Last Friday at a backyard punk show, Quinn McClurg was taking photos of her friends smiling at 10:02 p.m. In mere minutes, the venue became a site of a mass shooting that targeted its queer and trans attendees.

The show was held in the backyard and garage area of Nudieland, a venue located south of Minneapolis, Minn. By the end of the night, six were injured and one was pronounced dead—a beloved member of the community known as August Golden.

McClurg is a 21-year-old poet, journalist and student at the University of Minnesota. She is also a trans woman. Having moved to Minneapolis only in 2021, DIY shows like Nudieland were quick to take her in.

“DIY shows are one of the only regularly safe places for trans folks, queer folks, punks and everybody to get together and socialize,” McClurg told Reckon. “Because everybody you know and love is there. People you’ve worked in the encampments with, people you’ve done protests with—everybody’s there.”

Nudieland derived from its sibling venue, Disgraceland two years ago as an expansion. But it isn’t just a venue; Nudieland houses many of its punk patrons. A resident of the house who requested anonymity for their safety shared with Reckon that Nudieland never strove towards being a haven for queer and trans punks because it just already was to begin with.

The resident, who is also trans, said, “This is not a unique space. So many of the punkhouses I started going to, as young as 16, in and around Southside [Minneapolis], were the same way: there was no striving, we were just in it together, whoever walked in. We’ve always been freaks.”

The night of the shooting was a celebration of one of the local bands Texture Freq’s newest album release. Like any other night, Twin Cities Trans Mutual Aid Project was tabling. Organizers table shows at Nudieland regularly. Others that have been present at the shows include Southside Harm Reduction Services, Southside Food Shelves, and even a gender-affirming clothing swap. Music and tabling aside, sometimes people like Aaron Diveley show up just to be with other Nudieland patrons.

“I had a pretty off day and I was just there to talk to folks, grab a couple of beers, have a smoke, talk to my friends and meet new people,” said Diveley, a trans patron of Nudieland whose background is in environmental analytics. “It’s such a healthy community. Anybody who’s not queer or trans is very accepting of those identities, and it’s a very healing place where you don’t have to worry about being yourself.”

Diveley and McClurg have been supporting each other amongst other survivors of the night to be with one another and flesh out the trajectory of the shooting. According to the information they’ve collectively gathered, two men wandered upon the show and pursued two queer women.

In an Instagram post by MPR News, a user who attended the show commented, “They were trying to flirt with me and my friend—who both identify as lesbians—and we told them we weren’t interested and not to touch us. They got upset and eventually walked off, and less than a minute after [they] started firing.”

“This was a hate crime,” Diveley told Reckon.

McClurg added that receiving rejection is a normal experience, but that it should never call for murder. “[Yes], this is about gun control, but I think it’s most importantly about machismo and toxic masculine shit,” she said. “Because nobody else would do that getting turned down.”

Kat Rohn tells Reckon that it is crucial to support and center the voices of those at the shooting. Rohn is the executive director of Outfront Minnesota, a social services organization based in Saint Paul, Minn. and largest LGBTQ advocacy organization in the state.

“We are in the midst of unprecedented legislative and rhetorical attacks on queer and trans folks that are directly fueling acts of violence against our communities,” Rohn explained. “And like Club Q, this is an attack on a space and scene that has been a place of welcome for those in the LGBTQ community.”

Even prior to the shooting, the Nudieland community has been built on a collective support because alike many DIY shows and venues, its patrons are mostly marginalized people. The shooting only exacerbated the need for the community to be with one another. Diveley and McClurg criticize the erasure of this sense of community in recent reporting, which only wanted to center details of violence.

“[In] the articles, nothing was about [our] mutual aid groups,” said McClurg, who witnessed her friends ripping their own shirts in aid of those who were injured—one of whom is still alive, though hospitalized. “None of [the reporting] was about the punks supplying lifesaving aid. [There was] nothing about us hugging minutes after everything happened. Nobody cares about [Minneapolis] more than the punks. Nobody gives a shit, loves more or cares more than these people do.”

That same night, an officer of the Minneapolis Police Department was shot in a drive-by. When he was discharged from the hospital, the MPD gathered outside to show solidarity. On X, a video of their applause went viral.

“I find it shocking that it was a 24 hour news cycle and one police officer being shot in his car and a significant portion of the entire Minneapolis Police Force applauding the officer [was] a bigger news story than seven people suffering injuries at a punk show,” Diveley said. “On the first night, it was impossible to even get information about the shooting because everyone was talking about the police officer.”

Shooting aside, violence against the community is not new. This year brought upon over 560 bills into court to target the community, from bathroom bans to gender-affirming care bans and ‘Don’t Say Gay’ laws. Trans people, mostly Black and Latinx, are over four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violent crime, according to the Williams Institute. The Club Q shooting, which killed five people, was not even a year ago.

The anonymous trans resident of the house venue explained that there is a deep linkage to anarchism in spaces like Nudieland, “in the sense of relying on each other to make a life as outside of all the petty individualistic ideals fed to us by capitalism, the state, the nuclear family model, gender and sexuality and all the deeply ingrained ways we’ve been told to live,” they said.

To them, the shooting does not cast a shadow on what that night was meant to be. “[To] hold so many shows and events that fostered intergenerational trans and queer community and community at large, was such an honor. That’s what Friday night was: a wonderful, raucous celebration of our lives and art.”

They added that there will not be another show, but that they will always remember the Nudieland house “in the golden hour, yard full of friends, sharing the small joys of music, movies, food, and so, so much love.”

The morning after the shooting was memorable for McClurg. She, Diveley and their friends stopped by Nudieland to help clean up the house—from blood to beer cans. The house had a swarm of flower arrangements. Diveley and McClurg dumped an unopened can of beer on the ground after exchanging sips and stared at the flower arrangement—exhausted and in disbelief of what had happened.

For McClurg, one thing remained true: “Punks take care of themselves because they’ve never had any other choice.”