Do you have health insurance? Do you want it?

Many folks in our creative community-  actors to gallery owners, fashion designers, authors, filmmakers, painters – are uninsured or underinsured .  But now a group is calling for artists to stand together to change that.   Of course, they’re doing it in a fun and funky way, on Sunday, Oct. 25.  And you can join them. First, check out the new Web site for the Professional Artists’ Coalition.

Then, gather at 11 a.m. on the north lawn of the Meyerson Symphony Center. That’s right – the Arts District will have a crowd two Sundays in a row. Get a yellow poncho for a $2 donation, and be part of a giant Pac-Man symbol. Why Pac-Man? (Or Pac-We as the group is calling it) Read on for more.

FLASH MOB ACTION ART HAPPENING – ARTS DISTRICT

Sunday Oct 25, 11am-12:00

PAC- WE: MAKING THE INVISIBLE VISIBLE

Contact: Greg Metz 214-364-8435 [email protected]

Website PAC-WE.Net and Facebook PAC-WE

PAC-WE

An action by and for the North Texas Art Community calling for health care reform.

PAC – WHAT?

The Professional Artist Coalition is a ‘flash mob action’ creating a bright public yellow signal for health care reform. A first for Dallas, and this cause.

PAC – WHO?

The North Texas art community. This includes thousands of citizens daily engaged in the visual, performing, literary, media, and commercial arts.

PAC- WHERE?

Morton Meyerson Symphony Hall- convene under the di Suvero Sculpture ‘Proverb/ Pendulum for preparation of happening.

PAC- WHY?

Because artists of any kind stand with the American people to demand a change to the status quo of a broken health care system.

Because artists are unique victims of the health care status quo. Most are independent contractors, uninsured or underinsured.

Because artists are fed up with other PAC’s (Political Action Committees) funded by insurance and drug companies that are fighting to care for profits instead of health.

Because the North Texas art community realizes that at the very moment that Dallas is celebrating its new PAC (Performing Arts Center), with architects and programming imported from elsewhere, it has no plan to sustain its own creative community.

Because artists have been silent and invisible for too long when it comes to the health and care of our society.

PAC WE – The Origin of the Concept

PAC MAN is a sign of consumption. We often consume health care and culture without thinking about its wider context. We don’t ask why healthcare costs so much or why so many are left without it. We also don’t ask about the livelihoods and healthcare of the artists that are seen as culture providers. Since the cuts in arts funding on a national and local level (most notably during the culture wars of the 1990’s) artists have been cultural workers who contribute to our communities with little or no support in return.

But PAC MAN is also a sign of the earliest glimmer of technology and its promise for the future. When it was invented in the 1980’s we would never have guessed that the internet would create a world that was so connected and empowered by the access to information. These qualities drive this event by connecting us and empowering us, based on our access to information that is so condemning of the status quo. These qualities bring us together on this day for this action.

We use the yellow color of PAC MAN as a sign of wisdom, optimism, clarity and awareness.