Langerado Music Festival: loud music, closed minds?
March 12th, 2008 by admin
The Langerado music festival ended on Sunday at the Big Cypress Seminole Indian Reservation. Unfortunately, ARFF was asked to pack up our information booth at the festival on Friday night after raising concerns about the treatment of an alligator on site, and for showing a video about the treatment of animals in factory farms.
ARFF had paid several hundred dollars for space in the festival’s Green-A-Rado “eco-village,” which was described in the festival’s program as representing “an engaging and diverse vision of sustainability.” We were excited at the opportunity to bring a message of compassion to animals to Langerado’s young crowd.
Around mid-day on Friday, the two ARFF members at the booth began to hear comments from festival-goers about an “alligator wrestling” show. Upon investigation, we found several men from the Seminole Tribe pulling an alligator out of a small pond and proceeding to torment the animal with a stick, and slap the animal on the nose, in order to create a reaction from the alligator and entertain the gathered crowd.
Because of the complaints we received, we created a simple petition on a piece of paper asking the festival to end the alligator show. Several hours later, after collecting dozens of names, a Langerado employee visited our booth and became furious when he saw the petition. He grabbed it off the clipboard and told us that we could not criticize the Seminole Tribe in any way.
About ½ hour later, the Langerado employee returned with a co-worker (Langerado’s Vending Coordinator) and said that the video at ARFF’s booth was too graphic and that it had to be turned off. The employees oddly claimed that, due to the late hour (9:00pm), festival-goers may be drunk and could have a dangerous reaction to the footage of animal abuse in the video. Because the video was the centerpiece of ARFF’s display, we refused and chose instead to accept a refund and leave the festival.
The video, “Meat Your Meat,” features footage of the suffering of chickens, turkeys, pigs and cows in modern factory farms. The video can be viewed online here.
It was disappointing to have to leave the festival, especially after having many positive conversations about vegetarianism with festival-goers. We found it ironic that as we were packing up our booth, The Roots- a band that has been very supportive of the vegan lifestyle- was playing on a nearby stage. We’re curious how they would react if they knew that a vendor was asked to leave the festival because they were speaking up for animals. (Langerado Music Festival also featured other well-known vegetarian-friendly musicians- including Michael Stipe (R.E.M.) and The Beastie Boys)
You Can Help
Please contact Langerado and urge them to work with the Seminole Tribe so that alligator wrestling is not part of next year’s festival.Contact:
langinfo@langerado.com
You can also contact Langerado via the festival’s MySpace page. We were glad to see that several of the comments on Langerado’s page criticized alligator wrestling; for example: “This was a great festival….however wrangling alligators…was disgusting! PEOPLE WE NEED TO RESPECT THE LAND BY NOT LITTERING (i have never seen so much trash in my life) AND NOT ABUSING INNOCCENT ANIMALS WHO WHERE ON THE LAND FIRST….”