2024 Budget Cut Response

January 29, 2024

LxNY | Latinx Arts Consortium of New York voices its deep concern regarding the second round of fiscal cuts for arts and culture—$11.6 million—proposed by Mayor Eric Adams on January 16th, 2024. Many Latinx-serving institutions in our network rely on Department of Cultural Affairs funding to service their communities and address urgent needs in NYC neighborhoods. We are already feeling the detrimental effect of the Mayor’s first round of cuts in November, and have had to restrict the provision of essential services to our children, elders, and communities at large—including asylum seekers.

Historically, the Latinx population in NYC has faced numerous disadvantages like economic disparities, unequal access to health care, education, and housing, as well as immigration and language barriers. Our institutions are uniquely equipped to serve these communities and offer the public and the world a glimpse at the Latinx experience, which contributes substantially to the tapestry of NYC’s cultural ecosystem and economy. 

Prior to his latest proposed budget cuts, Mayor Adams had already cut the DCLA budget by a devastating $9.3 million for the current fiscal year. This included a $5.8 million cut for the Cultural Institutions Group (CIG), a one-year pause of CUNY’s Culture Corps, which provides opportunities for CUNY students to work in the arts, and a $2.6 million cut from the city’s Cultural Development Fund (CDF), which provides grants to arts nonprofits throughout the city. The Mayor’s budget cuts will continue through 2025 and represent an additional $5.4 million reduction to our sector. 

These numbers (totaling about $20 million) represent a drop in the bucket when we consider the city’s overall $109 billion budget—and yet the loss of those $20 million will be catastrophic for our sector, especially for those of us serving communities that have been historically under-resourced across the five boroughs.  

As a collective of New York City-based Latinx-serving organizations and institutions, we stand with our community and with all the migrants who contribute to making New York City what it is. We firmly oppose the proposed cuts and stand in solidarity with asylum seekers, affirming their right to livelihood. We strongly denounce the Mayor’s attempt to blame this migrant community for the new round of proposed cuts. We also denounce the 20% reduction to the city’s migrant services budget, which will see a startling $1.5 billion cut, further compromising the livelihood and safety of this group. 

In solidarity with NYC’s CIG organizations, we endorse the letter published on January 16th in response to the budget announcement**. It is worth emphasizing that government funding comprises a substantial percentage of the overall budget of small and medium-sized organizations of color, even though this amount is smaller than the city’s support to the major arts institutions. This second round of cuts will have a proportionally greater impact on the sustainability of thousands of NYC’s smaller organizations, jeopardizing our ability to maintain jobs and continue developing a more diverse creative workforce for the city. Most importantly, it will hinder our delivery of culturally competent programming, community engagement, and cross-sector collaborations across all neighborhoods. 

We strongly urge the Mayor to consider the destructive effects his budget cuts will have on the future of our city, and to restore all funding to DCLA. Our arts and cultural organizations are essential to our communities, and promote the civic participation, economic well-being, mental health, and collective identity of millions of New Yorkers.