Thousands of dollars from President Biden’s American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act funded a writing fellowship targeting “non-binary” 13-year-olds and a Muslim jazz music series, among dozens of other humanities projects in New York that are seemingly unrelated to COVID-19 pandemic recovery.
The ARP Act, which Democrats passed in March 2021 without any Republican support, was billed by the Democratic Party as an economic necessity for getting the country through the pandemic. The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), which received $135 million from the plan, announced in June 2021 that it had allocated $51.6 million in ARP funding for “state and jurisdictional humanities councils and interim partners to support recovery and reopening of humanities organizations and programs across the country.”
Months later, Humanities New York distributed more than $360,000 ARP funds to dozens of organizations, including a $10,000 grant for Urban Word NYC to launch three literary arts fellowships for marginalized youth. One of the taxpayer-funded fellowships, the Black Girl Magic Fellowship, is a series “for NYC/NJ-based girls and non-binary youth ages 13-19 centered on their development as writers, building their self-esteem, and addressing issues that matter most to them,” according to Urban Word’s website.
President Biden speaks during an event on the American Rescue Plan in the Rose Garden of the White House on March 12, 2021, in Washington, D.C.
(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Humanities New York awarded another $10,000 ARP grant to the National Jazz Museum in Harlem to create a five-part music series about the influence of Islam and Muslims in jazz.
“This ongoing series highlights the contributions of Islam and Muslims in the birth and continued growth of jazz,” the National Jazz Museum website states. “These discussions and concerts are fundamental to changing conversations and attitudes about ‘belonging’ in the history of jazz for Muslims and for other marginalized groups.”
Humanities New York awarded another $10,000 ARP grant for Roots Wounds Words to create a talk series aimed to provide Black, Indigenous, and people of color storytellers “with opportunities to deepen their literary craft across genres such as creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry, screenwriting, and more.”
President Biden signs the American Rescue Plan, a coronavirus relief package, in the Oval Office of the White House, Thursday, March 11, 2021, in Washington.
(AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
Humanities New York awarded another $10,000 ARP grant for the Pan Am Museum Foundation to “explore how racial diversity changed the airline industry.”
Another nearly $10,000 went toward creating a “cultural sensitivity training” program at the Seneca-Iroquois National Museum, and another $9,425 went to Seven Generations of Stewards to host a festival about “Native American culture, history, foods and social issues,” to name only a few.
Fox News Digital has extensively reported on the millions in ARP funds that have funded social and climate justice programs all over the country that have virtually nothing to do with pandemic relief.
For example, the NEH awarded the Oral History Association $825,000 in ARP funds for a grant-making project titled, “Diversifying Oral History Practice: A Fellowship Program for Under/Unemployed Oral Historians,” which provided 11 year-long fellowships of $60,000 each for oral historians “from communities which have been historically marginalized in the field,” such as “Indigenous peoples, people of color, people with disabilities, and working class people.”
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), flanked by Senate Democrats, Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), speaks during a press conference on the Child Tax Credit in the Senate Studio on Capitol Hill on Thursday, July 15, 2021. Today, roughly $15 billion dollars start going out to families that include nearly 60 million eligible children in the first monthly payment of the increased and expanded Child Tax Credit from the American Rescue Plan that was passed in March.
(Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
The NEH awarded another $499,023 to the University of Montana for multiple programs on racial justice, including a public lecture series on “racial justice, death and Indigenous knowledge.”
The Science History Institute in Philadelphia was awarded $359,097 by the NEH to create a “multiplatform project exploring the historical roots and persistent legacies of racism in American science and medicine.” The same institute previously received a $1,230,100 Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan on April 14, 2020.
Another $200,000 in ARP funds went to the Chicago Humanities Festival to create “six humanities programs on racial justice, gender equality, and building an inclusive society.” The group was previously awarded a total of $778,236 from two PPP loans between April 2020 and January 2021.
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Many economists have blamed the ARP for overheating the economy and contributing to the current inflation crisis, which hit a whopping 8.2% last month.
The NEH and Humanities New York did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment.
New York is only one of many states that gave ARP funds to humanities projects, including Illinois, Delaware, Idaho, and Pennsylvania, according to documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request and shared with Fox News Digital.
