The fallout from Philadelphia’s June 2020 George Floyd riots worked to radicalize the city’s cultural and arts communities. 

Shortly after the rioting, museums, art galleries, theater companies and historical societies sent out statements in support of Black Lives Matter. These messages of support grew exponentially until the tsunami had every arts and community organization joining the chorus of praise and adulation. 

The rallying around BLM was no surprise for those familiar with the city’s arts and culture scene. Many city theater companies have been staging plays with leftist themes for a number of years. Some of these theaters have also become community centers where the promulgation of all things Left occurs in workshops, book clubs, discussion groups as well as the marketing of mass e-mailings that seek to instruct the unwoke. 

The leftist imprint is so entrenched in the city’s theater community it’s not unusual to hear an artistic director introduce a new play with a reminder to the audience that the land on which the theater sits was once Native American ground. After this might come a moment of silence or a formal “thank you” to the particular tribe in question. 

As a lifetime lover of Native culture, announcements like this strike me as pretentious pandering. What these artistic directors often forget is that the so-called stolen land in question was also stolen by a number of warring tribes going back hundreds of years. Natives stole from Natives — and stole from Natives again! — just as colonists stole from Natives. 

The support for BLM that erupted after the riots even affected public relations agencies, massage businesses (!) and small neighborhood associations that usually avoid ideological alliances. 

The city body massage outfit in question sent out an email mass mailing labeled, “I stand with BLM” while urging its sore muscles plagued customers to donate to the Philadelphia Chapter of Black Lives Matter 

Philly Arts for Black Lives, an organization formed after the riots, was organized primarily to support defunding the police. In its policy statement Philly Arts for Black Lives made the demand that “all arts and cultural organizations in Philadelphia sever known ties with the police.” Many of the city’s big name theatre companies signed on as supporters. 

It occurred to me as I read through the list of supporting theatres that the riots helped mainstream America’s Cultural Revolution. A friend of mine who grew up in Hong Kong and who remembers the beginnings of the Cultural Revolution there told me that what is happening in the United States today happened in his homeland decades ago.

The Marxist Revolution in China included attacks on free speech, freedom of expression in books and film, and in some instances the demolition of statues. In China presently there is no free speech when it comes to political issues. Ordinary citizens cannot speak out but must text their thoughts and feelings privately to friends and others. The Marxist censorship overlords have apparently decided to overlook the world of text messaging. My Hong Kong friend insists that the United States is headed down the same path. “It’s déjà vu all over again,” he says. 

InterAct Theatre Company, which bills itself as a theatre for today’s world, stated in its BLM support statement: “What is the power of new plays at this moment? What can a theatre do?” Well, it can do what The Philadelphia Artists’ Collective (PAC) is doing: come out swinging by providing website categories like “Find a protest” (making it easy to grab your sign and run to the location in question) or join a Pandemic Reading club that includes a section entitled, “For White People, Educate Yourself,” that features Ibram X. Kendi’s book, “How to be an Anti-Racist.” 

Because, of course, given the situation and your privilege, you can’t be anything but. You’re a racist even if you think you’re not a racist. 

The award-winning Wilma Theater, once known as the zeitgeist of the avant garde, stated its solidarity with Black Lives Matter.

“The Wilma Theater stands in solidarity with those who have lost loved ones to racial violence and with those seeking a freer society through protest, outrage and art.” The Wilma set up a fundraiser for Black Lives Matter, a virtual showcasing of “Kill More Paradise” by James Ijames that one critic said puts “a buzz saw through the contemporary myth that all lives matter.” 

Racism matters and black lives matter but what needed to be examined then was the Black Lives Matter movement, which became much more than a fight for racial equality. (BLM has fallen off the radar in 2024. When you capitalize black lives matter you tap into a Marxist agenda and a platform of beliefs that go way beyond the fight for racial equality.

President Trump in 2020 called Black Lives Matter a terrorist organization but didn’t say anything more about it. He never answered the question why he thought Black Lives Matter was a terrorist organization. He did not elaborate, but had he bothered to do that no doubt he would have mentioned that BLM goes way beyond issues of racial equality to include so-called intersectional issues unrelated to race, such as support for a future divested from police and prisons and “all punishment paradigms.”

BLM also actively supports free abortions for minors, the end of so-called cisgender privilege, heteronormative thinking, and the destruction of the nuclear family. The organization is also committed to overthrowing US imperialism and capitalism. 

The highly politicized Zuka Theatre issued a statement after the riots — “there’s “much work to do to counter the racism that pervades so many cultural institutions.” On the surface, this appears as a not so radical statement but a common sense sentiment many people would not disagree with.

The award winning Arden Theatre Company near South Street let it be known that “racism kills…it is insidious, blinding us to our own biases,” and promised to “listen more.” Bravo! But curiously enough, the Arden stopped short of endorsing Black Lives Matter as an organization, almost as if to say that it is possible to care about black lives without endorsing the organization that promotes the extra issues listed above. 

1812 Productions, a company famous for comedy and its annual hilarious political satire, This Is The Week That Is, also used the term Black Lives Matter but in a generic sense. 1812 Productions co-founder Jennifer Childs, wrote “I believe, as everyone does at 1812, that Black Lives Matter.”

Black lives do matter: just don’t put that truth in all caps and turn it into a Marxist polemic.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art, from its lofty and not-so-apolitical throne on the Parkway, issued a statement entitled “Black Lives Matter” without mentioning the organization per se but still capitalizing the words in a design of ingenious ambiguity. “We stand with all Philadelphians,” PMA’s statement read, “demanding an end to systemic racism in all areas of society.” 

The word “systemic” is part of the leftist vocabulary. 

The statement continued: “We have also paused to reflect on the role of museums — and our role specifically — in historically silencing Black voices. We do know we have work to do.” Surprisingly, the PMA statement did not contain a link to BLM-Philadelphia, and there was no suggested reading lists for unwoke “idiots.” 

The Irish Heritage Theatre, the only producers of Irish and Irish-American plays in the city, went full throttle in its embrace of BLM. “We resolutely stand by Black Lives Matter and its mission for racial justice and equality,” the statement read, conveniently overlooking or forgetting the other parts of BLM’s mission. I’m thinking of all those heteronormative Irish actors who plan on having nuclear families. 

The Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation at Drexel University also threw its hat into the ring by declaring itself an ally of the BLM movement, as did Historic Germantown. No surprise here. Organizations connected to Academe rarely go out on a limb and think independently. And yet the Independence Seaport Museum avoided ceding to the movement when it said in its statement that “Black lives matter.”

Black lives do matter, but not the organization with the same name. The Independence Seaport Museum dared to buck the cultural trend. 

Small neighborhood associations like the Northern Liberties Neighborhood Association and the Olde Richmond Community Association in the city’s Riverwards neighborhoods sent out statements of support, not wanting to be left behind in a Rapture that might possibly accuse them of indifference to racism somewhere down the line. 

(A 2023 Pew Research Center survey stated that only 51 percent of Americans support BLM. That percentage is probably lower today. )

The biggest disappointment for me in reading these statements of support at that time was not finding any reference to the days or violence that wrecked Center City and many neighborhood businesses. For the most part the statements avoided any reference to looting, broken glass, blown-up ATMs and partially burned buildings.

The four days of looting became invisible because it was an inconvenient truth. 

Thom Nickels is a Philadelphia-based journalist/columnist and the 2005 recipient of the AIA Lewis Mumford Award for Architectural Journalism. He writes for City Journal, New York, and Frontpage Magazine. Thom Nickels is the author of fifteen books, including “Literary Philadelphia” and ”From Mother Divine to the Corner Swami: Religious Cults in Philadelphia.” His latest is “Death in Philadelphia: The Murder of Kimberly Ernest.” He is currently at work on “The Last Romanian Princess and Her World Legacy,” about the life of Princess Ileana of Romania.