NYC NOW - May 17, 2023: Midday News

Episode Date: May 17, 2023

A State Supreme Court judge issued a temporary order allowing a group of migrants to stay in two Orange County hotels. New York City wants to expand a program that sends EMTs and social workers to respond to calls about people in mental health crises, but the effort faces staffing limitations. Finally, starting on May 18th, Harlem Stage hosts a three-day conference on the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and '70s. WNYC's Michael Hill discusses the event with Associate Artistic Director Carl Hancock Rux and Harlem Stage CEO Pat Cruz.

Welcome to NYC Now. Your source for local news in and around New York City from WNYC. It's Wednesday, May 17th. Here's the midday news from Michael Hill. Migrants staying in two Orange County hotels can remain there, at least for now. A state Supreme Court judge issued a temporary order yesterday, allowing 186 migrants at the crossroads in nearby Romano hotels to stay put at least through June 21st.

That's when lawyers for Orange County and New York City go back to court. The order also bars the city from sending any more migrants to Orange County. For now, Orange County Executive Stephen Newhouse says New York is a self-proclaimed sanctuary city, but Orange County is not. New York City is seeking to expand a program

that sends EMTs and social workers to respond to calls about people in mental health crises instead of police. But officials say the program hours are likely to remain limited due to staffing challenges. The program known as Be Heard operates in select neighborhoods between 9 in the morning and 1 in the morning. Dr. Mitchell Katz runs NYC Health and Hospitals. The doctor says it will be a challenge to make the service run 24-7.

COVID has really disrupted the mental health market. We are in favor of 24-hour coverage, but we would need to be able to, hire more people in order to do that. City officials say it's especially hard to recruit people to work overnight shifts. Taking a look at your forecast now. 63 and sunny are high today, 66 under plenty of sunshine, and it's breezy out there too. Clear and cool tonight, chilly down to 46, tomorrow's 64 and sunshine, Friday mostly sunny and 68, 70s on the weekend with chances of showers. 63 and sunny now.

Starting tomorrow, the Performing Arts Organization, Harlem Stage, is hosting a three-day conference exploring the work of the revolutionary Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 70s. Black Arts Movement, Examine, will run through May 20th. Carl Hancock Rucks is the Associate Artistic Director of Harlem Stage, and an artist in residence there. He's also the curator of this event. Pat Cruz is Harlem Stage's artistic director and CEO. They both join us now to talk about this last season at Harlem Stage and what's still to come. Pat, Carl, thank you so much for joining us. And good morning.

Good morning. Thank you for having us. Yeah, we're thrilled to be here. Thank you. Some of our listeners may have never heard of the Black Arts Movement. Would you both tell us about the movement and its ethos? I'm going to let Carl take that because this was his big idea for Harlem Stage. take it away in terms of talking about how this series evolved and came into being.

Sure. The Black Arts movement is a movement that started in the mid-60s in a popular historical viewpoint of it. It really started with a proclamation by Amir Abraqa, the writer, formerly known as Leroy Jones, as well as many other writers and artists. And it was really a proclamation around 1965 for black artists and intellectuals to create work that was black-centered and that was Afrocentric-centered without paying attention to a white gaze or a European gaze. The idea, of course, was black empowerment. So it was an offshoot, really, of the black power movement and a way to really coalesce and create. an artistic and intellectual movement of literature, visual arts, film, dance, you name it, sculpture, whatever, that was absolutely by black people, for black people, and about black people.

Carl, I'm wondering, what works made as part of the black arts movement would people be familiar with? Well, certainly one would think of Amir Abraqa's play the Dutchman as one example. another would be and some things now here this is why I said that there's a popular view of when it began and then of course

one can think that it began maybe earlier than 1965 because there was emir baracca's the Dutchman there was Adrian Kennedy's funny house of Negro both of which were produced together

and both which won Obie Awards those plays and were unprecedented in their style and in what they were talking about and how they were presenting their thesis and their ideas of

blackness and of black people. So that can certainly be thought of as a work that many people, I think, would identify with and know of as part of the Black Arts Movement, as well as, you know, many of the plays that came around in the late 60s and early 70s and ending with something like Entazaki Shang-Gays for Colored Girls.

Harlem Stage is putting on several action-pack days as part of this conference, as you referenced there, with about a dozen offerings. Which of these discussions or events are you personally most excited to watch unfold? Carl, let's start with you. Well, you know, it's hard for me to pick one. It's like asking which one of your children are, you know, do you love the most? But, you know, I think the conference and the party that we're having at the Park Avenue Armory are two events that are very dear to me. beginning with the conference, I think it's an opportunity for people to see film. It's an opportunity for people to meet these artists, some of whom are still alive, and to hear them talk.

Felipe Luciano, one of the original members of the last poets. And to also, I should just say this, that the series was created by me, or at least designed in my mind, not only to celebrate the black arts movement, but to begin to investigate it, to question whether or not it was successful, to question whether or not it was as inclusive as it should have been, to, you know, relate it to the people that are black and living now today and what that really means. Carl, I'm curious about something. You raised an issue here. You said as inclusive as it should have been. What are you getting out there? Well, I'm getting at the fact that the black-ass movement was created in a moment and a time. And at that time, it wasn't popular necessarily to have gay voices or transgender voices as part of a black power movement. It was not popular even for women to take the lead in black politics. So there was a patriarchal kind of format to the entire thing.

And I think that what I'm getting at is that what it should have been was what it was called, which is the black arts movement. The black arts movement being a movement for all black people, which I don't think it necessarily completely achieved. And that's what I'm getting at. There's a whole plethora of blackness and a whole plethora of identity that was sort of excluded from a platform. of being able to talk about their issues with being black and in the world. Pat, you've said that you and Carl spend hours discussing the parallels between the social climate of today

and the one that falls to the black arts movement in the 60s. Do you think there's anything similar happening today artistically in reaction to the killings of black men, women, and children? Oh, without a doubt. Both the poetry, the music that is taking place, I don't know of a black. or Latino artists, for that matter, looking across the spectrum at artists of color who are not conscious of and responding to this so that some of the younger panelists that we have and some of the younger scholars have been very vociferous about the Black Lives movement and responding to that. So yes, there is emphatically a response from younger artists. And Carl knows so many of them and has invited them to participate in this happening that we're going to have at the Armory to close the whole thing down. Carl Hancock Rucks is the Associate Artistic Director of Harlem Stage.

Pat Cruz is Harlem Stages, Artistic Director and CEO. I want to say thank you both for joining you. for this. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks for listening. This is NYC now from WNYC. Be sure to catch us every weekday, three times a day, for your top news headlines

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