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To Will with MI from Portland who called at about 9:45 and voiced his fear that, after what happened to Jim Chasse, he is "one bad day away from ending up on a slab": We are making a documentary about Jim's life and death. Please contact us @ Alienboy.org

posted 4 years, 2 months ago
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My name is Cheryl Strayed. I am a writer living in Portland. I moved here from Minnesota, a state which is ranked 13th in the nation for state arts funding, as opposed to Oregon's number 48. The lack of support is definitely something I've felt. Though there are some grants available to individual artists from a few nonprofit agencies, those grants are relatively small (a few thousand, as opposed to sums significant enough to truly support an artist on a major project) and limited. My husband is also an artist--he's a documentary filmmaker--and, much as we love Oregon, we have had serious discussions about moving to a more arts-friendly state, since both of us make our living as independent artists.

In my mind, what needs to change has to do with the way Oregonians think about taxes. We are one of the few states without a sales tax. This is why we are a state at the bottom of the arts-funding scale, in constant struggle to fund the schools and social services. You get what you pay for; we won't be a thriving arts community in the longterm unless we support that community. Much as we are all loathe to pay taxes, the fact is that it's our civic duty to fund the kind of world we hope to live in. Artists play a large part in making our community more vibrant, more interesting, more soulful. It's worth the few dollars each taxpayer would pay annually.

Cheryl Strayed

posted 4 years, 4 months ago
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