The timeline of events preceding the cancellation of Sanctuary’s NYE event was pretty damn predictable. Announce an event for the future and bank on enough people wishing COVID somehow will resolve itself before January 1st in this the year of our Dolly 2021 to buy tickets to an in person party with 84 other people at the Greater New Hope Church of God in Christ. Announce a reduction in capacity and then days later announce the event is cancelled. Issue refunds. Use upcoming event as fundraising/promotional focal point in the meantime.
Why not take it virtual and stream the show for donations? You’re providing something of value, right? Why try to plan an in person event at all considering the facts of the reality we are living in right now? There was never any indication things were getting better or going to get better. Was there ever any realistic intention of having an in person event? Queer folks are more likely than other to work low wage public facing jobs. Why would we risk our health even more when a lot of us are traumatized by the most routine of medical care?
You have to have some kind of activity going on or coming up though in order to … be … an organization, and to solicit donations. Having social media accounts and stating you have a safe space opening up don’t constitute really anything. Not giving any specifics about what this space is going to offer (programming, support groups, game nights, pie making classes, literally anything?) doesn’t help to support a claim that another social justice project has taken place or will happen.
But let’s just back it up to the donations part period. Just in concept. The idea of “donating” to an organization that helps other people is not valid. The way we frame giving a person or group of persons money for “nothing in return” completely alienates us from people who need that money. If I am giving you money or goods that makes you a person who needs help and me a person who doesn’t and allows me to fool myself into thinking we are never what we really are which is just people in different material circumstances.
When I aid somebody, whether that is through Venmo or feeding them or furnishing them with goods, etc, it is easier to realize that I am just a good actor in this relationship with another person. I was in relationship to this person before I became aware of their existence or of their need but now that I am aware of them and their needs I can act or not in response to that.
What I am definitely not doing when I am aiding somebody is sending money to a pool in a bank account for “donations” that sits there until the organization decides who gets it and for what and when. When you frame direct aid (mutual is not a requirement) this way we see that most fundraising organizations are just people who have passwords and a social media presence that generates money for them. They will also perform some work outside of getting aid to people who need it, mostly administrative work generated by the funding they receive.
There is definitely a desired purpose in anonymizing financial transactions between people aiding and people getting aid. There are also already hundreds if not thousands of apps that perform this function safely and for free. They’re all constantly vying for our attention on other apps, even our money transfer apps. So why then is there the go-between? It doesn’t make sense, logistically or financially.
This is all of course assuming that there are no bad actors in these exchanges. You might think that being in the “public eye” would keep folks honest about what they are doing with the money you sent them for that rally or event but the desire to maintain “harmony” in our communities curtails people knowing the truth. That very same mechanism that we would think encourages transparency, exposure to the public, is actually what motivates organizers to cover up other “activists” misdeeds. In a state where human rights are constantly coming under attack, a great fear is that exposing wrongdoing among us will only give support to those who say we are morally inferior because we are queer or Mexican or disabled. We have all been accused of “giving ammunition” to the other side if we expose ways marginalized people harm each other.
The entire idea that this is a war between marginalized people and what we are told are mainstream normal people is at the root of why we get stuck. There is no moral ammunition for what we need to accomplish in our lifetimes. We need to get rid of the idea that success for marginalized people looks like acceptance from the apex predator class or subduing them. While physical threats to oppressed peoples are very real I believe the way we will get around these obstacles is through real and radical transparency.
What if when somebody was entrusted with funds for a large scale event and they went missing after an argument in the group that group made an announcement with the information that they had and asked for feedback on what community stakeholders want to be done? What if when somebody “misplaces” funds entrusted to them for the interim of a yearly event we announced that so they didn’t go on to hold other positions of public trust?
What if when allegations of racism are made right before an election for grant funded board positions somebody brings it up during the election meeting? What if we didn’t all act like everything was fine when 15 people none of us had ever seen at a Pride meeting came into the room to vote their friends in?
What if when an organization only mentions publicly that there are board elections at all less than two weeks from those elections, those members are replaced by an interim committee selected at each election? What if we had to have election contingency plans and guidelines before accepting any more funding?
What we have instead in Chattanooga are fundraising and drag show marketing apparatuses. After trans people and people of color showed up to do the nitty gritty work for up to a decade each, trans people got a social media post on TDOR. I’m going to guess prompted by someone having to ask them if they were going to do anything on TDOR.
Transgender Day of Remembrance is another topic for another time.
If you’re with me this far I truly thank you for reading. I’m waiting on the government or my job to send me some extra money they owe me and then I can purchase the podcast microphone on my Amazon wishlist. At that time, these rants are gonna be more frequent and MUCH longer. Just ask Elliott.
Queer Pandemic 