A group of L.A. residents have launched a petition demanding that Michael Alig be removed as the “special guest” of the upcoming “Sex Cells” event at Echoplex.
The petition is directed to Danny Fuentes, who in January launched “Sex Cells” as a monthly event at Echoplex, the live music venue in Echo Park. Fuentes is best known for opening in 2013 an art gallery called Lethal Amounts, described as a “celebration of the underground: punk rock, glam rock, anti-pop culture and various facets of what would largely be considered taboo.”
Alig was the founder of the Club Kids, a group of young clubgoers in New York City in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He became a notorious figure when, in 1997, he was sent to prison for 17 years for killing another club kid, Andre “Angel” Melendez and dismembering his body after a dispute over money and while they were high on drugs. The story of that incident is told in “The Shockumentary,” a documentary produced by World of Wonder.
Now 51, Alig has a website on which he bills himself as “Artist, Writer, Criminal.”
Patrick Waechter, part of the group that organized the petition on Change.org, emailed WEHOville.com (GayLifeLA.com’s sister website) to announce the petition.
“A number of concerned citizens, including myself, have come together to protest Mr. Alig’s appearance in our Los Angeles nightlife spaces,” Waechter wrote. “We do not believe that murder or any act of violence should be glamorized or normalized, and we believe that doing so will only harm our posterity. Should we continue to desensitize our impressionable youth to the nature of violence, we only stand to look back and wonder if we could have done something to stop it.
“I am not an especially conservative man. In fact, I’m quite the opposite. I do, however, value human life above all else, as I believe everyone else should Life is fleeting and amazing, and should not be taken for granted. Mr. Alig has no place in our safe spaces in Echo Park, in Los Angeles, or anywhere. If he is truly rehabilitated for his wrongdoings, then he should absolutely not be capitalizing upon the fame he has built by having his act of murder immortalized in film.
“We have created a petition to ask the promoter and venue to please remove Mr. Alig from the bill, in order to send a message to our community’s youth that we do not put violence on a pedestal. This party can still be a good time for those who are attending without normalizing a murderer.”
As of publication, the petition had garnered 341 signatures. GayLifeLA has reached out to Fuentes and will update this story if he chooses to respond.
