Last Updated
May 3, 2020
Work. Shouldn't. Suck. LIVE: The Morning(ish) Show with special guest Deana Haggag. [Live show recorded: April 30, 2020.]
Guest: Deana Haggag
Co-Hosts: Tim Cynova & Lauren Ruffin
Guest
DEANA HAGGAG is the President & CEO of United States Artists, a national arts funding organization based in Chicago, IL. Before joining USA in February 2017, she was the Executive Director of The Contemporary, a nomadic and non-collecting art museum in Baltimore, MD, for four years. In addition to her leadership roles, Deana lectures extensively, consults on various art initiatives, contributes to cultural publications, and has taught at institutions such as Johns Hopkins University and Towson University. She is on the Board of Trustees of the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Artistic Director's Council of Prospect.5, and the Advisory Council of Recess. She received her MFA in Curatorial Practice from the Maryland Institute College of Art and a BA from Rutgers University in Art History and Philosophy.
She is proudly a first-generation Egyptian-American Muslim disabled woman of Afro-Arab descent. She currently lives in Chicago, Illinois and New York, New York.
Transcript
Tim Cynova:
Hi, I'm Tim Cynova and welcome to Work Shouldn't Suck live, the morning-ish show. On today's episode, Lauren Ruffin and I are joined by Deana Haggag. Dina currently serves as president and CEO of United States artists, a national arts funding organization based in Chicago, found online at unitedstatesartists.org. Before joining USA, she was the executive director of The Contemporary, a nomadic and non-collecting art museum in Baltimore, Maryland. Deana lectures, consults, contributes and teaches at numerous places. She's on the board of trustees of the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Artistic Director Circle of Prospect Five and the Advisory Council of Recess. She received her MFA in curatorial practice from Maryland Institute College of Art and BA from Rutgers in art history and philosophy. She is proudly a first generation Egyptian American Muslim, disabled woman of Afro Arab descent and we are honored she's with us today. Without further ado, Deana, welcome to the show.
Deana Haggag:
Thank you for having me. Hi, good morning-ish.
Lauren Ruffin:
Good morning-ish.
Deana Haggag:
Am I the first one to make that joke?
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, we'll tell you, you are.
Deana Haggag:
Thanks.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yes, absolutely. So Deana, it's so good to see your face, so good to catch up.
Deana Haggag:
Likewise.
Lauren Ruffin:
So the question we've been throwing to folks just to sort of ground us is, how are you doing and how's your community? What are you hearing from folks that you're talking to regularly?
Deana Haggag:
Yeah. Oh man. How is my community? I mean I guess my community feels like nonprofit arts administrators. I think right now I am working in collaboration with several, and I think right now my community is feeling two things at once. The first is an urgency to get work done, and I think we're really proud and honored to be doing the work that we're doing at a moment where we know that artists need so much support. Then on the other side, we're also feeling the dire pressure of supporting a really vulnerable workforce. I think right now my community feels like it's in a moment of extreme cognitive dissonance and just trying to take it one day at a time.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. So Tim read your bio, but are there things right now that you think are sort of coming to the fore as you would introduce yourself to our audience?
Deana Haggag:
Yeah, I mean I think a few things are coming to the fore for me right now. Tim noted very quickly that I am a disabled person and I think living as a disabled person in the middle of a global health pandemic is a very specific experience. I am also a disabled person that has a tremendous amount of economic privilege. I have this, for the time being at least, a full-time paying job with health benefits, a well paying job. I am in a partnership with someone who also has a well paying job and so I am disabled and yet have economic resources to take care of myself in a very scary moment.
Deana Haggag:
I think what's been really coming to the fore is the experience of the disability community right now in particular and then the intersections of low income disabled folks who, I don't know that this is affecting anyone more than folks in that level of precocity. So that community for me feels like the one I am working in the deepest favor of. Sort of in a quiet day-to-day way, and the one I'm the most worried about, and the one I think about every morning and every night. But yes, I think of all of the identities and hats and caps. I think man, being in a disabled body is a really specific thing right now.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. I think it's been interesting to see over the last couple of years in particular, but always when nations go through trauma-
Deana Haggag:
Yeah.
Lauren Ruffin:
In 2016 I felt like it was black women who really sort of chartered the path for a possible way out of there that unfortunately a lot of folks didn't follow. But those were the voices-
Deana Haggag:
Amen.
Lauren Ruffin:
Those were the voices that really sort of rose up, and I think right now it's folks who are really, really steeped in disability justice that are charting a path for us. I don't know that we're doing a great job hearing those voices candidly. We've had probably one of our most memorable conversations on here was with Syrus Marcus Ware, who's based in Toronto. But yeah, I think you're spot on around this moment being one where we have to look to that community for sort of guidance.
Deana Haggag:
Yeah. Yesterday I was talking to the folks at Disart in Grand Rapids and that was sort of the conversation. It was just like, "Oh, but will folks really listen? Will they know where to look? Will those lessons survive the, what feels like the immediacy of COID-19?" I think in really big structural ways, a ton of stuff I think is really clear. Never again will employers be able to go back and say, "Work can't be done remotely." For specifically office workers. Right? Which is something that disability communities have to face forever, but then also these conversations around healthcare and insurance and the medical industrial complex and these things that I think the disabled community has been on the front lines of since the dawn of our nation, more or less. Now I think all of those conversations are coming to a head.
Deana Haggag:
But I think one thing that was really clear on our call yesterday and in general is there's looking to disabled folks for sort of logistical and infrastructural changes. Like what does it mean to work remotely? What does it mean to be in a moment of physical distancing? Because so many disabled people live in a lot of physical distancing as a result of their own wellness and care needs. But I think the thing that's actually really funny to me is there's a difference between social distancing and physical distancing.
Deana Haggag:
There's lots of ways that people make communities and there's lots of ways that people have to learn new intellectual and conceptual vernaculars to survive a physical distancing. I don't know how many folks are talking to disabled people about that, so I don't think it's enough to be like, "Oh, y'all have been using things like Zoom since the beginning of time. Cool." It's like, "No, there's like a whole other lexicon that exists in sort of disability and [inaudible 00:05:57] justice that I don't think people are really, really getting into, that I think could help non-disabled people in this moment of extreme terror as both physical distancing and possibly social distancing is such a new phenomenon.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. Are there organizations or individuals, collectives that are doing really, really great work that our audience should be listening to right now?
Deana Haggag:
Yeah, I think the folks at Sins Invalid in the Bay area have been on the front lines of this thing since forever. I think anything that they're touching or thinking about is super important, I think the Harriet Tubman collective is incredible and I think exists at the intersections of both disability but also racial justice, abolitionists movements. I think there's a book, Care Work by Leah Lakshmi that I think should be required reading for everyone right now.
Deana Haggag:
Then I think there's just a lot of notable scholars like Claire, John Lee Clark, I mean it's just sort of an endless list of folks. But yeah, I think I'm curious about what does a bibliography look like, and I think also the tension of a lot of this right now, it's like there's an entire community whose lived experience and knowledge of this is so important and it's also a community that can be easily exhausted if folks... I think it's one thing to talk to disabled folks who are like, "Oh I am being invited to be on a bunch of webinars." But also the pace and the immediacy of that is so important. So I do think looking at a preexisting scholarship or books or texts or videos could be super helpful. So sorry, a very long answer to your question is like, I can't stop thinking about disabled people every second of every day, more so than usual.
Lauren Ruffin:
No, we're taking notes. I think that was really helpful. One of the things I'm curious about on this live stream, we've gotten so many resources for folks just in these conversations like that, just lists of... I feel like we do have to put together a bibliography of all the thinking and thought that has come out of what people have been reading, thinking, listening to, to sort of guide us out of this because it's hard to feel like we continually are Columbusing communities. Like they've been there, we discover them, we listen to them and then we put them back on the shelf until the next crisis that could have been averted if we had just held on to them for a little bit longer.
Deana Haggag:
Yeah.
Tim Cynova:
So much there. I'm fortunate that we have the transcripts and it feels like next week is probably the end of our daily live streams with six weeks of daily live streams and it feels like just sitting with the transcripts, reading, reflecting on it because they, like this conversation, are so informative. There's so much here and thinking about what does a future look like where everyone thrives and what do we need to do right now to make sure that we're not missing this moment? You mentioned we can't go back to where people say some jobs can't be done remotely. I fear that we will go back to that. How do we hold onto, yes, the jobs that you said couldn't be done remotely, now are done remotely, and the thing that could have been an email, but instead it was a meeting, it was an email.
Tim Cynova:
So what's the responsibility of organizations as leaders, as accomplices and allies in the organizations inside the sector, in the sector to support and hold onto the things that we've proven that can be done and just iterate and adjust and improve on those things to move forward rather than everyone goes back to the office on a some date and we forget that we were able to do this.
Tim Cynova:
So I guess that's personally what I'm wrestling with. How do we not miss this maybe once in a lifetime moment? So on a podcast I would edit out that last part where I just rambled until I ended at three periods, but on a live stream. Yeah, there you go.
Deana Haggag:
We love a live stream. We need a little danger, you know? A little danger these days.
Lauren Ruffin:
On that remote work thread. So Deana, in the green room I realized we didn't know where we were physically.
Deana Haggag:
Yeah, same with me.
Lauren Ruffin:
Tell me as you're leading US Artists, can you give us a sense of how your staff and your organization was working and whether/how you've pivoted right now, what that felt like as a leader?
Deana Haggag:
Yeah, so United States Artists is headquartered in Chicago where we have a little over 15 full, part-time employees and a couple of contractors and we went to our office every day. I, for the past three years that I've had this job, have actually been living between Chicago and New York. So in the weeks that I was in Chicago, went to a sort of traditional nine-ish, 10-ish to like six or seven-ish job with the rest of our staff.
Deana Haggag:
Our lease was actually up in February and throughout all of February and into March we started all working remotely in a moment where there was about five weeks-ish that our offices were being transitioned and so actually it was kind of good practice where we all figured out how to talk to each other remotely kind of right before COVID hit. We moved into a new office. It's actually called the Fabric Impact House in Chicago where a group of justice funders all moved in together, so we moved in with folks like the Woods Fund, Field Foundations, Pillars Fund, and have spent the last year cultivating this kind of communal workspace. We all moved in there for about two weeks before the stay-at-home order came down, so now my entire staff is all back out in their remote working situations.
Deana Haggag:
Right now I have moved to New York full-time. I am here in Brooklyn currently and communicating via Zoom and Slack with our staff who are, again, predominantly in Chicago. We have one contractor here in New York and then two full-time staff in Baltimore that have also been remote pretty much the entire time. So I think I was still planning on going back and forth to Chicago even though I have made New York my primary residence. Clearly, that does not feel like it is on the horizon. One thing that's coming up a lot for our staff right now in terms of how we work is questions about, well if the stay-at-home order lifts, are people expected to just go back to the office if they don't feel safe. There's a thing the news says, and I think a lot of us lately are feeling like, "Whoa, there's like the thing a spreadsheet says, there's nothing my policy says, but then there's the right thing to do."
Deana Haggag:
I feel like how people work is one of those matters. The board and I are unanimous in this, we will get back to our office if and when it feels like that's the right call to make. But we're not deciding that based on the government's perception of the COVID-19 situation. I think right now our staff clearly misses one another, or at least I miss them. It's kind of a weird thing to adjust to everybody remotely all the time. But I think we're all doing the best we can in such a weird situation.
Tim Cynova:
This has been one of the things that Lauren and I have been talking a lot about offline, or off the live stream is the responsibility of employers to provide a safe workplace even concerning what's coming out now around limiting liability for employers around workplace safety, around OSHA, and then what the responsibility is going to be and how this is really going to come down to leaders and organizations living their values. It's unfortunate in a lot of reasons and it's infuriating to think that we're balancing dying people with cash to states or whatever that might be. I think having the message out there around... Because a lot of people don't understand what OSHA means from an office, but you don't have to really think about it in office. But what does a workplace free of harm look like and what is supposed to be in our responsibilities? Even if you legally could do it or legally could get away with something, that's not the right thing to do.
Deana Haggag:
Yeah. Yeah. I think a few things. I think this thing has made so many things perfectly clear. I think the first thing it's made clear is like every policy is just a damn Google document. You can just change the word doc. That means you can make life better for your employees or you can make things worse, like scale back regulations that are again, just words that humans sit around the table and determine together. There's no big magical force we owe anybody anything except for our own morality. Right? So I think in terms of a staff, a part of me feels like doing no harm is also psychological and intellectual. I think right now USA, it's rough man. We, a couple of weeks ago joined a coalition of six other nonprofit partners to start an artist relief fund.
Deana Haggag:
USA funds artists, that's what we do. We give them unrestricted grants. We trust fully that people can decide for themselves how to use a financial resource to take the best care of their own needs. But we are a philanthropic organization that moves at a relatively glacial pace. It takes us a year to identify who these people are. We are very thoughtful. We dot every I, we cross every T and when you do something that's a relief effort, the pace of that thing is different.
Deana Haggag:
When Lauren was talking about running a slower marathon, we went from being a bunch of bowlers to sprinters overnight. It's really different and I think one thing that's been really, really clear, at least for USA staff and I imagine many of our coalition partners is, we're all worried about our people taking the best care of themselves. At the same time when our people are trying to help however they can, but to help means they have to work at a pace that is not okay.
Deana Haggag:
It's not okay to meet the demands of COVID-19 if you are really trying to help people. I think a few things we've implemented or we're trying, it's we're trying to take everybody to a four day work week in the next two weeks as a way to say, "Just take one extra day." We really want to meet the challenge of supporting artists in dire financial needs, but we also want to meet the challenge of protecting our staffs who are going through so many different things at their own home lives. I think we're all just thinking about how to do that. It's not an easy task, my heart goes out to everybody in leadership right now, but I do think we know what the right thing to do is, and we know the difference between what the spreadsheet says and what we should actually be doing, and I don't think we'll forgive ourselves.
Deana Haggag:
At the end of the day, we will look back on this time and the choices we made will be perfectly clear, not just our communities but to ourselves. I think every leader should really be sitting with what this will feel like in a few months when you've made these decisions on behalf of the people you're supposed to take care of.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. So I had virtual dinner with Susie Davis last week, which was hilarious. Of course.
Deana Haggag:
Yes.
Lauren Ruffin:
Can you talk about who's your partner with the relief fund?
Deana Haggag:
Yes.
Lauren Ruffin:
Can you talk about it? She said it was your brainchild and gave you all the credit.
Deana Haggag:
Of course she did, no.
Lauren Ruffin:
So tell us about the fund and I'm particularly curious about a couple of words you used, trust being one of them and then sort of speed/pace because the difference between immediate relief and longterm recovery is so, so bad. I'd love to hear sort of your thoughts on those things.
Deana Haggag:
So yes, thank you Susie. But no, I think a few things. I actually think immediate relief, the pace feels entirely structural. We all just had to do certain infrastructural things faster to pull something like this off. I think that's happening across industries right now. I actually think the pace for longterm recovery to me it feels less structural and more intellectual. We just got to change our minds about a few things real quick before we can even get into a conversation to talk about longterm recovery. I only want to say that because I want to go back to the word trust. It is very, very clear how much we distrust poor folks and folks who live in low income communities, right? We've always known this and I think right now something like artist relief is a bridge to those communities.
Deana Haggag:
We've had to pace hella fast to meet that within the infrastructures of our orgs. Creative capital, Arcadia, Foundation for Contemporary Art, Academy of American Poets, Young Arts, the Map Fund in USA, we're all little baby orgs and now all of a sudden we're like an over 50% coalition that is dragging at this thing. I think everyone wants to have a conversation about what is the longterm recovery going to look like. To me, the pacing there is just how fast are we going to change our minds about how much we trust poor people? Truly, how fast can we shift that psychology societally before we even all get together to figure out what does life look like for the next year, 18 months.
Deana Haggag:
Because even now in the middle of needs being entirely clarified across every industry and in every region of our country, there are still industries that are questioning handouts and charity and how to inform how certain money is spent to vulnerable communities and I'm like, "Oh, the pace on that needs to move faster."
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, yeah. You're so right on that and I think part of that's just nonprofits only exists because rich people don't trust poor people.
Deana Haggag:
Yeah, exactly.
Lauren Ruffin:
I was always astounded when I was working in a homeless shelter. I managed a $20 million stuff program. We were giving out backpacks to kids and everything else, gift cards. The question I got more often than not, when someone gave me a $50 gift card was, "How does your organization guarantee that these people are not going to spend this gift card on alcohol in the store?" And I would look at them in Bethesda, Maryland and be like, "Your 16 year old gets wasted every weekend."
Deana Haggag:
Literally.
Lauren Ruffin:
You don't think that someone who is raising three kids on $700 a month in Washington DC that you've rapidly gentrified gets to buy a case of beer? Like I just don't. But that piece around trusting, it's a radical idea that we would in the United States, we would trust people to understand, one, to look out for their communities with any sort of relief effort and to prepare those who are sort of closest to them. So y'all raised what, like 11 or 12 million in a couple-
Deana Haggag:
Yeah, we're at a little over 11 million right now. We launched with 10, I think now we've raised like another million and a half since we launched, and we're redistributing it. Someone is at my door. This deeply embarrassing, but this doorbell keeps ringing. [crosstalk 00:19:52] while I talk and then-
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah, totally, it's a really cute doorbell.
Tim Cynova:
Lauren looked down at her desk and I thought, is this a new ring on your phone or is this like the old Nokia phone ring?
Lauren Ruffin:
No, here we go. [crosstalk 00:20:04] That's not an old Nokia phone ring because that ring is very distinctive. It's not that cute. My phone ring is not that cute.
Deana Haggag:
I love it. Yeah, so we launched with 10 million. We're distributing it in $5,000 unrestricted grants cross-discipline, and I think the number one thing we're prioritizing is just need, but it's rough. So we wanted to launch with 10 million specifically to be able to fund a hundred artists a week until September. The reason for that again, is we just wanted to make sure we reached artists where communication's not going to travel fast versus spending out 10 million in a month. It's just that way there's no way coastal cities, visual art, will hear about it faster. There was no way to do that equitably. But in our first cycle, which closed last week, we got over 55,000 applications. [crosstalk 00:20:51] Yeah, we funded 300 of those people.
Lauren Ruffin:
Thousand?
Deana Haggag:
55,000, yeah. Which I think that brings me to the single biggest adamant revelation about this whole thing, which is on one hand the arts are an economic engine and we all know this and we're constantly trying to justify ourselves in this frame. But I think this thing really is like, damn, we are like a workforce. We are a massive, massive, multidisciplinary workforce. I think in a moment where I think COVID-19 has really lost the narrative around how the United States takes care of its workforce, is super clarified. That being a gig worker in the United States... Being a worker, period in the United States is hard and complicated, but being a gig worker, there is nothing for you. It really doesn't matter that, I mean, it does matter of course, that Congress wrote 1099 employees into the Cares Act under unemployment.
Deana Haggag:
But there's also a moment where unemployment can't keep up with any worker, let alone adding a huge workforce. So I think that at Artist Relief reading these applications is wild, because it really clarifies our industry and our industry is akin to restaurant workers, domestic workers, transportation workers sometimes because artists are both. A nanny and a poet, a painter and a bartender, but then when they're not and their sole income is coming from their work in a self-employed way, they move at the same speed that some of these other industries do. So I really am hopeful that a longterm strategy is that we band together with other industries of gig workers. We fight this fight that people need to be insured. The number of things we're reading that could be preventable are like what? That part's been hard.
Lauren Ruffin:
Yeah. I think in hindsight, we look back at the decade of 2010 to 2020, the rise of the concept of gig worker and the gig economy and that going from a side gig to people's full-time work is something that we didn't consent to as workers. It happened, and it's been interesting working in the art sector and seeing that from sort of working in homeless shelters and seeing how that became a lifeline for people to get out of poverty. But I don't think it's the same thing for the arts and culture sector.
Lauren Ruffin:
I'm really curious about how we start to reframe work and absolutely a hundred percent reframing solidarity for the other sectors. Restaurant opportunity coalition is doing amazing work, has always done amazing work. To me, that's the bedrock. You can't meet a restaurant worker in New York City who wasn't also an actor, actress, performer, artist.
Deana Haggag:
Yeah.
Lauren Ruffin:
I think you're so right on that. Can we ask the suitcase question?
Tim Cynova:
Yeah, let's go with the suitcase. So we've got two minutes left, so we need to get suitcase in.
Lauren Ruffin:
Okay. Deana, life is a suitcase. You're carrying this bag around with you. We've been in this thing for like five weeks, this pandemic. What was in your suitcase before we went to the pandemic that you are not taking with you after we're out, if we're ever out, and what have you discovered during the pandemic that you were keeping in your suitcase forever?
Deana Haggag:
Oh my Lord. Okay. So first of all, I've cooked more than I ever have in my life. I would like to keep that. I'm amazed a little bit that when you cook you just have to like wash dishes constantly. This is blowing my mind that you like eat on a dish and then you wash it and then you just put more food on it and then you wash it and then you just put more food on it and then you wash it. But yeah, the cooking has been incredibly... I want to take that with me. I've been super into risottos. You can just totally zone out for 20 minutes and stir and you just really get into a rhythm and you can't really be on your phone, it's just you and the risotto and something about that's really intimate and nice. So that I want to take with me forever, cooking.
Deana Haggag:
What I want to leave behind, I mean honestly and maybe it's not possible, I want to leave behind the performances of my profession. I think a thing about COVID that I've loved so much is for a second, for a glimmering second, lots of incredible people were willing to break the fourth wall together and it was cross industry. It was the lawyers, philanthropists, the nonprofits. Everyone was just like, but this is how the world really is and we met certain challenges because we all just broke the fourth wall.
Deana Haggag:
I think maybe it's a little twofold. I want to leave behind all the things that made that not as possible pre-COVID, and I want to take with me this way that everybody together could say, "Hey, I know we think we ought to do it this way, but what about this?"" And then everyone in the room was like, "Yeah, there's literally no reason we can't do it that way. Let's go."
Deana Haggag:
So the last thing I do want to take is the power of a coalition and I think that's what I love so much about your broadcast is that, in some weird way, it's like this strange morning-ish coalition moment you've made every morning with people in the workplace. But that sense of collaboration I think is actually really mighty.
Tim Cynova:
Well and with that we're out of time, but before we go, we can't just stop there and be like, "That's where we're ending it." Are there any parting thoughts? Anything you wanted to include that you didn't?
Deana Haggag:
No, I'd like to just reiterate that everybody needs to read books by disabled people. Follow disabled people on the internet. Just find your disabled homies like fast. That's it, thank you.
Tim Cynova:
Yeah. Deana, amazing to have you on the show. Thank you so much.
Deana Haggag:
Thank you.
Tim Cynova:
Oh, sorry. If you want to say thank you again. I cut you off.
Deana Haggag:
Thank you. No, no, bye-bye, bye.
Tim Cynova:
Oh God, This is the worst ending to the show. Yes, it was so amazing.
Lauren Ruffin:
It also might've been the best.
Tim Cynova:
Continue the Work Shouldn't Suck live adventure with us on our next episode when we're joined by Diane Ragsdale and Andrew Taylor. Miss us in the meantime? You can download more Work Shouldn't Suck episodes from your favorite podcasting platform of choice and re-watch Work Shouldn't Suck live episodes over on workshouldntsuck.co. If you've enjoyed the conversation or are just feeling generous today, please consider writing a review on iTunes so that others who might be interested in the topic can join the fun too. Give it a thumbs up, or five stars or phone a friend, whatever your podcasting platform of choice offers. If you didn't enjoy this chat, please tell someone about it who you don't like as much. Until next time, thanks for listening.
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