Queens Says No Kings (QSNK), a grassroots pro-democracy group, will host VoteFest, an interactive festival celebrating the right to vote in New York City, on May 30 from 2-4 p.m. at MacDonald Park in Forest Hills.
NYC-based attendees can receive help registering to vote, checking and updating their voter registration status, locating their polling station, creating a vote plan and learning how to become a poll monitor with Common Cause New York.
They will also have an opportunity to share personal stories about why they vote on a community wall and on the organization’s social media.
Locally-made empanadas will be served while supplies last. The link to sign up for the event is here.
VoteFest is a non-partisan, immersive, family-friendly, open-air festival designed to inspire citizens to vote on the first day of early voting.
The festival will blend large-scale visual art installations, music and civic education into a community celebration focused on preparing to vote.
According to a news release from QSNK, the event will include activities for individuals and families to celebrate voting in artistic ways, as well as selfie stations with community-created artwork developed specifically for the event.
Attendees can walk through a field of locally-made VOTE flowers, help create a community mural celebrating voting, make mini VOTE flowers to take home and take photos in front of QSNK voting-themed art.
The event will feature four music acts and two speakers to rally attendees about voting.
Musicians include Gary Baker, a Queens-based singer who will lead a sing along; Gabrielle Sterbenz of Disturbenz, a NYC-based singer and musician; Singing Resistance Queens, a new Queens-based group will debut at VoteFest; and Curtis Watts, a Brooklyn-based percussionist and native New Yorker who performed with the Curtis Watts Trio.
Speakers include Asha Smith — a civil rights leader, legal strategist, professor and artist — and Drea Herrera, a queer, Arab, Latinx and self-proclaimed “coffee-addicted” New Yorker who is a senior organizer at the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU).
Organizers of the event include QSNK, Women’s Action Group of Forest Hills (WAGFH), Hands Off NYC (HONYC), Common Cause New York (CCNY), Let’s Talk Democracy (LTD), Queens Young Democrats (QYD), HeadCount, Indivisible and others still to be announced.
According to the organization, QSNK formed in response to authoritarian drift and the systematic stealing and hijacking of democracy, the constitution, truth and facts, public money, privacy, education, healthcare, free speech, due process, voting rights, social services, federal agencies, and jobs and worker protections, as well as the ongoing erosion of protections for immigrants, families, veterans, LGBTQIA+ people, women, children, workers and many more vulnerable communities.
MacDonald Park has been the starting point for all QSNK marches, which are the largest marches in the borough’s history.
To learn more about the organization, visit Mobilize.us, QueensSaysNoKings.com, or the Queens Says No Kings YouTube, Facebook or Instagram pages.