One Month After Nudieland

By Quinn McClurg

The long shadow of Nudieland has fallen thick and absolute; I know it will continue to stretch far, far into the future, equally ignored or understated by most media.

One month later, most of the articles about Nudieland include mentions to the queer and transgender elements of the community affected. However, despite several articles being written immediately afterwards, the first article to mention the LGBTQ+ community or the nature of the shooting as a hate crime was published four days later.

Both in grief and the newscycle, four days may as well be a lifetime. When the folks affected were dealing with the hardest and most immediate processes of grief, the few running headlines read: “1 dead, 6 injured after mass shooting at Minneapolis punk show.” If folks didn’t read beyond the headline (or haven’t had experience inside the punk community), they would assume the shooter was a punk, some sort of violent person spreading their violent subculture.

If folks did read the story in question, they would have seen no mention of the LGBTQ+ community present, the mutual-aid communities present, or the fact that the shooting was queerphobic in nature. Like always, the people affected were reduced to a number, a handful of pixels on a screen.

I felt especially bitter about this article, as I was one of the first folks interviewed. I spent upwards of 15 minutes talking to the reporter about how beautiful and immediately supportive the scene is, how Nudieland is a haven, and how queer and trans folks were targeted. The editorial team only used my brief description of the shooting itself, something I strongly discouraged.

I understand the dynamics of the inverted pyramid and the nothing-but-facts, breaking-news formula, but the fact that integral LGBTQ+ elements were so easily overlooked is nothing short of erasure; Nudieland wouldn’t have been attacked if it wasn’t motivated by anti-LGBTQ+ hate. The day after the shooting, I attended a friends- and-family event for August Golden, the well- loved musician killed at Nudieland. Enraged with the article, I talked to some other punks there, mentioning how, as a journalist, I thought I could be careful enough. Someone responded with something along the lines of, “huh... explains why you were holding out hope for the media.”

Maybe it goes without saying why punks don’t trust the media; maybe it goes without saying why punks have only ever had each other for support. And support did come flooding in. Several GoFundMe pages were made for Tonio (a critically injured victim), six other injured victims, Caitlin (August’s partner), and the residents of Nudieland, each one receiving tens of thousands of dollars. Journalism didn’t spread the word of the mutual aid or fundraising pages though, only social media posts and word of mouth. Benefit concerts, free meals, and free counseling all popped up to support survivors, proving invaluable in reinforcing the community’s cohesion.

In almost every way, Nudieland was a reality check; the realities of grief, death, injury, gun violence, toxic masculinity, misogyny, queerphobia, and media coverage set in. But so too did the realities of love, support, catharsis, cohesion, and community. I’ve come a long way after the shooting. However, at the time of writing, I can’t help but feel immense rage that such an act of violence occurred, especially in the punk community, one built on infinite amounts of radical love and acceptance. Just one action based on senseless hatred disrupted so many lives forever, lives of folks who were already downtrodden, disadvantaged, marginalized, and stigmatized. I, alongside many other queer and trans individuals, have been afraid to leave my house presenting; we’ve been battling trauma and mental illness; we’ve been flinching at every door slammed or horn honked; we’ve been missing sleep, missing meals, and missing each other, especially since work or school can’t be put off forever.

And this grief, this rage, this hurt—it isn’t just for the folks who were immediately impacted; all of it is meant to be shared. We all should know the realities of these emotions so we can better contextualize the depths of the human experience alongside the texture of the sociopolitical world we are living in. I have to do something with this rage, and I have to live through the rest of my life carrying it. Maybe, like many others impacted, I’ll use it for art, maybe for organizing, maybe for mutual aid. But right now, ever since my first interview, I am going to use it to be a better journalist, objectivity and inverted pyramid be damned; lord knows those immediately impacted need it the most.