Ally Hom/Emory Wheel
This year, the heady, stressful fall semester won’t be remedied by two days of drinking too much beer and dancing to one-hit wonders in Atlanta’s Piedmont Park. That’s right – Live Nation cancelled Midtown Music.
“This is bullshit,” my friend said in a text that arrived minutes after the cancellation was announced. “They destroyed it again.”
According to local and national media, Georgia’s gun laws with an axe festival — namely the Safe Transportation Protection Act of 2014, which has been dubbed the “guns everywhere bill” and GRANTS Georgia residents with concealed carry permits can bring their guns into government lands and buildings, churches, bars and even some areas of airports. According to this act, guns are allowed in public parks, which, according to a 2019 legal decision, makes it is impossible for Live Nation to enforce a temporary gun ban at Piedmont Park for the duration of the festival. Music Midtown’s cancellation is more than an attack on college students who wanted to see the Future; it’s a sign that conservative politics will kill Atlanta.
First, the repeal signals that gun ownership privileges in Georgia are being expanded in dangerous ways. It goes without saying that firearms and music festivals are incompatible. Mass shooting at a music festival in Las Vegas killed more than 50 people in 2017. But banning guns at festivals is illegal under state law because gun owners are supposed to be within their rights to carry guns in public parks and endanger other festival-goers. the festival. Despite the countless past tragedies in which reckless people died In the hands of rampant gun control, Republicans still somehow manage to defend guns over human life in the name of freedom.
Even culture risks dying. Movie and music scenes, which are part of it make Atlanta, the cultural capital of the South, is not immune to the consequences of lax gun laws. town it’s the center of the US hip-hop music scene and boasts a growing indie-rock crowd. fun bring about $9.5 billion in revenue for the city, with Music Midtown alone cOLLectiON 50 million dollars. However, terribly lax gun laws like the “gun everywhere bill” could be the end of the city’s music scene.
Atlanta will risk losing more public music shows because it’s nearly impossible for artists to stop guns in their crowds. Shaky Knees and ONEMusicfest festivals, which are also keep every year on a public basis, it looks like it will be the next one. Maybe the concerts will start to disappear too. It is absurd to expect musicians to perform in front of a drunken and armed crowd, and unreasonable to assume that concertgoers will feel comfortable attending events while guns are blazing. Concerts and festivals are dangerous enough as it is; the participants RISK being trampled, attacked or drowned by unruly mobs. Gov. Brian Kemp’s extreme gun agenda return live music from an exciting event to a life or death experience.
Live music is only the tip of the iceberg; Music Midtown and the larger music industry may be the first, but not the last, victims of the Kemp era. The film industry will be next.
Film and television producers love Atlanta Thank you to generous tax credits, with the industry bringing in $4.4 billion in revenue for the state last year. However, restrictive abortion laws in addition to discriminatory voting laws and lax gun regulations are also beginning to drive the film away. After the Georgia Fetal Heartbeat Law switched banning most abortions after fetal heart activity is detected, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Ca.) asked film companies to end production in Georgia, calling out new abortion laws are a “brutal attack on fundamental rights”. The industry protested when the law was first passed, and major producers and actors like Jason Bateman threatened to leave Atlanta if approved. Well, it was. Now, it’s only a matter of time before Hollywood, and its billions of dollars in revenue, start vacating the city — taking thousands of jobs with it.
Georgia Republicans are costing culture, tourism, jobs and state revenue because of their radical agendas. Music Midtown’s loss is evidence of the growing disconnect between Democratic Atlanta and the GOP-controlled legislature. Despite Atlantians existing in a liberal oasis with 72.6% of Fulton County VOTING Democratic residents are still adversely affected by the state’s conservative laws. Beyond the dangerous elements of city living, like going to concerts, the ubiquity of guns leads to an increase in gun deaths in the state. Homicide rates up with each passing year, with death higher among black youth and in low income Black and Native communities. Even Emory, in the affluent bubble of Druid Hills, is not immune to gun violence. A student with a gun promote a lockout on campus last May. A man was killed outside a popular Buckhead bar last April. A man was shot in Emory Commons last month. When guns can be carried anywhere, blood is spilled everywhere.
The repeated call to vote is exhausting. But nothing will change until Kemp is out of office. This November we can vote Stacey Abrams in the governor’s office and have a chance to change state laws. Abrams has concentrated gun in her gubernatorial race, proposing to roll back Georgia Republicans’ gun-friendly laws. Perhaps she will finally bring the state up to speed with Atlanta, restoring abortion rights and tightening gun restrictions. Because in Atlanta, it’s no longer safe to have fun.
Sophia Peyser (25C) is from New York, New York.