- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
Great column, Andrew, with an irresistible headline. A group of us in San Francisco are campaigning for the public employment of artists under Obama's Jobs & Growth stimulus package to work in the schools and couple an employment program with the President-elect's commitment to school reform and educational advancement.
The arts have shown their ability to foster a love of learning in a variety of subjects and serve as a collaborative meeting place for students from diverse economic and racial backgrounds. Artists also represent a 50-state strategy that can put talented artists to work who are young, old, middle-aged, male and female, gay and straight, disabled and not-so-disabled, and of many ethnic stripes. A broader demographic base than that served by traditional infrastructure projects.
In the spirit and noble examples of the WPA and the CETA Arts Program of the Ford-Carter years, we press Uncle Sam to invest in putting artists to work in the schools and community centers of our nation.
Michael D. Nolan
San Francisco
