In Search of the Right Words

Last week I testified before the Illinois House Museum, Arts, Culture, and Entertainment Committee in Springfield. This week, I was on Good Day Chicago on Fox32, joined Darryl Dennard for an interview with iHeart Media, and was included as one of 10 lives "upended" by federal funding cuts by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) USA Today. In all of them I'm asked to answer the question "Why do the humanities matter?"

I never do the story justice.

No matter how hard I try, I am never able to capture what it feels like to attend A People's Salon - or what I know it will feel like at this weekend's Odyssey Project/ Proyecto Odisea Graduation.

During the Peoples Salon - PERMANENT RECORD - the living room at Haymarket House in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood was lit up by a rainbow of ages, backgrounds and experiences. For a few fleeting hours, we personified the fullness of Chicago, of Illinois, and of America. We embodied what it means to make and protect space for the collective consideration of challenging ideas. Over the course of 90 minutes we wove the fabric of democracy. The stories and performances by artist and musician Damon Locks, sociologist and writer Reuben Miller, author and archivist Tempest Hazel and public school history teacher, Matthew Collin Clark transported us into a constellation of ways of thinking and knowing about the phrase "permanent record." All were deeply personal. All were universally expansive.

We invited attendees to etch a memory onto a paper record. We'll have a "record collection" of memories. We'll have the photos we took. We'll each have our memories. This will be our permanent record of the public humanities.

When we gather in a few days for the Odyssey Project/Proyecto Odisea graduation we will gather to witness and celebrate the achievement of our beloved students.

Over the course of the program, students analyzed illustrative poems and wrote their own. They learned about the Harrison High School protests of 1968 that, among other things, gave Chicago one of its first bilingual schools, Benito Juarez Community High School. They drew connections between disparate writers and moments like Emily Dickinson’s poetry and Octavia Butler’s novels.

100% of Odyssey Project/Proyecto Odisea students are living at or below 150% of the Federal Poverty Guideline. Over 70% are women who are the heads of their households. Over 90% are students of color. Students receive support to participate. We provide books, transportation, childcare, and sometimes laptops.

In many ways programs like our Museum on Main Street, Road Scholars, Odyssey Project/Proyecto Odisea, Community Conversations hearken back to a deeply rooted public humanities movement in America. Walt Whitman is, perhaps, one of America's most famous examples of someone who benefitted from the public humanities. Whitman - who stopped being able to go to school around the of age 11 - was a regular at public talks, performances and debates on science, philosophy, literature, and social issues in New York City. These free offerings - part of the Lyceum movement - were formative educational experiences for thousands of adults, and deeply influenced Whitman, and works like Leaves of Grass and Democratic Vistas.

Our democratic endeavor requires hearts and minds, not just politics, policies, and technologies. Democracy requires imaginative, displacing endeavors. Humanities - and the humanistic endeavors of art, culture, storytelling - are more powerful than politics for creating the society that best fits the need of the people. 

But being a 'public' is a transient, ethereal thing. It doesn't leave a 'permanent record,' it lays the foundation.

Everyday, Illinois Humanities works to make sure these kinds of experiences exist and are available for everyone in Illinois - particularly for communities and individuals least likely to have them.

I expect that every time I'm asked, "Why does the humanities matter?" I'll continue to struggle to find the words that express what I feel and see when we are in action. 

I'll probably always struggle to find the right words. It's probably a good sign that I'm a humanist at heart.