No Music For ICE! was spearheaded in part by Sadie Dupuis of Speedy Ortiz, Joey La Neve DeFrancesco of Downtown Boys, Adult Mom, Evan Greer, Carmen Perry, and Jes Skolnik; the group pointed to Intersect as the catalyst for their movement. “After the lineup reveal, a lot of outrage focused on the artists who agreed to play the fest — many of them unwittingly supporting a company they have major concerns about,” Dupuis told MTV News.
Those that signed the petition have called on Amazon to “terminate existing contracts with military, law enforcement, and government agencies that commit human rights abuses,” stop providing technology to organizations that work in deportations, to end the use of its facial recognition software, and to no longer work with any of these organizations in the future.
According to Greer, musicians are afforded a public platform that enables them to call for change, and this petition is one such instance. “We have a responsibility to use that power in solidarity with people who are resisting oppression and human rights abuses,” Greer told MTV News. “Our demands are very simple. But musicians are drawing a line in the sand.
As for Perry, she told MTV News that her involvement is personal. “As a Mexican-American person, the way Amazon and other American tech companies are supporting ICE and the DHS’s racist agenda against migrants is abhorrent to me,” she said. “It deeply upsets me to see Amazon attempting to make a move into my community by hosting their first music festival featuring some of our peers, and it felt important to try to take a stand and get other musicians involved.
Perry, a member of the band Remember Sports, noted that No Music for ICE! doesn’t wish to shame or call out musicians already scheduled to perform at Intersect; according to reports by