In her two decades as a human rights lawyer, working on issues in more than 25 countries, Hadar Harris says she is upset by what she testified on American soil and that she worries that some Americans may not pay enough attention.
“I would say this is a very dangerous moment,” Harris said, sitting at a table in a small office for work at the Washington Center, where she is the executive director of the Washington Office of Pen American, an organization that promotes literary freedom and free expression.
Her concern is partly focused on the main changes that take place at the John F. Kennedy Center for performing arts under Trump’s administration.
Named after the former US president, Kennedy Center, as is well known, serves as a national artistic center that should reflect the pulse of American culture. It is a space that hosts a wide range of artists, from well -known performers to independent productions. And although it may seem unusual to raise awareness of what some can consider only another concert hall, there is concern that this is much more than a calendar of artistic events.
“You have a president who seeks to consolidate power … They really attract key constitutional principles, including freedom of expression and freedom of speech,” Harris explained.
“So, those of us who have seen it before … I can see exactly what’s going on,” she said, warning that when a political leader tries to “capture the culture”, this is something he says he is typical of authoritarian. “Just by the book.”
US President Donald Trump has set up in charge of Washington’s Kennedy Center, promising to get rid of the performance ‘she woke up’ and encouraged big names like Hamilton, Issa Rae and Louise Penny to cancel events in protest.
Trump’s ‘Golden Age’ in art and culture
Shortly after returning to the White House, US President Donald Trump has imposed significant changes at the Kennedy Center.
“I decided to immediately abolish several individuals from the Board of Directors, including the chairman, who do not share our vision of the golden age in art and culture,” Trump said on his platform for social media of truth In early February.
“In my direction, we’ll make Kennedy Center at Washington DC, again great,” he wrote.
Although all this is in his extent of power, Trump has made an unusual move to install himself as a chairman of the committee. He also stuck for some programs at the Kennedy Center, although he said he had never actually attended the show in the place.
“We don’t have to wake up at the Kennedy Center,” Trump told reporters at Airforce One while they traveled to Superbowl in February.
“We don’t need some shows that are the shame they even put on.”
Ric Grenell, who chose Trump for the temporary CEO of Kennedy Center, threw a little light on what the president wants to see on stage.
He told the audience at a conservative political conference “We want to make art brilliant again.”
When he pushed the specifics about how to do so, Grenll suggested more religious program and cited plans for the “big big celebration of Christ’s birth on Christmas.”
The church is drawn in protest
Although Trump’s goal may be added to certain types of religious program, at least one prominent church is withdrawing in protest.
“We don’t support it, we don’t believe it is right,” said Howard-John Wesley, the older pastor of the Baptist Church of Alfred Street, in Alexandria, Va.
For the last five years, members of his community have been invited to perform at the Kennedy Center. Their elaborate Christmas concert requires nine months of preparation and costs a church about $ 250,000.
After change, the church leadership decided to cancel and perform the exhibition under their own terms. Wesley says they were afraid that they would eventually cancel anyway.
“Not for anything else than we are a professional, inclusive church that was open and we say that we do not believe that it is the direction God wants to take over our nation.”
Trump made it clear that he did not support the initiatives aimed at promoting diversity, involvement or capital, known as Dei. He has signed a number of executive orders intended for removal and initiative to refund Dei in educational programs in the Federal Government, while pushing the private sector to adopt similar changes.
For Wesley, this is a non-stain. The Alfred Street Church sits on a land from the country he bought Freed and enslaved African American 222 years ago. The Congregation is now strong and growing 12,000 members.
“We would not be in the history of the line of the Black Church and the Civic Rights Movement, and all the great men and women who fought for our civil rights, just to start with something we believe that we are extremely leading us back as a nation,” he said.
Cancellation of performers and protests
There is also an increasing list of performers who are distanced from the Kennedy Center.
Award -winning television producer Shonda Rhimes resigned on the Committee after changes. Actor Issa Rae, a TV show star UncertainHe canceled the performance, and musician Ben Folds gave up as an art adviser to the National Symphony Orchestra (NSO), who holds performances at the center.
Earlier this week, organizers of the blockbuster musical Hamilton He announced that a series of shows would no longer happen next year.
The star and creator of Lin Manuel Miranda told the New York Times that “Kennedy Center was not created in this spirit, and we will not be a part of it while Trump Kennedy Center.”
In response to Hamilton Announcement, Grenell has published On social media Wednesday that the move was a “publicistic stunt that would reciprocate the fire.”
“Art is intended for everyone – not just for people who love and agree,” he wrote. “The American public must know that Lin Manuel is intolerant of people who disagree politically.”
‘One of those who define moments’
The best -selling Canadian author Louise Penny was set to launch her new book, Black WolfOn stage at the Kennedy Center, but she canceled those plans in mid -February.
In a Recent Facebook postShe announced that she would not visit the United States and that she would instead take the launch of a book in Ottawa at the National Art Center.
“I hardly believe that I am saying this, but given that it is a constant threat to the unprotected trade war against Canada by the US president, I do not feel that they can enter the United States,” she wrote, adding that she hoped her US fans would come to Canadian events.
She said the cancellation of the Kennedy Center launched for her was an easy decision.
“I think it’s one of those who define moments for us as individuals,” she told CBC News during an interview from her home in Knowlton, Que.
Penny thinks Kennedy Center is changing as an attempt to Trump’s administration to suffocate artists and intellectuals who cannot agree with the president.
“What is the first Tirani doing when they take over power?” Penny asked. “They closed disagreement.”
