Accountability in Music • Page 66

Quick explanation- Sheridan Allen formed Punk Talks to be a free/affordable resource for people in the industry who can’t afford or don’t have access to mental health care. I have heard shady things about the org over the years and have had my own less than stellar experience, but always assumed the common good the org was doing was worth my personal discomfort with them being the Voice for Mental Health in our Scene. However...as more of this comes to light and as more people share their experiences, I’m starting to think all of us should have spoken up much sooner. This is really, deeply disturbing and I’m trying to track down more information because no therapist should be allowed to operate if they are sharing confidential information. The only time a therapist is allowed to break confidentiality is when the patient poses a danger, and even then they are supposed to inform the police. Not a girl who will post about it on Twitter for cred.

 

someone on twitter said only one person on their website is even certified to be a licensed therapist yet they know more people in the org are offering 'therapy'....thats fucked

 

I actually really want to talk to MY therapist about this because this cannot be ethically allowed. There has to be a board or something that can do something about it.

 

Yeah, there’s no way this is okay. Wow. This is seriously so gross and can’t be legal.

 

This is nuts

 

More in the thread of tweets.

 

This is the situation Zoe is referring to.

 

it's worth noting that members of this band work (or worked at? idk if they're still there) at the middle east in cambridge MA and have defended/prevented transparency regarding sexual assaults committed by one of the owners, so this statement seems to be a "this is a good PR moment to seem like we have good politics" kind of thing and i don't support this band

(here's more info about the middle east thing from when it was more actively happening boycott of middle east club in cambridge? • r/boston



they never made a public statement addressing the issues and have swept it under the rug as much as possible)

 

asking this person to open up and then ignoring them after is just vile

 

After browsing around a bit, it seems like this is an extremely common thing. I’ve seen a handful of people say they were just ghosted.

 

yeah the fact that that doesnt seem like an isolated incident is extremely alarming, to say the least. this is not the kind of organization that should be handling people's mental health and for everyone they've helped it seems like they've done quite a bit of harm elsewhere.

 

From what I know of Alex he isn’t in support of all of that (and I talked to him at the time about that) but I also don’t live up there and I don’t know the details more than that.

 

I’m really, really upset about this and it’s beyond anything I could have ever thought would happen in this scene tbh.

 

my band had a show scheduled at the ME when this was all coming out and the band we were brought onto the bill with (who was on tour from the south, not locals) decided to contact the booker (who i think was alex from AF) to get a grip on what was going on because I brought up concerns. the booker essentially said that the ME was handling it internally with "staff training" and not to worry about it, which isn't great when a band brings that kind of concern to you. we ended up just canceling the show because we all felt uncomfortable supporting the venue and couldn't change locations in time. there really was no public accountability that the venue had to deal with, the "big talk" kind of fizzled out, and a lot of local bands and booking groups (allston pudding, other local bookers) no longer play shows or patronize the venue for this reason. i think it's important to just put all this stuff out there because we so often are seeing people talking up their politics for "clout" and not being actionable, and if AF actually voiced that they'd stop supporting the ME this would maybe not seem as disingenuous

EDIT: to put this in a clearer light, an older less financially prosperous venue down the street from the ME called "out of the blue too" closed two years ago after their owner was accused of sexually assaulting a performer. not that this venue shouldn't have closed, but by virtue of the ME being a bigger/more well known place with more money, they've been able to skirt away from this thing and that's probably Not Good

 

Man posing as a therapist without any sort of professional training is so wildly fucked

 

To clarify, there are certified therapists working with Punk Talks. They list 5 on their site. However, no one else in the org should be offering therapy or disclosing results of professional therapy.

 

I haven’t heard of them beyond the name and vaguely what they do, so this is coming as a pretty big shock to hear just how awful it is. Wish I hadn’t posted that twitter thread now, except I guess some of the publicity around it is what is bringing more of this to light.

I really hope some actual therapists will make themselves available to undo some of this damage for those affected. and they certainly need to be looked into professionally by those capable of doing so.

 

sarah's an amazingly wonderful person (and actually brings this story full circle, being that nicole emotionally abused them in the first place) so it's so awful to see this

 

yeah, i know about the owner thing, and i know a bunch of bands have stopped playing shows there. i saw all the staff training and "the owner isn't involved anymore" but of course i don't know the details. i just know the band has been in a bunch of these situations and have handled it super well in all cases, and in cases like this i always have to worry that someone could be worried about not having an income or something if they spoke out about it.

fuck capitalism

 

This all sounds like one big HIPAA violation.

 

Ahhh okay the tweet I saw made it seem like only one was actually certified but they def made it clear people who aren't certified are trying to give "therapy" as well

 

Had to make an account to come in and say this. Animal Flag is 100% making a statement because I’m pr terms it’s the right thing to do. I noticed Cerce has not made a statement whatsoever, in fact after Nicole’s post and the Reddit post someone was on their fb commenting back at a fan saying Becca would be singing for the show. No doubt these lames were waiting it out to see whether the story caught on or not. It’s extra hypocritical as well considering a member of both bands (zach w) is usually the first to jump on these situations and publicly voice his opinion. I can only assume again since it’s someone who can grant clout, hesitation was present.

And for the Middle East thing. It’s totally a case of trying to keep it hush. Alex just got called out this week (see lilith’s Twitter) and people have reported seeing the dude who was supposedly blacklisted hanging out there regularly.

It’s a real eye opener to how cliquey this “community” really is.

 

yeah, thanks for this post. definitely one of the things it's hard to know if you aren't in that local community. hoping this isn't just quiet now that it's being brought up again, definitely not defending them again until i see some actual progress here

 

Is it possible cerce may play the shows without Old gray? I’m only asking bc they haven’t cancelled them on any of their social media and these reunion shows can take a lot of planning on the bands part.

 

i would be STUNNED if the old gray shows happen.