Have Fun!
Buy tickets for yourself (and a friend?) and attend a local event, especially if it’s a benefit for a cause you value! Musicians, spoken word poets, theater—joy is resistance!
Choose venues and artists who live in your region, and spend what you can to bolster the local community. The economic downturns hit artists hard.
Why it matters:
The arts are always an early target of authoritarians. Artists are the folks whose values lead away from strict traditional roles. They learn to have a thick skin and get by on scraps to create room for self-expression. Very few artists ever make a living, much less get rich and famous, and even those who did started off in some local bar or bookstore. When you buy tickets to local events, you support the venues and artists who unearth truths obscured by manners.
Entertainment is also critical to sustaining our resistance. Humor, music and storytelling fuel persistence. In every WWII ghetto or American Plantation, oppressed communities developed strong entertainment cultures that preserved history, stories and knowledge. The more oppressed a people is, the more seriously it takes entertainment.
Authoritarians control entertainment because it informs and inspires us. Fight back by supporting the voices emerging wherever you are. A Thriving arts community inoculates against fascism.
