This past Memorial Day weekend, I attended the Annual Detroit Electronic Music Festival (DEMF).
While 2007 marks another year attendance at the DEMF required the purchase of admission, despite the festival's history of offering free admission, the scene inside retained its free spirit.

Upon my entrance into the event a representative from the Michigan Coalition For Compassionate Care, an advocacy group for medical marijuana, greeted me and invited my signature on a petition. The usual multi-stage arena pumped out house, ambient, techno, and fusion varieties. Local and regional hipsters gathered on a grassy knoll, adjacent to one stage, playing hacky sac and hanging out.

Upon approaching some of these young hipsters, I wondered what brought them to the festival and if they felt any serious commitment to radical or alternative politics. Here is what they had to say:

Jamie Zahorchak, 23 from Novi, explained she came for the music, to hang out with his friends, and to scope out "all kinds of people", their outfits, hairdos, and to meet them too. She identified herself with ravers and attested to care about gas prices and financial aid for education; adding that she was not in school currently for financial reasons.

Deniz Antapli, 19 from Milwaukee, said he came to dance. When asked if he identified with any social movements, he denied it. Later he expressed interest in pro-choice issues and Libertarianism. Deniz's friend, however, Jas Mchugh -19 from Ann Arbor- came for the music and said he "totally" identified with a social movement but said: "I wouldn't call it anything."
Jas named the war in Iraq and poverty as his social concerns.

Another festival attendant, twenty-seven year old Christie Childers from Warren, explained: "I come every year" to "hang out with friends...listen to some music." Christie took her son to the event last year. She named a party kids' raver movement as her social movement and named health care, education, gas prices, and "things that affect me, my family, and friends" as her issues of concern. Her final word? "I don't like too many social limits on what people can and can't do."