Learn from Canada

The Sundance Film Festival has announced that they’ll be leaving Park City, UT for Boulder, CO, beginning 2027. The festival organizers, including Robert Redford, are being pretty circumspect about the reasons, probably because they’ll need the cooperation of Park City for the January, 2026 festival. The chair of the institute denied that they were leaving Utah, though the institute did turn down cash and tax incentives from Cincinnati, Park City and Salt Lake City.

Sundance announced the move the same day that Utah Governor Spencer Cox, in a typically Republican act of courage, said that he’d let an anti-gay bill become law without his signature. SB77 bans the display of pride flags and other associated symbols in government buildings, including schools.

Still, Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall, a Democrat in that blue dot, has already voiced her concern over the anti-gay ban. The bill’s sponsor didn’t seem worried about losing over $100 million, yearly, for the Utah economy:

Sundance should have just pulled out if the wanted to make a statement. Nobody should be attending Sundance, SXSW or any other festival in a red state. I hope attendance will be down at all of these festivals. Blue states have plenty of music and film festivals, sporting events and other tourist draws — there’s no need to send money to haters.

Canada is doing an exceptionally good job boycotting US tourism, with demand for flights from Canada to the US down 70%. Since many of our National Parks might be unpleasant destinations this Summer due to DOGE cuts, and many of them are in red states, there might be some natural boycotting going on, though I haven’t seen any specific boycotts announced.

And, yeah, I get it that people are boycott-skeptical or boycott-numb, but there are a lot of easy discretionary spending changes to make that aren’t sacrifices. Don’t buy red state liquor, beer or wine (this can be a fun chance to try blue state producers). Don’t plan leisure trips to red state destinations. Those are just a few easy things that anyone with discretionary cash can do to send a message to people like Utah State Sen. Trevor Lee.