Going Broke In the Heart of the Beast

Today’s Star Tribune headlines a sad story: In the Heart of the Beast puppet theater may not be able to put on its annual May Day parade:

In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre’s MayDay parade, a vibrant rite of spring in south Minneapolis for 44 years, has become so popular that it will cease next year unless the nonprofit gets outside help.

Losing money because it is so popular! That is like the kid you knew long ago, who said he wasn’t doing well in school because he was just too smart.

The parade loses substantial amounts of money, but the far-left City of Minneapolis wants to step in:

“This is so much more than a parade,” Minneapolis City Council Member Alondra Cano said…”The city’s going to do everything in its power to support” the theater and the parade.

Mayor Jacob Frey’s office announced that he was working to save the parade.

“MayDay offers a rallying cry for workers and justice — and one of the events that best captures this inclusive spirit is the annual parade,” said Mychal Vlatkovich, Frey’s spokesman.

Ah yes, a “rallying cry for workers and justice.” A reminder that May Day has long been celebrated by Communist regimes like the Soviet Union. In the Heart of the Beast puppet theater–its name comes from psychopathic mass murderer Che Guevara–is fine with those traditions. Thus, in promoting its 2009 May Day parade, the theater wrote:

As we experience the failure of our economic systems built on debt, consumer waste, the theft and sickening of earth resources, we gather to rebuild an economic system that protects and sustains our Earth as a “Common Treasury for All.”

Right! If only in the world of puppets. In 2016:

This is the time for Reparations–for the land and water, for our ancestors, and for each other.

This is a time to admit and address the systematic theft and exploitation of land and people; a crime that has
benefitted and continues to privilege whiteness.

What do we each offer, give up, bring forward to heal the oppressive relationships of injustice we’ve grown accustomed to?

And this was when Barack Obama was president! In May 2017 the parade’s theme was “Imagine, Heal, Resist.”

At this time of great upheaval,

we come together to IMAGINE a just and joyous future for all;

HEAL personal, cultural and historical wounds;

and stand as a circle in RESISTance to false myths of separateness that perpetuate violence and inequality.
***
Imagine cities that recognize deportation as the wrong punishment for illegal immigration, which is a breach of civil, not criminal, law.

The May Day parade is a useful reminder, too, that it didn’t begin with Donald Trump. Remember when George W. Bush was literally Hitler? All Republican presidents should be impeached! That is what the puppet theater says, anyway:

It isn’t surprising that Democratic Party politicians want to keep Heart of the Beast in business. I first wrote about the puppet theater in 2009, commenting on the fact that the theater had received $25,000 in “stimulus” money from the Democratic Congress and the Obama administration. (The Daily Caller reported several years later that the theater had gotten $100,000 in stimulus funds, so what I saw may have been the down payment.):

In the Heart of the Beast is not just any puppet theater; it is a far left puppet theater. It puts on an annual May Day festival that celebrates the Communist version of that holiday.

This is how the government-funded puppet theater portrayed the Nativity:

Joseph, at first played by a puppet, is a working man trying to figure out how to provide for his family, but has to worry about providing for his new wife. He is out of work and trying to find a job, which is difficult, as he is confronted with a host of accusations because of his immigrant status. Finally he learns that he needs to go to Bethlehem for the census.

After failing to find shelter from the neighborhood houses, Mary and Joseph are stopped by Herod, played by the appropriately nasty and thrilling Julian McFaul. Herod stands at a border crossing, complete with barbed wire, and forbids Mary and Joseph to cross.

Your tax dollars at work! With more to come, if the Democrats who run Minneapolis have anything to say about it. But that isn’t all. The State of Minnesota supports far-left puppetry, too, as do major corporations and foundations. The McKnight Foundation disperses the wealth of the founder of 3M. Target Corporation funds left-wing causes when it isn’t selling paper products and household goods to suburban housewives.

The curious survival of leftist puppet theater is a good example of how you and I fund, against our wills, people who are bitterly hostile to us and to our country.