A Complete Human Being is a Complete Artist

Fascists like to do this: Get rid of the arts, cultural expression,

literature, including libraries and cultural spaces. This includes book banning or book burnings. That’s why in April and early May the Trump Administration withdrew grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts—and called for the elimination of both agencies. In March, Trump reduced funds for other agencies including the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which funds libraries.

That’s why Salvador’s dictator Nayib Bukele last summer closed the country’s cultural centers in his “anti-crime” crusade. That’s why in 2015 and beyond, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani made millions of dollars with his security consulting firm in Mexico and Central America calling for the “annihilation of gangs” but also the removal of arts and cultural programming—an evidenced-based effective means for gang prevention and intervention.

I know about this. I’m one of the leading advocates for the arts—music, dance, theater, writing, painting, new media… anywhere, anytime. The arts should explode in every neighborhood, especially in the poorest areas where presently there are no bookstores, no art galleries, no movie houses, or cultural cafes.

In these areas liquor stores abound, guns and drugs are readily available, but one cannot buy a book!

In the United States, the arts tend to be concentrated in museum rows, tourists’ traps, in well-off neighborhoods. In poor and working-class areas, urban or rural, they don’t really exist. People do create, all the time, even doing artisanal works to survive. But they aren’t provided the skills or resources because the poor and laboring classes must focus on working hard, making ends meets, and not get distracted by “frivolous” things such as art.

But poverty isn’t just about material things; there’s also poverty of the spirit.

I saw the powerful impact of arts programming in the 1960s when Civil Rights legislation went hand-in-hand with public art projects including murals, photography, musical instruments in schools, and more. As a teenager I was a gang member, a drug user, in and out of jails and juvenile hall. A community center opened in one of the poorest communities in Los Angeles County, my barrio, largely funded by the government. It included services for adults, but also a youth center, an alternative school, and a childcare facility.

Like many urban youths of the day, I had no mentors or elders. These programs funded personnel to work with lost boys like me. The main youth counselor took an interest in me, somebody no other adult would give the time of day. I gave him a hard time like I did any adult, including teachers. I learned they’d walk away from me eventually so I didn’t invest any care or emotion in any of them. I told this youth counselor to “drop dead.” I’m sure he went home cursing me out. But he never showed any anger. He stayed patient but persistent. He always came back.

In time we made agreements. As a barrio gang youth then, we had a code of conduct, a sense of honor. We called it having “palabra”—to be your word. To be trusted. When he offered me a job painting murals, including training, I jumped on this. However, I had to agree to return to school (I had dropped out in my freshmen year after being expelled). I also met a photography teacher who gave me a camera and said, “go around your neighborhood and take pictures.” I even tried to play sax in a garage band and wrote in small notepads, then typing in an old Remington typewriter with sticky keys and a loose ribbon.

All this forced a conflict in my heart: I could stay in the gang, keep fighting, stealing, getting arrested… or I could continue to do my art. I sabotaged the art many times, but in the end that programming proved transformative. Eventually I quit gang violence. I went “cold turkey” on heroin and stopped criminal acts. I got my high school diploma and even started college classes. Around age 20, I was done with the street madness. At that age, married with my “high school sweetheart,” I also held my first child in my arms and promised never to return to “La Vida Loca” (The Crazy Life).

However, when President Nixon took office, such programming was eliminated from federal funding. It was called “The Nixon Cuts.” I’m convinced this contributed over the years to more gangs, more crime, more violence, and greater mass incarceration.

Over the decades I worked on gang prevention and intervention, also entering prisons, juvenile lockups, and jails to teach writing, do poetry and healing circles. I helped with urban gang peace efforts involving Chicano gangs in the 1970s, Bloods & Crips peace efforts after the 1992 Los Angeles Uprising, with Chicago-area gangs in the 90s, and in gang-ridden areas of Mexico and Central America.

In Chicago I brought in arts programming to groups like Youth Struggling for Survival, Increase the Peace Network, the Humboldt Park Teen Reach, and more. In Los Angeles I worked with some 40 gang interventionists, researchers, and advocates (and then L.A. City Councilperson Tony Cardenas) to create the “Effective Community-Based Gang Intervention” model, approved in 2008 by the L.A. City Council. This eventually established the Gang Reduction and Youth Development program that along with Summer Night Lights (free access to parks with arts after school and on weekends) helped the city once known as the “gang capital” of the world, reduce its violence and crime. I also shared this model in Mexico, Chicago, El Salvador, Guatemala, and England.

In 2001, my wife Trini and I founded a culture-driven arts space called Tia Chucha’s Centro Cultural & Bookstore in L.A.’s northeast San Fernando Valley with its own bookstore, small press, deli, performance space, art gallery, and workshops in music, dance, theater, writing, and visual arts. This part of the Valley is a working-class area, predominantly Mexican and Central American, with a significant Black population, of half-a-million people, and largely void of arts programming till we opened or doors.

Tia Chucha’s also instituted the “Trauma to Transformation” program that sends artists, poets, drummers, theater persons, and more to prisons, juvenile facilities, and parolee housing (the largest juvenile lockup in North America is five minutes from the center). We’ve become key to the economic, cultural, and spiritual revival of the area. As a nonprofit we have donors, fundraisers, earned income (mostly by selling books), and foundation and government grants. We’ve helped save lives.

Over the years, I’ve witnessed gang violence and crime decrease in those areas where such funding and programming were allowed to persist—whether in U.S. inner cities, Indigenous Reservations, or poor migrant communities. And in countries I spent time in of Latin America and Europe.

I’ve proposed “A Neighborhood Arts Policy” in Los Angeles County and other areas. The fullness of the imagination, arts creation, and cultural expression is one of the best indicators of a healthy and safe community. One of my books, “Hearts & Hands: Creating Community in Violent Times (NYC: Seven Stories Press, 2001) documents how this can change lives and communities to be safe, peaceful, and healthy.

We have a saying at our Trauma to Transformation program: “A Complete Human Being is a Complete Artist.”

Now with government cutbacks, like during the Nixon years, we face budget cuts and staff reductions. This is occurring throughout the country at a time when we need this funding more than ever.

The fascists don’t care. They want minimal human intelligence, capacity-building, or imagination because those are the greatest challenges to authoritarian power. It’s time to be strategically creative in fighting this power that has the wealthiest getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

Let’s keep creating. With or without government funding. Creativity is in our genes, it’s our birthright. Nobody can give or take this away. It’s what makes us human, which in turn is the best way to overcome fascism in any country, in any time.