Sharon Cheslow

GoFundMe launched for DC punk icon Sharon Cheslow (Chalk Circle, etc)

A GoFundMe has been launched to help influential DC punk icon Sharon Cheslow, who is suffering from “severe health challenges due to acute PTSD,” with medical bills. The campaign was launched by Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker, Bratmobile’s Molly Neuman, and Julia Holter, and Corin Tucker, Julia Holter, and Sharon Cheslow are promising to release a collaborative song if the $20,000 goal is reached. As of this post, they’ve raised over $11,000. Here’s the GoFundMe description:

Sharon Cheslow is an artist, musician, songwriter, educator, archivist and feminist warrior whose work and support have been a critical source of inspiration to many musicians and bands, namely those connected to Riot Grrrl such as Sleater-Kinney, Bratmobile, Bikini Kill and others. Sharon is a wonderful, kind, loving and generous person who has been struggling with severe health challenges due to acute PTSD and is still in treatment/recovery. Her condition is debilitating. She is currently only working part-time in Los Angeles, resulting in extreme financial hardship. In the past year, she was awarded emergency financial assistance grants from New York Foundation for the Arts, MusiCares, Musicians Foundation, and Carnegie Fund for Authors. The help from these different organizations has expired, and funds have run out. All other resources have been explored. Her situation is precarious, and she is at risk of losing her rent-controlled apartment where she has resided for 13 years. She is currently receiving free therapy and medical services through Medi-Cal. Because of this, we have organized this campaign to raise funds to help her get enough breathing room to consider what her next steps might be.

If you might be in a position to support Sharon, it would be very meaningful to her and those who love her. As a celebration of successful completion of this campaign, Sharon, Corin Tucker, and Julia Holter are planning to collaborate on and record a song to share with this community of support. An expression of healing and release.

Information on Sharon’s creative work can be found here:
www.sharoncheslow.com

Many thanks for your consideration.
Molly Neuman, Corin Tucker, Julia Holter

If you’re unfamiliar, Sharon Cheslow has been involved in countless important and influential projects over the years. She was a guitarist/vocalist in the short-lived DC post-punk group Chalk Circle, who were only around briefly from 1981 to 1983 and only played four shows total, but proved very influential on the development of riot grrrl (and their legacy got a boost with the 2011 compilation Reflection). She was also in Bloody Mannequin Orchestra (with future members of Dag Nasty), Suture (with Kathleen Hanna), Red Eye (with Tim Green of Nation of Ulysses), and more. In the 1980s, she started the fanzines If This Goes On and Interrobang?!, the latter of which famously included a list of women in punk from 1975-1980. She also compiled the 1988 book Banned In DC with Cynthia Connolly and Leslie Clague, and in 2008, she published the book, Interrobang?! Anthology on Music and Family. She has been active in recent years too, and recorded a few collaborations with the aforementioned Julia Holter in the late 2000s/early 2010s.

Those are just a few of her many accomplishments — you can read more about Sharon and her work, and hear some of her music here. And if you’d like to help, you can donate to the GoFundMe here.

https://twitter.com/corintuckerband/status/1182848993195376640