by Barbara Smith

Photos: Earl Edwards and Busby Promotions

“Artists Against Hate,” a consortium of performers created in response to the CA vs HATE legislation enacted last year, brought audiences to their feet multiple times at a riveting concert held at CSU Dominguez Hills last Friday evening. The diverse troupe of dancers, visual artists, poets, and writers, led by Executive Producer Brian Townsend, Publisher, Precinct Reporter Group; Project Director Kathryn Ervin, CSU San Bernardino Professor Emeritus, Theatre Arts; and Associate Producer Maura Townsend, Artistic Director and Choreographer, Maura Townsend Dance Project, wrapped up their third in a series of three concerts over the last year with the message that it takes strength to stand up to hate and that art can be a universal language to bridge cultures and bring people together creatively to combat hate.

State data released one year after the launch of CA vs HATE, the hotline and online portal for reporting hate crimes and incidents, has shown its impact. The statewide reporting hotline was created to combat a rise in reported hate crimes, which had risen nearly 33 percent from 2020 to 2021. After one year, people statewide reported more than 1,000 acts of hate, with race and ethnicity bias being the most widely cited motivations. Friday’s interactive concert helped drive awareness of services and resources available to anyone targeted for hate including direct services for victims and survivors of hate incidents and crime; prevention services including arts and cultural work, youth development and senior safety and escort programs; and intervention services including outreach, training, restorative justice and coordination with local government and institutional partners. Audience members were reminded of the hotline, offered in 15 languages, which is available for any victim or witness to anonymously report a hate incident or crime at 833-8-NO-HATE or at CAvsHATE.org.

Maura Townsend and Dwight Trible

Selections in the 90-minute concert addressed race, gender identity, religion and ethnicity. Performances included dance, music, spoken word, and visual art. “These concerts actually connected two communities,” said Project Director Kathryn Ervin. “I hope the audiences we served were moved by the performances to understand how hate hurts us all and the importance of speaking out! I know the artists were moved by the opportunity to interact and present with artists similarly developing creative work to present against hate.”

Outstanding dance companies who performed at Friday’s concert included Kybele Dance Theater, led by Seda Aybay, Artistic Director and Choreographer; Maura Townsend Dance Project, featuring guest artist Michael Tomlin III; FUSE Dance Company, led by Artistic Director Joshua Estrada-Romero; and BrockusRED, led by Deborah Brockus, Artistic Director and Choreographer. Narrators Ron Berglas, actor and educator, and Joyce Lee, filmmaker and theatre professional, connected the threads through each performance, weaving data and historical references with personal stories of how hate has impacted communities and how we can forge a path forward. “Hate is a very old idea,” offered Lee, relating that in 1895, newspapers reported the gruesome Tyler, Texas lynching of Robert Hilliard, a Black man, by a lynch mob numbering some 10,000 people. Now, in our increasingly polarized climate, data shows that for the year ending 2022, Blacks suffered over three times the impact of other groups. “Art pushes against hate,” Lee added, introducing jazz vocalist Dwight Trible, who also serves as executive director of the World Stage in Los Angeles. Trible has collaborated with jazz greats Pharoah Sanders, Billy Higgins and most recently saxophonist Kamasi Washington.  His rich, thunderous arrangement of the classic “Everything Must Change,” drew deep on his ancestral origins and showcased incredible range, sending a surge of hope through the crowd. He later shared how his work with the World Stage, an educational and performance art space in Leimert Park Village, and the famed Leimert Park Jazz Festival, is rooted in helping artists invest in themselves. “That is what I have dedicated my life to,” he said, “bringing us together to fight against what has separated us, seeing similarities in our common humanity and coming together in our greatness.”

Spoken word artist Shaunté Keakalani Caraballo, Assistant Professor, Department of Theatre & Dance at CSU Dominguez Hills, drew on her self-described roots as African American, LatinX and Boricua, in an elegantly phrased poem, delivered with passion and nuance, her story, which many in the audience related to, a kind of “romantic rendezvous of melanin.”

Clearly audience members were moved by each performance. Roshada Baldwin, niece of Lula Washington, Founder and Artistic Director of the Lula Washington Dance Theatre (LWDT) and Founding Member of the International Association of Blacks in Dance, came with her 10-year-old son Jemari English to support fellow dancers and artists. Baldwin’s own career in dance gave her an added appreciation for the project. “It’s important for such an event to take place,” she said. “In fact, it should be a priority to stimulate discussion. Hate comes in many forms. So does love. Art always teeters on extinction. A program like this reenergizes us to see how dancers, poets, and musicians can come together with passion for their art and to make a difference.”

Added Associate Producer Maura Townsend, “The artistic expression by the artists elicited audience reactions in a safe space. My hopes are to continue concerts like this promoting positivity through the arts and simultaneously bringing artists of various backgrounds to spread the message.”

In remembering acting legend James Earl Jones, who passed away Monday, we are reminded of his statement, “The arts have always been an important ingredient in the health of a nation, but we haven’t gotten there yet.” With projects like “Artists Against Hate,” we move steps closer to that goal.