Los Angeles Poverty Department Performances Frame Community Conversation With Civic, Arts, And Community Leaders.
With Agents & Assets as a launching pad, civic, arts, business, community, and cultural leaders come together for a discussion of the wide ranging issues touched upon in the performance including the Constitution, the press, homelessness, poverty, health care, civil liberties, U.S. foreign policy, and the wars on drugs and terror. Specialists on various aspects of social policy and those on the front lines with firsthand experience of government policies join audience members to illuminate the issues and demonstrate the role of the arts in fostering “a culture of democracy.”
Saturday, May 21 / REDCAT / 6:30 PM
Agents & Assets Benefit Performance
Discussion: Endless Wars: Drugs and Terror
Benefit Panelists:
Alfred McCoy, historian, University of Wisconsin-Madison; author of The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade.
Ramona Ripston, Executive Director of the ACLU of Southern California and the ACLU Foundation of Southern California.
Wednesday, May 25 / The Democracy Forum at The National Center for the Preservation of Democracy / 7:30 PM
Agents & Assets performance
Discussion: Journalism, Propaganda & the War on Drugs
Panelists:
Alfred McCoy (see above)
Robert Parry, editor IF magazine; reporter who broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for AP and Newsweek; author of Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq.
Sunday, May 29 / Compton Community College at the Forum of the Alllied Health Building / 3:00 PM
Agents & Assets performance
Discussion: Then & Now: Proposition 36 and the Prison Industrial Complex
Panelists:
Dave Fratello, political director of Campaign for New Drug Policies and co-author and campaign manager for Proposition 36.
Susan Burton, founder and executive director of A New Way of Life Foundation that provides basic living needs for homeless women with a history of substance abuse that are in transition from prison or at risk for incarceration.
Leadership for the Special Benefit Performance includes Amy Brenneman, Jodie Evans, Frank Gehry, Steven Lavine, Peter Sellars, Thom Mayne, Bill Viola, and Adele Yellin.
The idea of equality is something that is only possible to demonstrate culturally. Politically there is no equality. Economically there is no equality. Socially there is no equality. In the arts and culture, we are equals. All over the planet there are people waiting for their turn. This is the time: a cultural democracy—the reality of equality—that we can demonstrate on a stage towards a future. —Peter Sellars, director, LAPD Benefit Co-chair.
These performances are made possible through support from the City of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department; the California Community Foundation; and the Los Angeles County Arts Commission. Additional funding has been provided by Old Stories: New Lives. LAPD also acknowledges the Nathan Cummings Foundation for its major support of Agents & Assets from 2002 to 2004 and Animating Democracy, an initiative of Americans for the Arts with funding from the Ford Foundation.