PARADIGM SHIFT
A CONVERSATION ON THE KIND OF LEADERSHIP AMERICA NEEDS NOW
CLIENT: NEW YORK LIVE ARTS
Public Programs: Issues & Ideas, Democracy, Interpersonal
Photo: Ian Douglas
Photo: Ian Douglas
ABOUT
Paradigm Shift presented several leaders in the arts, public service, business, and religion in discussion on the need for new thinking about leadership in America today. Inspired in part by the decisive role of Black women voters in Alabama in sending Doug Jones to the U.S. Senate, and the experiences of women of color who had won positions of authority in Congress and the Women’s March yet soon found their decisions and identities come under fire.
CURATORIAL STATEMENT
We have been told that America is in the grip of a national emergency. It is hard to argue with that assessment given the rise in hate crimes, family separations, mass shootings, income inequality, digital surveillance, and climate degradation. Those events are coupled with new pressures put on marginalized communities and people of conscience, as well as calculated attacks on journalism, science, history, and the judiciary. Strangely, the cry of emergency is unconcerned with any of those threats. Perhaps the issue is not the rocky waters we have entered but the steering of the ship.
American leadership has lately veered in two directions: those who would see us turn inward and backward, and those who caution that a seasoned yet paternal hand is what’s needed to guide us forward. The former is represented by the travel ban, the border wall, the rolling back of environmental protections. The latter is found in the aftermath of tough political campaigns, when urgency is given to reconnecting with disaffected white male voters over organizing with women of color who have tilted or decided elections.
The demand for a different kind of leadership is found in the work of people whose communities have been painted as the Other. Trailblazers have always existed but too many were considered outliers. Now they are rising at almost the same time, winning offices, directing institutions, and excelling in fields that had rarely welcomed them. Are they better understood as the harbingers of a movement?
“Does democracy grow stronger when the people who are the first to experience inequality take hold of the wheel?”
If that movement is meant to change the culture, does the new vanguard of arts leaders have a central role to play? If a more inclusive and just world is our goal, are we ready to come together or step aside as circumstances may require? Does democracy grow stronger when the people who are the first to experience inequality take hold of the wheel? When they heed the call of Audre Lorde to speak out and take action "until laws are changed and lives are saved and the world is altered forever," what support will they need and are we organized to give it?
While confronting injustice, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. expressed a radical faith in America, and in the power of “dangerous altruism” and “unarmed truth” to create change. Are we again in need of that kind of vision? If we believe that every crisis contains an opportunity of equal force - and that here, both are tied to our understanding of leadership – does the national emergency before us today demand anything less than a paradigm shift?
– Brian Tate, 2019
FEATURING
Aurora Flores, President, Aurora Communications, Inc. is the first female music correspondent for Billboard Magazine; the first Latina writer for the Christian Science Monitor and Ms. Magazine; and the first female editor of Latin NY.
Lisa Lucas, Executive Director, National Book Foundation, is the third director in the history of the foundation, and the first woman and the first African-American to lead the organization.
Kristina Newman-Scott, President, BRIC, is the first immigrant and the first woman of color to serve in that position, and "one of the very few women of color to lead a major New York cultural institution" (The New York Times).
Sarinya Srisakul, Former President, United Women Firefighters, is the first Asian woman firefighter in the FDNY.
MODERATOR
The Rev. Kaji Douša, Senior Pastor, Park Avenue Christian Church, is the first woman called to that role in the congregation’s 206 years. Also Co-Chair of the New Sanctuary Coalition-NY.
REMARKS
Sayu Bhojwani, Founder and President, New American Leaders, served as New York City’s first Commissioner of Immigrant Affairs, and is the founder of South Asian Youth Action (SAYA).
Lisa Lucas, Sarinya Srisakul, Aurora Flores, Kristina Newman-Scott, Rev. Kaji Douša, Sayu Bhojwani, and Brian Tate. Photo: Ian Douglass
PROJECT TEAM
Brian Tate, Curator
Janet Wong, Associate Artistic Director, New York Live Arts
Hannah Emerson, Producing Associate, New York Live Arts
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