The Tarells of this world don’t start in Hollywood or the Royal Shakespeare Company. They start at the African Heritage Cultural Arts Center, and that place has helped thousands of kids dream about something bigger than they knew – and what they knew was poverty in the inner city.
That’s Michael Spring, director of the Miami-Dade county department of cultural affairs, quoted by The Guardian’s Joanna Walters. He’s referring to Tarell Alvin McCraney, who wrote the play on which the film Moonlight was based, in Walters’ examination of some of the consequences of cutting the National Endowment for the Arts.
Spring was blunt on the plans:
It’s diabolical.
The National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities, though they seem to have survived this year’s budget, are very much in the crosshairs of the U.S. federal government. Arts are a public good, and state support, especially in disadvantaged areas, is essential.
But the appearance of saving money—though the money saved is minimal—is the only thing that matters to the Trump kakistocracy.