In her two decades as a human rights lawyer who is working on questions in more than 25 countries, Hadar Harris says that she is alerted about what she is watching on US floor, and fears that some Americans may not pay enough attention.
“I would say that this is a very dangerous moment,” said Harris and was sitting at a table in a small workshop office in downtown Washington, where she is the managing director of the Washington Office of Pen America, an organization that promotes literary freedom and free expression.
Her concern is partly focused on the most important changes in John F. Kennedy Center for the performing arts under the Trump administration.
The Kennedy Center named after the former US President is, as it is known, as a national art center that is supposed to reflect the pulse of American culture. It is a room in which a wide range of artists takes place, from well -known actors to more independent productions. And although it may seem unusual to raise awareness of what some see as a different concert hall, the concerns that this is much more than just a calendar of art events is more than just a calendar of art events.
“You have a president who tries to consolidate power.
“So, those of us who have seen it before … can see exactly what happens,” she said, warning that a political leader tries to “grasp” culture what it is for an authoritarian. “Right on the game book.”
US President Donald Trump was responsible for the Kennedy Center in Washington and was responsible to get rid of “Woke” interferations and big names such as Hamilton, Issa Rae and Louise Penny to deny the events in protest.
Trump’s ‘golden age’ in art and culture
Not long after US President Donald Trump had returned to the White House, she made significant changes in the Kennedy Center.
“I decided to end several people from the board of trustees immediately, including the chairman who do not share our vision for a golden age in art and culture,” said Trump in early February on his social media platform of truth.
“In my leadership we will make the Kennedy Center great again in Washington DC,” he wrote.
While all of this is in his area of power, Trump took the unusual step to install himself as chairman of the board. He also struck some of the programs in the Kennedy Center, although he said he had never visited a show at the venue himself.
“We don’t have to woke up in the Kennedy Center,” said Trump reporters in Airforce One when he traveled to Superbowl in February.
“We don’t need some shows that are a shame that they attracted at all.”
Ric Grenell, who selected Trump as an interim executive director of the Kennedy Center, has thrown a little light about what the president wants to see on stage.
He told an audience at a conservative political conference: “We want to make art great again.”
When Grenell pushed for details about how they would do it, Grenell proposed more religious programs and cited plans for a “big celebration of the birth of Christ for Christmas”.
The church pulls out in protest
While Trump’s goal is to add certain types of religious programs, at least one prominent church is protested.
“We do not support this, we don’t believe that this is right,” said Howard-John Wesley, the senior pastor of Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, VA.
In the past five years, members of his community have been invited to performance in the Kennedy Center. Its elaborate Christmas concert requires nine months preparation and the church costs around 250,000 US dollars.
After the changes, the church leadership decided to terminate and make the show on its own conditions. Wesley says they feared that they would be canceled anyway.
“Not for anything else than we are a professional diversity, a professional church that was open and to say that we do not believe that this is the direction that God wants to take our nation.”
Trump has made it very clear that he does not support initiatives that aim to promote diversity, inclusion or justice, known as Dei. He has signed a number of executive regulations to exterminate and reorganize the initiatives in educational programs in the federal government and at the same time to cause the private sector to make similar changes.
For Wesley this is a non -starter. The Alfred Street Church is located on a property that was bought by freed and enslaved African Americans 222 years ago. The community is now 12,000 members and grows.
“We would not be in the history of the descent of the Black Church and the Civil Rights Movement, and all the great men and women who fought for our civil rights to simply do something that we believe that we will bring ourselves backwards as a nation,” he said.
Actors cancellations and protests
There is also a growing list of actors who distance themselves from the Kennedy Center.
The award -winning television producer Shonda Rhimes resigned from the board after the changes. Actor Issa Rae, star of the TV show UnsureCanceled an appearance, and the musician Ben Folds announced as an artistic consultant of the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO), which keeps up with the center.
Organizers of the blockbuster musical at the beginning of this week Hamilton announced that shows would no longer take place at the event location next year.
The star and creator of the show, Lin Manuel Miranda, told the New York Times that “the Kennedy center was not created in this sense and that we will not be part of it while the Trump is Kennedy Center”.
In response to the Hamilton Announcement, Grenell published on Wednesday on social media that the step “was a publicity stunt that will backfire”.
“The arts are for everyone – not only for the people who like Lin and agree with them,” he wrote. “The American public must know that Lin Manuel is intolerant to people who do not politically agree with politically.”
“One of these defining moments”
The best -selling Canadian author Louise Penny should start her new book. The black wolfOn stage in the Kennedy Center, but she canceled these plans in mid -February.
In a recent Facebook post, she announced that she would not take tours in the USA and instead the start of books in Ottawa in the National Arts Center.
“I can hardly believe that I say that, but in view of the persistent threat of a non -provoked trade war against Canada by the US president, I do not have the feeling that I can enter the USA,” she wrote, adding that her US fans would come to the Canadian events.
She said the cancellation of the Kennedy Center’s start was a simple decision for her.
“I think it is one of these defining moments for us as individuals,” she told CBC News in an interview from her home in Knowlton, Que.
Penny sees the Kennedy Center as an attempt by the Trump government to suffocate artists and intellectuals that cannot agree with the president.
“What is the first thing the tyrants do when they take over?” Penny asked. “They conclude dissent.”
