How Arts Got Him To The State Legislature

Photo Courtesy of John-Michael Parker. 

Music got John-Michael Parker into organizing. Then it convinced him to move home to Connecticut and run for political office. This week, that cultural spark has remained with him as he begins his inaugural term in the Connecticut House of Representatives.

Parker is the director of Arts for Learning Connecticut and a first-time state representative for Connecticut’s 101st district, which comprises Madison and Durham. In November, he defeated five-term incumbent Noreen Kokoruda, a Republican who has held the seat since a special election in 2011. He was sworn in Wednesday morning, in a socially distanced ceremony outside the State Capitol building in Hartford.

“As someone who has worked at the nexus of education and the arts, it's about thinking about people’s wellbeing, families’ wellbeing,” he said in a recent phone interview with the Arts Paper. “I think social justice and activism is at the heart of many great artists and their work, and helping to spread that work to youth is incredibly important.”

Parker is part of a statewide blue wave that Connecticut experienced in November. Two years ago, he ran against Kokoruda and lost by 18 votes in a nail-biting recount. This time, he won by well over 1100. He said he is excited to bring his advocacy for the arts and education to Hartford, where he believes that they can be part of the state’s path toward COVID-19 recovery and a more equitable legislative framework.

The arts—and a belief that they can shrink the opportunity gap—were baked into Parker’s platform before he knew what a platform was. Parker’s mom Clara is a school nurse, and he grew up listening to conversations around education. As a student in Madison’s public schools, he joined show choir and pit orchestra. He played saxophone at the town’s library and in the school’s musicals. When he headed to Yale to study science, he continued to perform through Yale College Arts until his graduation in 2010.

Music also set the unexpected soundtrack to his organizing career. After college, Parker moved to New York City to work for the education startup The Future Project. He grew his musical footprint as frontman to the Brooklyn-based band Great Caesar. In 2016, the band went on tour, booking shows that stretched from New York to Los Angeles and back. It wasn’t intended as a political trip. It became an education. 

The band traveled from state to state as America sprawled out around them. They saw bars in small-town Iowa and performance venues in Salt Lake City. For months, they watched as the presidential election cycle became increasingly more tense, and then ugly. They put Hillary Clinton campaign signs on stage and received warm welcomes from some crowds and cold shoulders from others. By the end of the tour—and the election—politics called out to Parker. 

“Before it, I was happy doing education work, being in schools,” he said. “I was seeing what felt like a real unraveling around 2016. It was feeling that divisiveness and nastiness that was creeping in. Artists have a role to play in the healing of our communities. When I came back from that tour in 2016, it was a quick jump to understand that if I wanted to get involved in organizing and community work, I wanted to represent my community.”

Even as he did organizing work in New York, he said he realized that his community meant the place where he grew up. By then, he had learned more about Connecticut’s legislative process—and saw a place for himself in it. He moved back to Madison with his now-wife, educator and expressive arts therapist Joyce Gendler, in early 2018.

When he narrowly lost to Kokoruda later that year, he continued to build out his networks as an advocate for education. He grew as a mentor, returning to Daniel Hand High School to conduct the pit orchestra in the musical Newsies and a production of Cinderella that COVID-19 stopped in its tracks. As arts events—and arts jobs—disappeared overnight, he pivoted to relief funding efforts for teaching artists who were out of work. Arts For Learning was later one of 154 state organizations to receive CARES Act funding through a COVID-19 relief fund for the arts. 

He announced his plans to run again in February, just weeks before Gov. Ned Lamont announced stay-at-home orders in the wake of COVID-19. As he built his platform in the midst of a pandemic, it included strategies for healthcare, education, job training and workforce development, and funding for the arts as a key to Connecticut’s economic recovery. 

“Government can be a force for good, and should be a force for good,” he said. “That’s sort of the lenses through which I have tried to see specific issues. How are we building strong, resilient communities?”

In Hartford, he has been named to the education, public health, and environmental committees. As he begins his term this week, he said that arts funding, access to equitable public education, environmental stewardship, and COVID-19 economic relief top his list of legislative priorities. The 101st district straddles suburban and rural: Madison runs along Connecticut’s shoreline, while Durham sits on the Coginchaug River and is home to some of the state’s farm country.

Parker said he sees his role as serving constituents in both the district and the state. As Connecticut’s shoreline is increasingly endangered by sea level rise and climate change, he said he looks forward to working toward “smart conservation plans with coastal resilience,” as well as access to and preservation of the district’s beaches.

Education, meanwhile, remains at the core of his legislative interests. As a product of Madison’s public schools, he has become an advocate for reforming the state’s Education Cost Sharing (ECS) program, through which municipalities receive state dollars based on town wealth, poverty, and taxable property. For decades, the formula has put the state’s cities—particularly New Haven, where 60 percent of the city’s grand list is now tax exempt—at a disadvantage.

Parker said that he would like to see a system where public schools in New Haven or Bridgeport are as well-funded and well-resourced as public schools in Greenwich and Madison.    

“I got to go to Madison's public schools, and was incredibly privileged to do that,” he said. “I feel like I've gotten to live a life with many doors opened up to me, and I’m seeing how that's not the case for too too many people in our state. Inequity happens to be based on where you're born and raised.”

He added that arts education can be a “critical intervention” in closing the state’s cavernous opportunity gap. At Arts For Learning Connecticut, he’s seen the impact that teaching artists—or as he calls them, “truth-tellers and storytellers”—have on both students and fellow educators across the state. As he begins his first term, he’s thinking about how that funding can support and respond to both teaching artists and students sidelined by the COVID-19 pandemic.

“A big piece of it is funding,” he said. “How do we have a policy that works for Madison in the same way that it does for New Haven and Hamden? How are we building space for social and emotional learning? How do we make meaningful programming for students when some of them could have homeschooling pods and some of them don't have internet?”

He said he also sees the fine and performing arts as part of a statewide economic recovery. Artists are often individual contractors, meaning that they are part of the discussion around job creation and getting Connecticut back to work in the midst of a public health crisis. Meanwhile, many of the state’s arts venues are facing millions of dollars in losses and have issued multiple rounds of layoffs. 

Prior to COVID-19, the state’s arts, culture and tourism sector generated $9 billion, 57,000 jobs, and five percent of Connecticut’s economy. Now, they are in a desperate push for state and federal aid even as a second coronavirus relief package earmarks funding for the performing arts. 

“As a state representative, you're thinking about the wellbeing of your community, representing your constituents, and thinking about how that is deeply intertwined with the wellbeing of everyone in your state,” he said. “I think State Representative is going to be an incredible journey, because I get to fight for my community while also fighting for Connecticut. It’s a real balancing act that I am excited to be a part of.”

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