Animal Collective Offer Live Albums to Help Fight North Carolina’s HB2
Animal Collective have offered up a pair of concerts from their current Painting With tour to help raise money for a North Carolina-based organization fighting against the state’s controversial HB2, also known as the “bathroom bill.” The band posted the two concerts – a March 9th show form Los Angeles’ Fonda Theater and a April 13th gig from Manchester, England’s Ritz – on their Bandcamp page following their Sunday night show at Asheville, North Carolina’s famed Orange Peel venue.
“Recently, North Carolina passed a law, known as HB2, that dictates which bathrooms transgender people are permitted to use and attacks the rights of LGBT citizens to sue when their human rights are violated in the workplace,” the band wrote to fans. “We felt that canceling our [Asheville] show, like many others have done in protest of this law, would be a disappointment to our fans and decided to go on with the performance. That being said, we don’t condone or agree with any type of bigotry or discrimination.”
Rather than cancel the North Carolina performance to protest the bill – like Bruce Springsteen, Pearl Jam, Nick Jonas and Demi Lovato, Ringo Starr and many more artists have already done – Animal Collective instead used the gig “to raise awareness and help those fighting for equality,” as recent N.C. visitors like Mumford & Sons, Cyndi Lauper, Alabama Shakes and Father John Misty have done.
“For those who were at the show, you may have seen a table set up for Progress NC, who we were introduced to by NC Needs You. They are an organization ‘dedicated to being a voice for forward-thinking North Carolinians who want to protect the balanced approach to government,'” the band wrote. All pay-what-you-want donations from the two concerts will go toward Progress NC.
Recently, the U.S. Justice Department and U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch recently warned North Carolina lawmakers that HB2 violates both the Civil Rights Act and Title IX, which bans discrimination in education. As a result of the Justice Department’s findings, North Carolina is in danger of losing nearly a billion dollars in federal education money.
North Carolina governor Pat McCrory responded to the Justice Department by suing the government, stating that HB2 was “commonsense privacy policy.” On Monday, the U.S. government responded to McCrory’s suit with a lawsuit of their own, claiming that North Carolina was in violation of provisions in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, Title IX the Education Acts Amendment of 1972 and the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act that outlaw discrimination on the basis of sex, CNN reports.