Angela Cooper and Ona Marshall contributed powerful commentary on Sundance Institute’s removal of Louisville from its list of host cities. I support everything they say and thank them for writing it. But as a lifelong activist in documentary and independent filmmaking, I offer a different perspective. They are not contradictory, but complementary.
If you believe, as I do, in the power of art to change minds (which is far more difficult than mountains), then Sundance is the place to be in Orlando, like Louisville, Nashville, Kentucky, Tennessee, Florida, etc. I suggest that we should target cities like this. Rather than retreat from them.
No wonder Sundance didn’t choose Kentucky.
I have in mind independent media programs designed with LGBTQ youth and young women in mind, such as how Sundance works with San Francisco-based LGBTQ media distribution company Frameline and the Kentucky Fairness Campaign. It has been curated in collaboration with local contacts such as. .
All three states have LGBTQ and women’s organizations, private foundations, and stakeholders that I believe will contribute to program planning, support materials, and tour costs. I imagine such a program would take place in a private location (e.g., a museum, a supporting church) followed by a discussion group, with the youth and, if they choose, their parents and teachers invited to participate. You will probably be killed. It will be chaired by a local civil rights activist. Local councilors will be offered an invitation to attend and legitimize their votes.
My proposal has notable precedent. In 1978, California’s LGBTQ community faced a ballot initiative proposed by State Sen. John Briggs, but unfortunately passed by legislatures in Florida, Tennessee, and Kentucky, and pending in other states. It was similar to the law. state. In response, the LGBTQ community organized community forums across the state. The most famous of these debate teams featured San Francisco Board of Supervisors member Harvey Milk and San Francisco State University professor Sally Gearhart, but there were many others. I served as one, visiting community colleges and churches in suburbs and small towns to discuss this proposal with the initiative’s sponsors.
We were spat at, slandered, and assaulted, even as we came together as a community to prepare for, in hindsight, even more difficult challenges ahead. And in the end we won. In midsummer 1978, public opinion polls showed the Briggs initiative had won by an overwhelming majority. That November, we suffered a crushing defeat. There’s a solemn coda to this success story: the price of the ticket. A few weeks after the victory, Milk was assassinated in his office at City Hall.
If you doubt the power of art, consider perhaps the most powerful slogan of the 20th century. Three simple and unforgettable words coined by a gay New York graphic artist: Silence = Death. However, this slogan means the opposite. “Action = life”. “Don’t say you’re gay”: It reads like a command, but it’s actually an invitation and an opportunity to tell our stories.
There is precedent for discriminatory legislation in these states. From 1865 to 1950, Jim Crow laws enacted by the Kentucky-led Southern Congress forced many African Americans out of the state. When asked whether writers should dig up and tell painful stories of past violence and discrimination, Frank X. Walker, a professor at the University of Kentucky, said, “I believe the truth will set you free.” Yes, it will happen, but you have to start saying it out loud. What local activists want from more generous state-based arts organizations is to lend a hand, not turn away.
If women and LGBTQ Southerners seeking to control their reproductive decisions are to have a different future than the one envisioned by the white Republican Congressional majority (“get out”), now is the time to act. It’s time. I always keep in mind the words of James Baldwin, a great black gay voice who is the voice of America’s conscience. The challenge is in the present moment, and the time is always now. ”
Editor’s Note: Fenton Johnson will be joining authors Brothers Paul Quenon and John M. A conversation with Brother Sweeney on “Reflections on the Spiritual Journey.”
