This weekend’s Fed Up Fest, held at Bridgeport’s Co-Prosperity Sphere, featured some of the most aggressive programming in its four-year history—just days after President Trump attempted to ban trans people from military service and Jeff Sessions’s Justice Department argued that LGBT employees aren’t protected from workplace discrimination by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Fed Up Fest is dedicated to increasing the visibility of radical queer, trans, gender-nonconforming and intersex people in the punk and hardcore scenes, and the need for events like it gets clearer with each passing week. The fest strives to be a “community of care,” in the words of its organizers: “We believe that at the center of liberation is radical love for each other and ourselves.” Everything about the three-day festival—the bystander intervention training, the panel discussions on aging in punk, the frenzied yet thoughtful music—manifested the spirit of resistance, hope, and direct action.
Lead vocalist and drummer Pursley of No Men (Chicago)I think Fed Up Fest is just important for queer people in general, just to show face and support people. It’s about support. It’s cool to play here because people get us. When we play in front of a bunch of . . . normie white people, I feel like we get lost in translation. They’re like, “Oh cool, punk music,” but it’s deeper than that. Chicago is so welcoming. All the venues that we play are welcoming. I’m from Austin, and I’ve never seen a festival like this. Hopefully it’s paving the way for more. We need more—people need more.
Jes Skolnik of Split FeetWe were talking about the idea of so many different people being able to tell their stories and this being a space that allows for multiple perspectives, so many individuals in a collective space—that’s huge, and that doesn’t usually happen at fests. There’s so much inspiration here. People forget about Chicago in national terms. “Oh, Chicago punk is Naked Raygun or this thing that happened forever ago?” Chicago has had a vital scene, and it’s been the Latino punk scene and the Homocore scene and the fact that all of these brilliant perspectives are allowed to percolate without somebody from the outside going, “This is what LA is. This is what D.C. is.” Chicago doesn’t have that, because people keep forgetting about us. We get to tell our own story; we get to define things for ourselves.
Isabella Mancini of the Fed Up Fest collectiveI think Fed Up Fest serves as one of the only spaces where I can really mesh two things that I love and care about a lot—queer communities and punk communities—and see them coexist in a way that’s critical and productive and intentional, when a lot of things in those two separate spaces don’t really mesh that well. I feel like it’s a unique and important space for two really important parts of my identity.
Monica Trinidad, cofounder of the For the People Artists CollectiveFor me, Fed Up Fest really just means making space for queer and trans people and gender-nonconforming people. A lot of the work that we do as a collective is creating artwork and making space to uplift people that exist at the margins of the margins. That’s what Fed up Fest exemplifies. I think it’s beautiful that they’re including workshops within the festival. A lot of times you just see all music, and then we don’t have time for the dialogue or what the music means or what we’re talking about through that music. I think incorporating different organizations and different collectives to come through and talk about things like bystander intervention and holistic approaches to homelessness is super important to getting the word out about all the different struggles we have in our various communities and how they all intersect.
