Virginians: Get involved!
In view of the huge deficits, the state legislatures in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia are devastating their funding for the arts and for education. Here's something that you can do to help in Virginia (via Virginians for the Arts):
"The greatest threat to public support for arts and cultural institutions in Virginia in the past two decades is pending before the House of Delegates and will be voted on this Thursday, February 25.Legislator contact info here.
On Sunday, the House Appropriations Committee recommended elimination of the Virginia Commission for Arts and all arts grants funding as part of the House's proposed 2011-2012 budget. The full House will vote on this budget on Thursday. We believe that legislative supporters of the arts will mount an effort to delete this provision from the House budget package and thus to restore funding for the Commission and its grants to arts and cultural institutions across Virginia, large and small.
Please call your legislators immediately and ask them to take action to eliminate this provision from the House budget. And please forward this E-mail to your board members, donors, artistic staffs and all other friends of the arts and ask them to join this urgent effort. Information regarding how to determine who is your legislator and how to contact him or her is set out at the end of this E-mail.
If this devastating proposal is to be reversed, we need nothing less than an unprecedented outpouring of public outcry over this action. Only you can make that happen. Please don't assume that "somebody else" will make these calls. We need every supporter of the arts to stand up and be counted in the next two days.
What exactly are we asking for? We ask the House to delete, from the proposed House amendments to the Budget Bill (House Bill 30), the elimination of all funding for arts grants through the Virginia Commission for the Arts. The proposal to eliminate this funding is part of Item 0.9 #2h, paragraph L., reductions to Items 233 and 234. This item begins on page 7 of the House Amendments and the actual elimination of arts grants appears on page 10)."
3 comments:
I don't know what's happening to politicians in Virgina. They just took out sexual orientation from the list of illegal state work place discriminations. So, now its legal to get fired if you're gay.
i hope they pass this. i would rather virginia NOT go bankrupt than fund the arts. in fact, i'm not sure where governments got the idea it's their job to fund art. it's not. (and by the way-this comment is coming from an artist.)
Terry:
Do it!
Which in legalese means: permission granted
:-)
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