White House Sponsors Communist Arts Collective

From Patrick Courrielche at Big Government, "EXPLOSIVE NEW AUDIO Reveals White House Using NEA to Push Partisan Agenda":

Buffy Wicks, Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement

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The NEA and the White House did encourage a handpicked, pro-Obama arts group to address politically controversial issues under contentious national debate. That fact is irrefutable.

But some have claimed that the invite and passages, pulled from the conference call that inspired the article, were taken out of context. Context is what I intend to establish here.

On August 10th, the National Endowment for the Arts, the White House Office of Public Engagement, and the Corporation for National and Community Service hosted a conference call with a handpicked arts group. This arts group played a key role in Obama’s arts effort during his election campaign, as declared by the organizers of the call, and many on the call played a role in the now famous Obama Hope poster.

Much of the talk on the conference call was a build up to what the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) was specifically asking of this group. In the following segment, Buffy Wicks, Deputy Director of the White House Office of Public Engagement, clearly identifies this arts group as a pro-Obama collective and warns them of some “specific asks” that will be delivered later in the meeting.

The rest is here. Buffy Wicks, pictured above, is quoted thus: "I’m actually in the White House and working towards furthering this agenda, this very aggressive agenda." The full audio and transcript of the NEA conference call is here. The call is organized and moderated by Michael Skolnik. He identifies himself as a filmmaker and political director for hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons in New York.

Here's a snippet of interest from the transcript:

This is Mike Skolnik. I am based in New York. I am a film maker for the past ten years but currently serve as the political director for Russell Simmons. I have been asked by folks in the White House and folks in the NEA about a month ago in a conversation that was had. We had the idea that I would help bring together the independent artists community around the country. So as we hear everyone's names and locations and companies, this is extremely humbling to be in all your presence on the telephone. It's a remarkable group that is on this phone. I thank you for your time ....

I want to start off by saying a few things ... I heard somebody from Shepard Fairey's team introduce themselves, and I think Shepard and the Hope poster obviously is a great example, but it's clear as an independent art community as artists and thinkers and tastemakers and marketers and visionaries on this call, the role that we played during the campaign for the president and also during his first some odd days of his presidency and the president has a clear arts agenda and has been very supportive of using art and supporting art in creative ways to talk about some of the issues that we face here in our country and also to engage people. And I think all of us who are on this phone call were selected for a reason, and you are the ones that lead by example in your communities. You are the thought leaders.

You are the ones that, if you create a piece of art or promote a piece of art or create a campaign for a company, and tell our country and our young people sort of what to do and what to be in to; and what's cool and what's not cool. And so I'm hoping that through this group and the goal of all this and the goal of this phone call, is through this group that we can create a stronger community amongst ourselves to get involved in things that we're passionate about as we did during the campaign but continue to get involved in those things, to support some of the president's initiatives, but also to do things that we are passionate about and to push the president and push his administration.

And the first thing that I thought we could all come together on and begin this collective of artists around the country was United We Serve or is United We Serve, and United We Serve is the president's call to the country to get engaged in meaningful community service, and I wanted to give you all the opportunity to hear more about the United We Serve from the folks who are running it as well as hear from the National Endowment for the Arts and Yosi Sergant, who many of us know has been a true champion during the campaign of the arts and as what he's doing over at the National Endowment for the Arts, and how we can all work together to promote and to engage our country in service as well as use art in doing so ....

The passages cited roughly overlap with those that Courrielche has highlighted with yellow and red at the draft.

This report constitutes a crushing idictment of the administration's corrupt propaganda progam. Especially interesting is the mention of Shepard Fairey, the famous communist-propagandist who struck gold with his iconic image of Obama "Hope" during the campaign. Below is Fairey's drawing of communist Angela Davis, who is retired from UC Santa Cruz as a professor in the history of consciousness. The Obama administration's NEA is engaged in the glorification of radical iconography; and we know now that taxpayer funding is supporting the production of this kind of communist-inspired art.

See also, the New York Times, "The Revolution Will Be Illustrated."