July 9th East Moline Concert to Benefit New Solidarity Effort to Stop Sexual Violence
On Friday, July 9th from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. at the Whiskey Stop (726 15th Ave., East Moline), area bands and artists will take the stage to raise funds for Family Resources to support victims of sexual violence in the Quad-Cities.
Alyx Rush will perform at 9 p.m. Friday at Whiskey Stop.
A new collaboration among River Music Experience, WVIK, Family Resources and the Whiskey Stop will host live music with performances by Murnau, Ross Clowser Trio, Mirabilia, Yung Flvy, BN WhoIam (featuring Crealot and K1ng Supr3m3), and Alyx Rush.
“This is a partnership that will help create a community vision where we are all able to thrive in mutual respect, protection, and care within our region,” said Moselle Singh, a coordinator of the Solidarity Collaboration. “Everyone deserves to enjoy music safely, and it’s up to us, as a community, to ensure such spaces exist. We can start by standing in solidarity against sexual violence and supporting survivor services in our community.”
BN WhoIAm will perform at 8 p.m. Friday for the Solidarity benefit.
“We came together because there are some instances of sexual violence happening in the creative spheres, and we collectively decided to become more vocal as a community about this, rather than continuing to sweep it under the rug,” Singh (a Q-C native, Augustana College alum and a local illustrator/artist) said Monday.
“Just to become more proactive about cultivating spaces that are safe and ensure protection, and care for each other. There are people within the creative community who recognize that this is an issue that has yet to be discussed openly and proactively addressed.”
Training was offered July 1 at River Music Experience in downtown Davenport on the issue, to raise awareness about sexual violence in the music community.
“People are not yet taking this seriously and a lot of people end up being taken advantage of in these situations and it’s just a huge problem,” Singh said, noting that training was from the Freedom Forum Institute, facilitated by representatives from KWQC and Q-C Times. “It was a training that they offer to staff working within the media industry in the QC, it was not led by Solidarity organizers,” she said. “They opened it up so that we could get everyone in the room to begin discussing how this applies to other spheres, specifically the music spheres, of the QC.”
Moselle Singh, a Q-C artist, is an organizer for the July 9 fundraising event.
“We can maybe catalyze a little bit more conversation, see where we gain some traction, eventually create a training program that’s translatable to the Q-C music sphere,” she said. “So people who are music venue owners, people who are staffed at these music venues have active bystander training for instances of sexual violence and sexual harassment. We’re not doing that yet anywhere in the Quad-Cities, and that’s a huge disservice.”
The training aimed to raise awareness that this is an urgent issue, and is not limited to the workplace.
“That’s a really good place to start,” Singh said. “So these organizations first of all, should be talking about that within their own workplaces. But then how do we translate out to the community itself? My purpose for bringing everyone into the same room is so that we can potentially catalyze more conversation, more skill-building, more avenues for actual active change within the community. The idea is to change this from conversation into action.”
The fundraiser will show there are people who take this seriously and demand action, she noted.
“RME will be offering the training program again, and we’ll be working with Family Resources to make that available again, and see if we can get more people to show up for them, to take this seriously, because it needs to be taken seriously,” Singh said.
“This isn’t just a Quad-Cities issue. This is like an everywhere issue, but the Quad-Cities can be a leader in addressing this head-on. And I think that’s a big opportunity that we could be looking at for making this a safe community for everyone to enjoy music.”
“At RME, we recognize that music venues are not always safe places, and the Quad-Cities music scene is no exception,” RME executive director Tyson Danner said. “We are honored to play a small role in supporting this broader effort to encourage conversation and change around the sexual harassment and assault that can happen within our music scene.
“The Power Shift training was a powerful interactive training session. Staff members from RME, The Echo, KWQC, Family Resources, and the Quad-City Times – as well as individual artists and music promoters – attended the training,” he said.
“It’s important that those who hold power and privilege, such as venue operators, promoters, and others in our music scene, understand their responsibility to protect every patron and ensure that our local venues are accessible and safe for all,” Danner said. “We’re very much looking forward to supporting continued conversation and concrete action on this issue.”
In addition to supporting survivor services, the group wants to prevent violence and predatory behavior in the first place. “The fundraiser is obviously going toward the survivor services, that’s something that comes after a horrible incident happens, which is unfortunate but making sure that those resources are properly funded and available to people is extremely important,” Singh said, adding that Family Resources is “phenomenal in this community.”
Several people took part in three-hour training July 1 at RME from the new Solidarity Collaboration.
“Preventative measures — it means raising awareness that people are functioning in awareness, when we’re cultivating these spaces, places for these conversations to be happening,” she said. “Practicing confrontation, a constructive confrontation, practicing active bystander training — that should be commonplace. Whenever there are these large festivals as well. Anything that’s happening downtown, there should be a tent that is literally for active bystander training, and have people staffed there to be patrolling, to be walking around paying attention, because things happen.
“And a lot of times people don’t know where to go,” Singh said. “We were also discussing this training program, if we do push in that direction, music venue owners who do go through that training and properly train their staff, they can have some kind of indicator that their staff is trained in active bystander training, in sexual harassment and violence and that they are safe to go to. They will help you if you need protection, if you need help. That’s really important.”
The poster for a July 9 live-music fundraiser at the Whiskey Stop, 726 15th Ave., East Moline.
“Solidarity: Coming Together to Support Survivor Services” is a five-hour benefit at the Whiskey Stop, East Moline, on Friday.
Admission to the Friday event requires proof of donation (electronic or print receipt) to https://gofund.me/4d9c39ec. They have a $5,000 fundraising goal, and $1,680 was raised as of Monday afternoon. On Friday at Whiskey Stop, there will be two stages; food and drinks will be available for purchase. The schedule of performers is as follows:
- Murnau — 5:00-5:45 (outside)
- Ross Clowser Trio — 5:45-6:30 (inside)
- Miribilia — 6:30-7:15 (outside)
- Yung Flvy — 7:15-8:00 (inside)
- BN WhoIAm — 8:00-8:45 (outside)
- Announcement — 8:45-9:00 (inside)
- Alyx Rush — 9:00-9:45 (outside)
Yung Flvy will perform at 7:15 p.m. at the Friday event.
After the event (“Solidarity: Coming Together to Support Survivor Services”), the GoFundMe page will stay open until July 16 and all the funds raised will be donated to Family Resources’ online campaign, to be matched up to $10,000.
