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‘We Created a Pitchfork Fest for Trans Rights’
Ekko Astral’s Liberation Weekend aims to fight eroding support for the community, even as some companies “don’t want to be associated with this.”
Holzman, who left Axios in 2024 as the only out trans reporter covering Congress, pushes for a realignment with realism by poking holes in lofty narratives on social media and vanquishing bunk logic on the climate beat, while pondering the plight of the world’s least protected people in Ekko songs like “Pomegranate Tree” and “Somewhere at the Bottom of the River Between L’Enfant and Eastern Market.” The band and collective have tapped trans artists and allies — including emo and skate-punk revivalists Home Is Where and Pinkshift, indie rockers Speedy Ortiz and Ted Leo, and genre-smelters Bartees Strange and L’Rain — to share wares and kick proceeds to future rallies and actions. You’ve spoken out a lot about political media flattening and spinning big stories and I wonder if you see the same routines in a music landscape where no one ever asked Kendrick Lamar about dropping slurs and getting deadname-y with a family member on his 2022 track “Auntie Diaries.” I think people are profoundly afraid and unsure of how to market art in an environment where identity is debatable.
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