{"id":8961,"date":"2018-10-17T11:39:35","date_gmt":"2018-10-17T15:39:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=8961"},"modified":"2018-10-17T11:39:35","modified_gmt":"2018-10-17T15:39:35","slug":"gonzalez","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2018\/10\/17\/gonzalez\/","title":{"rendered":"Gonzalez \u2018Running For Governor To Help Artists And Everyone Else, All The Little Guys That Are Being Left Behind\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the end of a \u201cCreate the Vote\u201d candidate forum<\/a> Monday with Jay Gonzalez\u2014the Needham Democrat running against Republican incumbent Charlie Baker for governor of Massachusetts\u2014 Melissa Nussbaum Freeman of Red Sage Stories Playback Theatre & Art for Social Change said she\u2019d not heard Gonzalez mention anything about paying artists.<\/p>\n

\u201cI barely make a living. I took my social security early. I get food stamps. I live in an apartment with three people in Dorchester,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all scramble as artists doing public engagement in the city for $2,000 [grants],\u201d Nussbaum Freeman said. \u201cI don\u2019t think anybody in government or who writes or reads the grants gets that little. \u2026 And we distribute that [money]. We don\u2019t keep that money to ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gonzalez said most early education providers in the state made $25,000 per year and that 40 percent of them receive state assistance.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m running for governor to help artists and everyone else, all the little guys that are being left behind,\u201d Gonzalez said. \u201cAs governor you are going to be my top priority\u2014all the artists, all the people that are being left behind.\u201d<\/p>\n

About 50 people attended Monday morning\u2019s forum at Harvard University\u2019s American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, which was organized by the statewide arts advocacy group MassCreative.<\/p>\n

Matt Wilson, executive director of MassCreative, who moderated the event, said Monday that the group had invited Gov. Baker to take part in his own solo \u201cCreate the Vote\u201d forum, but the governor hadn\u2019t yet responded.<\/p>\n

\"Jay<\/a>
Jay Gonzalez speaks at MassCreative “Create The Vote” candidate forum at Harvard University\u2019s American Repertory Theater, Cambridge, Oct. 15, 2018. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t have a creative bone in my body,\u201d said Gonzalez, who was Secretary of Administration and Finance of Massachusetts under Gov. Deval Patrick, then worked as president and CEO of CeltiCare Health and New Hampshire Healthy Families. He reminisced about his father playing songs from his native Spain as Gonzalez was growing up in Cleveland, a brother studying at Berklee College of Music and playing at Passim, a daughter excited by graphic design in high school, a grandmother-in-law who enjoys an arts program for seniors.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe arts connect us, Gonzalez said. \u201cThey\u2019re a vehicle for a having a shared experience, kind of like sports.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gonzalez said he supports increased education funding and early childhood education\u2014including more funding for arts education.<\/p>\n

\u201cI understand the governor has repeatedly tried to cut funding for the Mass Cultural Council,\u201d Gonzalez said. \u201cI will not make it worse and I will try to make it better. I will add more to that.\u201d He said he supports increasing the state\u2019s cultural facilities improvement fund. He said, if elected governor, he would ask the state Executive Office of Health and Human Services to look at how it could incorporate the arts into their programming.<\/p>\n

Gonzalez said he would appoint a high level person \u201cwhose sole responsibility\u201d would be to focus on the state\u2019s creative economy. (The state had a Creative Industries director<\/a> under Gov. Patrick, but that position seems to have been left open under Baker.)<\/p>\n

Gonzalez spoke of his proposal to raise taxes on wealthy individuals and institutions to fund education and transportation programs\u2014including a new 1.6 percent tax on the endowments of universities with more than $1 billion in their endowments. Harvard and Boston University would be among those affected by his proposal. Gonzalez said the new taxes would not reduce what these universities are able to do because the endowments have seen 4.8 to more than 8 percent growth per year.<\/p>\n

\n

Are you interested in politics and the arts? Then have we got a publication for you: Wonderland! Help Wonderland keep producing our great coverage of local arts, cultures and activisms (and our great festivals) by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.<\/em><\/p>\n

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\"Jay<\/a>
Jay Gonzalez speaks at MassCreative “Create The Vote” candidate forum at Harvard University\u2019s American Repertory Theater, Cambridge, Oct. 15, 2018. (Greg Cook)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the end of a \u201cCreate the Vote\u201d candidate forum Monday with Jay Gonzalez\u2014the Needham Democrat running against Republican incumbent Charlie Baker for governor of Massachusetts\u2014 Melissa Nussbaum Freeman of Red Sage Stories Playback Theatre & Art for Social Change said she\u2019d not heard Gonzalez mention anything about paying artists. \u201cI barely make a living. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8966,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,114],"tags":[455,245,453,456,452,68,244,454],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8961"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8961"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8969,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8961\/revisions\/8969"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}