In the last few weeks, Donald Trump’s proposed budget call to eliminate the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), has caused swift and devastating funding cuts to literary and arts organizations and writers and artists across the country. Each year they provide hundreds of millions of dollars to individuals and institutions in support of artistic excellence, creativity and access to the arts for all Americans. But Trump’s ultimate goal is to overhaul all federal cultural agencies in an effort to eliminate what he sees as art’s “woke” influences.

In other words, to eliminate everything from the arts (programming, policies and content) that he deems progressive and ideologically left-leaning, especially anything he deems “DEI.” To eliminate everything in the arts Trump doesn’t like.

As a result, organizations have already received notice that recently awarded grants have been rescinded and others terminated midway through their duration. This is intended to send a chilling message to arts organizations and foundations at all levels across the country: that the government can and will intervene if their programming or foundational support is deemed politically undesirable. Politically “woke.”

But the role of art and literature is to get people to think deeply about the world around us, who we are, how we relate to one another and what it means to live in a complex world where multiple truths, histories and experiences coexist.

However, in these times of censorship, Los Angeles Literature will continue to cover the entire Greater Los Ángeles literary community, a community so diverse it’s an active form of erasure and a systemic oversight not to cover its writers of color and LGBTQIA writers.

That’s why Los Angeles Literature will also continue what we began late last year: to host readings that feature the community’s diverse range of writers and poets. White, Black, gay, lesbian, queer, trans, Filipino American, Arminian American, Salvadorian American, Vietnamese American…writers. This is who we are. And each writer deserves a voice.

For these reasons, Los Angeles Literature is for the community. We’re here as an independent, online magazine that covers our news, history, writers, our writing and our literary arts organizations honestly, holistically and objectively—covering the good, bad and everything in-between. We’re here in part to bring and keep the literary community together. In this uncertain time where Trump is intimidating and reshaping the art and literary communities in America, to silence their power to critique and tell their own stories, Los Angeles Literature stands firm in our mission.