L.A. GATHERS

by Anu Yadav

I was late. The sun had set by the time I walked into the open air space of BLVD Market, a community-based food hall that incubates emerging restaurant startups in Montebello, just east of Los Angeles. Strings of lights glowed softly above a large circle of artists deep in conversation.

They were talking about money. 

Patricia Garza, Producer and Director of Programs at Los Angeles Performance Practice (LAPP), along with interdependent consultant Leslie Tamaribuchi of the Trout Lily initiative, brought together 18 artists for “L.A. Gathers: Cultural Equity & Interdependence,” a two-day deep dive into exploring questions of building a restorative cultural economy. Like, How do we break free from a system that perpetuates systemic inequity? 

Leslie Tamaribuchi

Their goal was to support Los Angeles community-based artists to learn together about some examples and principles of Solidarity Economy, a term used to describe community-control of work, food, housing, and culture through cooperation, participatory democracy, and equity. Artists received compensation to attend with stipends for travel and childcare as needed. This was key, making it more possible for people to take time off from other work and responsibilities. 

When I arrived, I slipped into a small breakout group during an  exercise led by Bruce Lemon, Jr. Co-Artistic Director of Watts Village Theater Company and Associate Artistic Director of Cornerstone Theater Company. We placed ourselves on a spectrum in answer to the question, “How healthy is your relationship with money?” 

After small group discussion, Bruce invited people to share in the larger circle and truth poured out. Tears. Nods of affirmation. Childhood experiences with money. Parents. Fears and challenges. Navigating the tightrope of institutional demands, community needs, artistic visions, and our own economic survival. But also hope, possibility, and hard won victories.

We were cracking open the shell so many of us are required to put up as artists in our current unequal society. Always on the ready to prove the merit of our work, we must look shiny and confident, not too desperate but desperate enough, with a grace, ease, and effervescence that obscures the looming economic realities many face.

Later, Barney Santos, founder of BLVD MRKT, sat down for an honest conversation with us about the challenges and goals of investment geared towards empowering – not displacing – the local community. A community centered food hall, BLVD MRKT focuses on supporting emerging Black, Indigenous, and People of Color-owned food businesses, with mentorship, classes, and access to funding. He also talked about alternative funding methods he used for BLVD MRKT in its initial phase, such as self-directed Individual Retirement Accounts, where people could use their retirement savings to make direct investments. (Learn more here and here.) 

According to the Souls of Poor Folks Audit, nearly half of Americans can’t even afford a $400 emergency. Millions more are either one paycheck or crisis away from the same situation, presenting a “structural crisis of national proportion that ties poverty to things like healthcare and housing,” and cutting across all lines of difference. (Poor People’s Campaign. “The 140 Million: Mapping Poverty, Injustice, and Low Wages.” Accessed December 8, 2022.)

Many artists too are struggling to get by, and even more so since the pandemic. Most of my career as a gigging artist, I have been in and out of poverty, and, at times, housing insecure. Due to my freelance income, like many other artists, I never qualified for unemployment until the pandemic. Only three years prior to receiving the coveted MacArthur Fellowship, choreographer, Kyle Abraham relied on food stamps as he built his dance company. Even as many artists are impacted by poverty, there is little space to acknowledge our realities. Instead we are pressured to perform countless hopeful pitches, proposals, and work samples to compete for fewer opportunities than meets the demand. And we do this while juggling multiple jobs, caring for loved ones, raising children, confronting illness, navigating mental health struggles—all amid global upheavals like the pandemic, climate change, and escalating wealth inequality The United States now has the highest polarization of wealth and poverty of any high-income country.

I mistakenly assumed that L.A. GATHERS  would be an engaging (yet ultimately detached) conversation on funding in the arts like others I have been part of. Instead, we started with our own experiences with money. In doing so, facilitators Patricia Garza and Leslie Tamarabuchi were weaving a kind of vulnerability and openness that allowed us to practice community care as a foundation for deeper conversations. We were building an alternative way of how to talk about money and justice – and what else could be possible.

The next day we met at NAVEL, a worker self-directed non-profit organization in downtown Los Angeles. We learned about their programming and process, followed by workshops and discussions with L.A. Co-op Lab and Trout Lily. (Ironically and sadly, NAVEL ceased operations and vacated its physical space in downtown Los Angeles on April 1, 2024, due to unsustainable financial pressures, including significant debt and a proposed lease increase of over 40%. See NAVEL, “Farewell to 1611 South Hope Street,” NAVEL Newsletter, March 28, 2024.)

Tamaribuchi hoped that artists across a spectrum of disciplines could have honest dialogue about funding and support – but in a way that was “liberated from some of the really oppressive power dynamics” that usually come with those conversations. The convening aimed instead to turn the tables of power to center artists’ needs and aspirations.

Tamaribuchi was frank. “There are people that have the resources… What are the channels through which capital can be moved?” Using a more trust-based approach, and obliterating profit motive, philanthropy could potentially do something different – get resources more quickly in the hands of communities as leaders and recognize the role artists can play within this work. 

I want to live in a world where philanthropy doesn’t exist because there is no need for it. This requires a world where human need is centered, not profit, and where our resources are shared rationally and equitably. But within the limitations of our current unjust system, there is possibility for change on the way there. To do so it is vital we have honest conversations about how funding operates, but more importantly what we want and need. As Patricia Garza of LAPP asked, “When do we as practitioners have the space to imagine new possibilities?” LAPP plans to host more conversations under the L.A. Gathers series so we can dig further into this powerful and potent question.

That time is now. When organized around the leadership and interests of artists and other sections of poor and low-wealth communities, there is limitless power, creativity, and imagination to design and fight for the future we deserve.