Dear Senators,
The $877 billion our industry generated last fiscal year is about to disappear. The 4.5%we added to our GDP—about to vaporize. As one of the most powerful economic drivers of this economy, we boast an export of $72.6 billion and an annual growth rate of 4.16 percent , nearly double that of the U.S. economy as a whole at 2.2 percent. Without your immediate action for financial relief by Aug. 1, we will collapse, and the result will be an economic cataclysm.
We are the arts economy. We are everywhere. And our fates are tied together.
We are over 675,000 small businesses and organizations in every town, city, and state, employing 5.1 million hard-working Americans who are now desperately struggling to stay above water. Our influence reaches across every sector, because the arts economy is a jobs multiplier, creating millions of sustainable jobs in collateral arts-adjacent economies. In short, our institutions of arts and culture anchor communities, producing highly interdependent commercial ecosystems that depend on rank-and-file arts workers who increase tax revenue, real estate value, and attract businesses, large and small. These are the dominoes. If you lose us, we lose the economy. We need your help.
We are Florida’s largest job creator at 260,999 jobs, bringing in $36,937,050,840, or 3.7 percent to Florida’s state GSP. America’s favorite theme park, which was built by union carpenters and construction workers, now runs on the working-class labor of the administrative staff who operate the day-to-day; the engineers who make it move; the electricians who keep it bright; the painters and pyrotechnicians who explode it with color; the custodians who keep it clean; and the actors, dancers, and musicians who bring it to life. We need your help.
We are New York City’s main economic driver: in 2019, Broadway sold more tickets than all the New York and New Jersey sports teams combined, creating a revenue of $1.83 billion in ticket sales, generating even more in arts-adjacent businesses. On any night out, our audiences take public transportation, taxis, and Ubers or Lyfts; pay for childcare; go shopping; and by record numbers, go to restaurants which employ kitchen staff, waiters, and bussers who rely on food delivery trucks whose companies purchase goods from farmers, who are now mass killing their livestock and burning their crops because their industry is crashing. We need your help.
We account for $30.3 billion of the Illinois economy and contribute over 224,000 jobs. In Chicago, alone, that’s $2.25 billion in economic activity annually. If we go missing, the economic implosion in our neighborhoods, in our cities, and in our state will take decades to rebuild.
The list goes on: We are a $1 billion economy in Wyoming, $2.9 billion in Nebraska, $4.2 billion in Iowa, $7 billion in Utah, $8.3 billion in Indiana, $9 billion in Arizona, $10 billion in Missouri, $15 billion in North Carolina, $19 billion in Ohio, $24 billion in Georgia, $44 billion in Washington, $46 billion in Texas, and $230 billion in California. We are big business because we are local business, creating and sustaining jobs across trades, not to mention the work of the artists themselves.
Artists, whose creativity has elevated our best moments and now sustains us through one of our worst, now require your signature as a byline to one of the most consequential stories of your tenure; the story in which you:
1. Extend Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC) by Aug. 1, before 28 million of your constituents are evicted and on the streets.
2. Create a 100 percent subsidy for COBRA to protect workers’ healthcare, with eligibility extended to 36 months.
3. Provide $43.85 billion in economic relief to sustain our arts and culture institutions—relief that should go directly to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, to be appropriated to its partner organizations across the towns, cities, suburbs, exurbs, and rural areas in which they operate. This $43.85 billion is just 5 percent of the revenue the arts generated in 2019, which is proportionate to the $50 billion you gave to the top 10 airlines who successfully lobbied for your assistance. We ask for nothing more than immediate and proportionate economic relief.
The cost of this relief and FPUC’s extension of $85/day ($600 extra dollars a week) will pale compared to your inaction, which is estimated to cost trillions and will devastate working people. Families and individuals who depend on our colossal arts economy are struggling to pay rent and put food on the table as they face anxiety over whether they can make it past Aug. 1. Our very humanity—and the humanities—teeter at the edge of a fiscal and existential cliff. If we fall, so does the identity of America itself for we are the very expression of this nation. And right now, we are crying out for your action.
Dear Senators, you are at your finest when you come together to hear the collective call of your people, one people, without prejudice to partisanship or politic, and with a heart full of love for all whom you represent. We are not only calling on you to represent us, we are calling on you to represent this moment. We are calling on you to represent our future. We are calling on you to represent the history that you are about to make.
Dear Senators, now is your time. The nation is bearing witness. You hundred women and men stand at the center of America’s stage and we are calling upon you to act. You have the power to save your people and revitalize your country in its darkest hour. And we are desperate for light. Dear Senators, the ink is still wet, you hold the pen, and the story of this nation is in your hands.
United We Stand,
Matthew-Lee Erlbach
Core member, Be An Arts Hero
SIGN HERE to add your name. To email this letter to your Senators, go here. This letter has gathered thousands of signatures, including the nation’s most esteemed arts leaders and organizations.
Matthew-Lee Erlbach is a playwright, TV writer, and actor. A labor advocate, he is co-leader and director of Government Affairs and Public Policy at Be An #ArtsHero, a national grassroots campaign repositioning America’s Arts & Culture sector as a legislative priority federally and locally.
