A spur of the moment fundraiser for Standing Rock left local musicians hurdling over last minute setbacks, but now they’re celebrating their success.
About 240 people stood in solidarity with tribal people at the Rhinelander High School auditorium Friday night to honor and raise money for the protestors standing at the frontline of the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Paco Fralick is an Ojibwe singer/songwriter who organized the fundraiser in two weeks time. He says they raised $3,400 for the indigenous environmental justice group, Honor the Earth.
“…I would say up to 10:30 we had a full crowd, when it started thinning out a bit. Scott had an idea to do “Stand by Me,” so we individually wrote versus about that song and collectively sang the chorus and the audience stood up and the audience stood up; the whole audience was holding hands and singing that song with us…it was pretty powerful…”
Fralick says Scott Kirby is a local singer/songwriter who performed with nearly half a dozen other musicians and speakers at the event, and says the fundraiser went beyond its original intentions…
“…I think one of the goals initially was raising the amount of money that we did, it was really more to raise awareness to get more solid good information out there to folks who were looking to digest it finding that difficult because of the lack of information or the amount of misinformation that’s out there.”
Fralick and Kirby say they’re considering an annual benefit to raise awareness of environmental challenges at the local level.
