in the service of tourism and real estate marketing. Promises were broken. The progress gained came at a severe personal price to Louise and her friends.
Read the biography of Louise Brown, Mother of the Movement and a founding member of the DiversCity Network.
There was also a cost to Charleston managing again to delay the progress needed to maintain a competitive and rewarding economy for its workers. When the closure of the Navy Base and Yard in the 1990s exposed the weakness of Charleston’s economy thirty years after the hospital strike, the area lost thousands of skilled workers and their families. Even service businesses like hospitality and F&B struggle today because the math of living and working in Charleston is impossible for people working in our tourism and medical sectors. Problems which should have been fixed 50 years ago have led us to an economy where even Charleston’s long established formerly aristocratic families now survive by liquidating assets they’ve retained for centuries. Historical revisionism departs from the facts and leads to debilitating delusions and failure in a competitive global economy where talent is free to leave.
Friends in the historic tourism sector have reported increasing numbers of politically focused tourists in Charleston, often determined to challenge the knowledge of professional historians who now have access to a depth and variety of material never available before. They are often angry and combative. Front line workers feel threatened.
Why the Fight is Here
These people, which includes right wing operatives already working locally with Moms for Liberty and Unity City, come to our history to create a foundation for their Dominionist agenda. They know taking over control of our archives, museums and historic tourism will support their national effort.
This is why they’re spending over half a million dollars in the Lowcountry.
Of course getting control of local stages, galleries, performing groups and organizations by direct takeover or through obtaining control of funding would allow them to silence not only outright dissent, but the effervescent sense of possibility which is even more threatening to them. The art of the Christian right is dull and rejects 500 years of progress. It’s useful to those who control it, but uninspiring. It is not in the Christian or modern traditions which Charleston embraces.
Why We Have to Win the Fight for Our Own Art and Culture
We will not allow this to happen. Please help us establish our Art and Culture working group and integrate it into our network so we can be prepared. We know Unity City is training and organizing now. They have no appreciation of the value of any artistic endeavor which doesn’t advance their religious agenda.
If you are willing to help, please call me soon. (see contact information below) We would like to hold an in person meeting of the 3-5 person working group and its core supporters before August 2nd. The entire network has to be fully functional before Labor Day.
William Hamilton, III
Lawyer, Writer, Activist, Poet, & Installation Artist
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