Take a look at this great article from The Nation, Stimulus: One Perfect for the Imagination, and be sure to sign the linked petition asking Congress to allocate 1% of the stimulus package for the arts.

Newsweek recently featured a wonderful piece about Obama and the importance of the arts, Will Act for Food, that opens with a shout out to Walt Whitman:

Since election day, pundits have exhausted themselves trying to locate every last reason for Barack Obama's win. But the fine-tooth combing has missed something—or, rather, someone: Walt Whitman. Nobody has pointed out that Obama shares his victory with the generations of writers and musicians and painters in the fervently democratic tradition that descends from our national poet.

...

Since Ralph Waldo Emerson issued his call for homegrown American creativity 130 years ago, and Whitman answered him with the all-embracing poems that helped shape the psyche of our polyglot young democracy, the arts have offered the various tribes of this country some of our best chances to know ourselves and one another, and to see the pleasures and pain of our interactions more clearly: think of what we've learned from Huck and Jim, "Invisible Man," Alvin Ailey's dances, "Angels in America," the blues. Better yet, try to imagine how we'd relate to one another without them.

I am hopeful that Obama will find a way to support the arts during his time in office, but we may need to remind him to do so. Please sign the petition today.