UPDATE - ACTION ALERT: Ask the House to Vote NOW on the RESTART Act for Live Entertainment Industry Relief

NAMM is issuing an urgent call-to-action to all industry professionals to urge House leadership to bring H.R. 7481, the bipartisan RESTART Act, to the floor of the House for a vote. The bill would provide provisions for the hardest-hit businesses to access additional PPP funds, long term, low-interest loans, and supplemental unemployment insurance to assist the hundreds of thousands of creative industry service workers impacted by the pandemic.

Contact your Member of Congress NOW

Michael T. Strickland of Bandit Lites states, “The Live Event Industry has been at zero revenue since March 13, 2020 and will be until 2021. It is imperative that Congress take action to support decimated industries like live events. There is simply no time and no method aside from passing the next relief bill with the RESTART Act language. We must all ask of our Members of Congress and Senators to do the right thing and save small businesses that will fail. This is our D-Day.”

The call-to-action coincides with #RedAlertRESTART, a global campaign that took place on Tuesday, September 1, 2020. The event saw thousands of buildings across the U.S. lit in red to raise public awareness of the impact of COVID on the live events industry. Earlier this year, a study from PLSN magazine indicated that 77% of professionals in the space have ­­­lost 100% of their income; 96% of companies have cut their staff;, and 97% of independent contractors (1099) have lost their jobs.

“It is vitally important that music and event professionals and others with concerns for people who work in this area contact Members in the US House of Representatives and urgently push for an ‘up or down’ vote on RESTART,” states Mary Luehrsen, NAMM’s director of public affairs and government relations. “The time is now to move this legislation forward to support the livelihood of tens of thousands of people impacted in this creative industry.”

NAMM encourages live event businesses and professionals to add their voice in support of relief by contacting their representatives to provide targeted COVID-19 business relief for live event businesses and individual professionals. A letter generator is available here: https://app.govpredict.com/portal/grassroots/campaigns/ct0mb0t6/take_action

Since March, NAMM has advocated for all facets of the industry for COVID-19 business relief and, in conjunction with this, offered a series of webinars, tools, and other resources to support COVID-19 recovery. View those resources here: https://ww1.namm.org/issues-and-advocacy/covid-19-updates-and-resources-business