LOS ANGELES (YBH.ME) – Below is a summary of the taped August 10, 2009 conference call featuring White House staffers, NEA Communications Director Yosi Sergant, Nell Abernathy Director of Outreach for United We Serve, as well as a host of folks from the American arts community.
Republicans have long insisted that the NEA is nothing more than a Democrat mouthpiece. The partial transcript below in no way refutes that argument. Listen to the full audio of the NEA conference call.
The call begins with Michael Skolnik, music impresario Russell Simmons’ political adviser, introducing himself and the conference call “I have been asked by folks in the White House and folks in the NEA about a month ago in a conversation that was held….We had the idea that I would help bring together the independent artists community around the country…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.”
Rock the Vote pushes for President Obama's health care reform.
Mr. Skolnik is clearly stating that he was asked by the White House and the NEA to get independent artists to “get involved” and to “support some of the president’s initiatives.”
Next, White House Staffer Buffy Wicks is introduced. Ms. Wick is a former Obama campaign staffer and currently serves as the Deputy Director of the Office of Public Engagement in the White House. During her time on the call Ms. Wick states that “I’m actually in the White House and working towards furthering this agenda, this very aggressive agenda….We’re going to come at you with some specific asks here…I hope you guys are ready.”
Nell Abernathy from United We Serve speaks next. Ms. Abernathy implores the group “figure out how to implement the great vision that Buffy and the president have about increasing civic participation across the nation. This will sound very familiar to many of you, we’ve basically been working to do this using the same tools we found so successful in the campaign.” Later in the conversation she states “To a large degree, that’s how I saw the arts community to be so powerful in the campaign helping us to tell the story, telling their own story whether it was the Hope poster which made the whole — our whole mission instantly recognizable and relatable to people, or it was the Will.I.am video that circulated on the Internet but helping people to feel that they are part of a national movement and that their story, their private story, fits into this public space.”
Lastly Ms. Abernathy mentions that NEA Communications Director Yosi Sargant is on the call and he “is going to talk about some of the specific ways which we feel the art community is critical to this both what’s already going on and some opportunity for future partnership”.
Next Mr. Sergant is introduced. During his time on the call, Mr. Sergant begins by lauding the efforts of the various participants on the call stating “This is what we fought for. We fought for a chance to be at the table and not only at the table but we’re setting the table. And now the official rule of National Endowment for the Arts, as director of communication and say, We here at the NEA are extremely proud to participate in the president’s United We Serve initiative. This is a chance for us to partner with the White House and the Corporation for National Community Service along with the arts community, in immediately effecting some change in our communities.”
“Really I want to emphasize, and I know that other people have brought it up already, but I want to just hearken back to it really quickly in that this is just the beginning. This is the first telephone call of a brand new conversation. We are just now learning how to really bring this community together to speak with the government. What that looks like legally, we’re still trying to figure out the laws of putting government Web sites on Facebook and the use of Twitter. This is all being sorted out. We are participating in history as it’s being made. So bear with us as we learn the language so that we can speak to each other safely and we can really work together to move the needle and to get stuff done. Pick — I would encourage you to pick something whether it’s health care, education, the environment, you know, there’s four key areas that the corporation has identified as the areas of service. My ask would be to apply artistic, you know, your artistic creative communities’ utilities and bring them to the table. Again, I’m really, really honored to be working with you; the National Endowment for the Arts is honored. You’re going to see a lot more of us in the next four and hopefully eight years.”
Mr. Sergant then introduces Thomas Bates from Rock The Vote.
Later in the call a caller named Liz Ban asks for “the people that are on the inside of government to talk for a minute about Organizing For America and the differences between Organizing For America and Serve.gov and what we can do to help on critical advocacy issues like health care reform, cap and trade policy, if that should help move policies through the government, because this is a really important role that our creative community can also play.”
Nell Abernathy answers Ms. Ban’s question “I can address that a little bit, and the reason only largely because in my role at a federal agency, I’m precluded from going too far down the specific steps what people can do to advocate. But we have to, for these legal reasons, remain really separate what we do here from what OFA is doing, and so they’re basically two separate goals with the same idea. We use the same techniques, organizing strategies, because basically they’re both run by people from the campaign. But Serve.gov and the United We Serve initiative is based on the direct service addressing needs through volunteering today bipartisan support ideas than OFA, which is obviously advocating for policy change on these specific issues. So if you’re interested in getting involved with OFA that’s run through the DNC now, I could probably put you in — I could help you with who to contact. I could get that information to Michael and he could get it out. We can’t sort of — as a representative of the corporation, I’m not capable of giving you more guidance than just sending you to the right person.”
Mr. Skolnik picks up on Ms. Abernathy’s comments with the following and then ends the call:
“I think that’s a good point, Liz. Organizing For America, which was created after the campaign which now houses, as we said, in the democratic party and is run by Mitch Stewart, who is part of the campaign, he’s the executive director, it is what the democratic party has created to help advocate on behalf of the president, on behalf of the president’s policies to get them passed in government. So what I had hoped in bringing this group together with the great hosts, which again, I want to thank for reaching out to their communities was that we could begin to bring together our community in the same enthusiasm, with the same enthusiasm and with the same energy that we all saw in each other during the campaign, and we could continue to work together on issues as important as United We Serve and Service and begin here and continue to work together on other issues that we feel are important, as we mentioned some of them, health care and others…”
Two weeks after the call, Rock the Vote announced that it was initiating a “health care design contest” to be judged by hipster artists N.E.R.D, Andrew W.K., and DJ Skee & Chester French.
Although NEA Communications Director Yosi Sergant was demoted over the incident, the NEA maintains that it did nothing wrong and was merely a participant in the call. The story was first broken by filmmaker Patrick Courrielche on Andrew Breitabart’s Big Hollywood blog.
NOTE: Yes, But, However! Editor John Romano also writes for Big Hollywood.
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John Romano is the publisher and editor of Yes, But However!, a musician, a former political correspondent for BBC Radio London, and a serial web entrepreneur. Follow him on twitter: twitter.com/yesbuthowever or John Romano on Google+John Romano article archive.
