O-Positive Fest Raised The
Cost Of Living In Kingston :(
Save the date: Saturday, October 11, 2025 from 12:00 - 4:00PM EST
(with a rain date of Sunday, October 12)
Contact us ASAP to offering FREE food or wellness!
Scroll further down to read our 2025 letter to O+ leadership!
First things first: what the heck is O-Positive? As with so many of our awareness campaigns - if you don't already know, don't even worry about it. So many of the harmful offerings across the 845 are things that low income and working class people aren't supposed to be a part of and are offerings that could not matter less to us, so please don't feel excluded or like O+ is worth you learning about. You can read about O+ here if called, but our interpretation is that they are an arts festival for tourists whose harm is outweighing their good intentions.
This yearly artwashing festival was founded by & is stewarded by primarily non locals who moved in Kingston NY - a city that is one of the most impacted by the gentrification & housing crisis in the Hudson Valley. While O+ uses buzzwords like "local", "community" and "radical care", they consistently market the festival to primarily tourists while not giving those visiting the area any educational materials around the housing crisis or local mutual aid efforts. O+ also has a history of inviting mostly non-local artists to participate as muralist or performers while so many lifelong locals yearn to feel heard. A lot of locals who have been a part have said that no one came to their performances or shows because tourists didn't know the locals, and full time locals avoid O+ entirely because of the cost or the crowds. The focus on catering to visitors creates a pipeline: tourists become transplants and/or landlords > these folks ultimately price out and displace the culture bearers who were here before.
O+ does offer an exchange of sorts, but what determines who O+ chooses to include? Chosen O+ participants are granted 1 healthcare service in exchange for being a part. Why are the barriers to apply? Why include non-locals at all when the people who live year all year long are struggling? Why won't O+ invest in the long term health of local creatives? What is the criteria to be chosen? And why make any artist "work" for healthcare when O+ has a huge annual budget (~$600,000 to be exact, primarily funded by millionaire Peter Buffett through the NoVo Foundation) (and a reminder that we at Celebrate845 have ZERO annual budget and yet we continue to prioritize paying artists and offering free and accessible programming and resources for impacted people all year long)?
O+ sadly seems to have ego holding them back and the founder, Joe Concra, said to us on a Zoom call once "if folks get the wrong idea, we can't control that".
But they can control how they are using their platform by doing things like:
- Help spread the word about the Hudson Valley Housing Crisis to visitors
- Consistently show up to local BIPOC led efforts on the ground across the 845
- Stop ignoring our asks for funds that directly pay local impacted artists or help our houseless neighbors get what they need (like our Hydration Stations)
- Stop perpetuating cycles of oppression via the arts, stop artwashing Kingston, and stop working with landlords on mural projects to raise their property values, thereby raising the cost of living and displacing longtime locals. Acknowledge your role in the greater 845 ecosystem and start repairing the harm caused so folks can live here long term with dignity.
- Incorporate accessibility and COVID safety mitigations into their offerings year round. As an org who supposedly centers wellness, ignoring these just don't make sense. Already marginalized populations have been hit hardest by COVID and Long COVID, and many people/artists do not have access to healthcare.
This is our ask. We're rooting for O+ old guard to unlearn and step up, to be better or to get out of the way, and to give up their power and resources to impacted folks who are from here and strive for liberation for all. If you know someone connected to O+, call them in and show them this campaign.
Use and search our hashtag #OPositiveFestRaisedTheCostOfLivingInKingston !
Community Day
Every year since 2022, we've hosted a Community Day during the O+ Festival Weekend! Our counter-offering is:
- A public, completely free for the public to attend and held at a public space that centers art, music, and wellness for ALL people while prioritizing moving resources to our most impacted neighbors
- Accessible via public transportation (via the UCAT bus in Ulster County)
- Completely outdoors to honor those still acknowledging the continued pandemic and other airborne illnesses
We intentionally include things like:
- Collaborative community mural making for all ages and abilities
- An all day open mic open and karaoke station for any low income, marginalized, Hudson Valley creatives to participate in via live performance
- Free food and groceries from local sources
- Free wellness offerings such as body work, tarot, and astrology
- Free harm reduction supplies such as Narcan/training, face masks, and fentanyl test strips
- Community resources such as affordable food maps, legal services, free clothing and wares, and other local wellness opportunities
2024 update:
BIG THANKS to everyone who helped keep mutual aid alive & well, even in the rain.
While O+ uses buzzwords like "local", "community" and "radical care", folks on the streets consistently name that the crowd drawn in is ignorant & unsafe. O+ markets to primarily tourists while not giving them any educational materials around the housing crisis or local mutual aid efforts. The focus on catering to visitors creates a pipeline: tourists become transplants & landlords who ultimately price out & displace people.
This year, O+ tried having the City of Kingston shut us down by booking the public park. We've been holding Community Day at Academy Green Park since 2022 to offer truly accessible art, music, & wellness to people in Kingston- a place experiencing nationally known gentrification & displacement. We did this during O+, who STILL refuses to name these plagues, is silent about Palestine, is a super spreader event, & so much more. We showed up anyway & gave away FREE food maps, resource zines, hygiene kits, food, hot tea, clothes, umbrellas, herbs & more despite the rain. O+ claimed that an artist specifically requested to utilize the park, but did that artist's performance timeslot have to overlap with our event? And how did the City of Kingston Parks employee who reached out to us hear about our event, and why wouldn't they share the public event that was booked during ours?
While O+ uses buzzwords like "local", "community" and "radical care", folks on the streets consistently name that the crowd drawn in is ignorant & unsafe. O+ markets to primarily tourists while not giving them any educational materials around the housing crisis or local mutual aid efforts. The focus on catering to visitors creates a pipeline: tourists become transplants & landlords who ultimately price out & displace people.
This year, O+ tried having the City of Kingston shut us down by booking the public park. We've been holding Community Day at Academy Green Park since 2022 to offer truly accessible art, music, & wellness to people in Kingston- a place experiencing nationally known gentrification & displacement. We did this during O+, who STILL refuses to name these plagues, is silent about Palestine, is a super spreader event, & so much more. We showed up anyway & gave away FREE food maps, resource zines, hygiene kits, food, hot tea, clothes, umbrellas, herbs & more despite the rain. O+ claimed that an artist specifically requested to utilize the park, but did that artist's performance timeslot have to overlap with our event? And how did the City of Kingston Parks employee who reached out to us hear about our event, and why wouldn't they share the public event that was booked during ours?
2025 update:
We sent the following letter to O+ Founder, Joe Concra, and the O+ Info and Comms emails. We'll update this page if and when we hear anything back. In the meantime, please save the date for Community Day and make an offering if you can. We hope that O+ does not mobilize local police towards a park where many already at-risk neighbors spend time.
"To whom it may concern,
This letter comes from a small collective of lifetime local voices through the vessel of Celebrate845. We send it with firm confidence but also in good faith and hope our words are heard, heeded, and helpful.
Your impact on gentrification: we ask that O Positive please take a more proactive approach during their festival this year to inform visitors about the gentrification crisis happening in the Hudson Valley and specifically in Kingston. For info about the crisis, click here (articles at the bottom of the page). Since O+ primarily caters to tourists, you have the opportunity and responsibility in our opinion to educate newcomers and to help locals get their needs met instead of encouraging extraction, gentrification, and ultimately displacement. Your being proactive can look many different ways, but here are a few suggestions:
- Amplify calls to action at every single venue from groups led by longtime locals such as Wednesday Walks for Black Lives, Rise Up Kingston, Unity Delivered, Celebrate845, etc.
- Resource sharing at venues: this could include printing copies of our Resource Guide zine, which links to a larger resource document that highlights things that many of us need, such as year round legal aid for tenants, affordable food and wellness resources, warming/cooling centers, and much more
- Local mutual aid efforts: happy to provide some to uplift that center lifelong locals
- Affordable food maps
- Acting as a cooling center on hot days, or providing info on how folks can support cooling centers or support cold water distributions for folks with nowhere to go when it's above 90 degrees (an effort that O+ can also donate to, as we distribute uptown right near your space)
- Offering free wifi to the public and being a public restroom to non patrons
- Amplifying our Free PPE hubs, as COVID is still disabling folks daily
COVID safety, accessibility, and your role in mass disablement: like it or not, O+ is contributing to mass disablement via having zero COVID safety mitigations at your offerings. As an org who supposedly centers wellness, we urge you to learn more about COVID and Long COVID, as both impact the most marginalized populations among us - artists included. Your complicancy is directly harming people in Kingston and beyond, as 1 in 10 people get disabled Long COVID. While it would be short notice, we are happy to act as paid consultants and get you safety tools for your venues and offerings. If you have chosen to ignore the ongoing state of COVID in the U.S., here is our comprehensive resource with zines, articles, books, podcasts, etc. We urge you to inform yourselves and start protecting creatives ASAP. In the future, we also urge you to hire us as paid accessibility consultants, as the lack of accessibility information available is deplorable, hurtful, and exclusive.
Academy Green Park: we intend to utilize Academy Green Park on Saturday, October 11 with a rain date of Sunday, October 12 for our annual Community Day from 12-4PM, where we offer art, music, and wellness to impacted folks who frequent the park year-round whom we have built relationships with. We are asking you to not hold any O+ programming at this location on these days during this timeframe. We are also asking that you do not tattle to any City officials OR tattle to local law enforcement in an effort to shut down our offering. We ask this in good faith and with the safety and comfort of our more impacted neighbors in mind, as you have the resources to utilize other locations and as such behavior puts the wellness of our neighbors directly at risk. Please honor the people who frequent this park and please do not attempt to punish any of us using carcerality.
Please confirm that this letter has been received. If we do not hear anything back from you by Tuesday, September 9, we intend to release this letter publicly on our social media and to some press allies in an effort to keep our requests transparent and our safety monitored by our community allies. We hope you are able to see this as an opportunity to move with integrity and we invite you to use your time and resources to step up to these potential challenges."
Want to offer something at our 2025 community day? Please contact us! Offerings should center arts, music, and wellness and should center the well being of those most impacted in our community, specifically in Kingston (but all are welcome!). If we can do anything to make our events more accessible, please let us know as we would love to accommodate.
