Code of Conduct Meeting

SCHEDULER POLL (link)

Facilitator: Violet

Facilitator prep to-do

Meeting agenda

  • Attendance: Luna Jay Dylan Violet Desdemona Peach Maya Vivian

  • Setting roles

    • Facilitator

    • Note-taker

    • Stack-keeper

  • Re-centering exercise

  • Re-grounding in the mission statement

    • Violet: Do people want to participate in this group going forward? Is there a place for an open membership DJ organization like this, or is the model unsustainable at its core?

    • Jay: exercise in sustainable flat hierarchy — no junior/senior relationship. Opportunity to perform outside established clique. “Genius of a scene” - Brian Eno.

    • Peach: I am a newer artist, I noticed that the scene is cliquey. I like music and community around music. Extended community with diversity and different genres

    • Vivian: Flat hierarchy means different roles are flexible; opportunity to learn new roles.

    • Luna: I like that it’s an experiment in non-hierarchy. Having difficult conversations even when it’s not for material needs.

    • Desdemona: I’m autistic and queer and no one was giving me a shot anymore.

    • Jay: In a way more professional than the way things would work in another org. We have to be accountable to each-other because authority is more distributed and you can take flyering for granted

    • Peach: This has been a very communicative group comparatively

    • Dylan: Allows you to get out of it what you put into it.

    • Luna: I like that people are supportive even when playing wild and unpleasant music

    • Maya: I found the org because I just wanted to play music. I learned a lot. It isn’t the org or event I would make myself but I like that we all share decision-making.

    • Jensen: I just liked the idea — It’s something that’s needed where you can bring what you want to it. Like collision, a bunch of different people doing different things. I was in marching band and I like the feeling of being something bigger than you are

    • Violet: I’m comparing everything to the worst case scenario of being flooded with difficult people and the org failing

    • Maya: I’m thinking that we need more leadership structure

    • Jay: Pulling from Dyke Slumber Party - “Vetting is a form of community care about social contracts.” Learning rave duties (working door or other things) is the vetting process?

  • Update from Maya on fact-finding

    • Maya heard: “we didn’t approach the survivor appropriately”

    • Maya: we need to accept what people tell us. I think we’re on the right track but this is an informational dead end. I don’t know what happened and I can fix it for this person but all we can do is proceed with the code of conduct.

    • Violet: what is our standard going forward? Does one anonymous complaint stop the event?

    • Jay: We should have a point of contact for these complaints. We should have a robust code of conduct and a system to deal with it.

    • Luna: wanna talk about vetting, about trust. Organizational power should be allocated based on community trust. We should be intentional about how we hand out power.

    • Violet: So we put the impetus on the survivor to come forward?

    • Desdemona: In court systems the complainant has to be the directly affected person!

    • Maya: We can only act on what people say, we can only take people at their word. We are providing a service for people and we have to make a good effort to accommodate the people who come to our events. we need to be confident enough in our events that when someone has an issue, it’s part of a process and not a condemnation of the whole thing

    • Jay: that’s where the social contract comes in. If we have trust in our systems then people will use them. This is new and the community doesn’t have experience with us, we need to build trust. Draw from kink event organizers in the scene, follow what they are doing.

    • Maya: If someone is harassing people at the venue, do you throw them out immediately? What’s the process? Safety event people? Or is that policing which is bad.

    • Luna: I think the case Maya proposed is different because it’s immediate and in the space with a stranger.

    • Maya: We need to plan for that type of situation too.

    • Jay: Person with hi-viz vest that says “SAFETY”

  • What to do about this specific case

    • Desdemona: I want to talk about what to do with me so I can figure out what investment to have

    • Luna: I want to build trust with Desdemona in community. I want to gather more information and have Des in community without putting her in positions of power

    • Desdemona: Is performing a position of power? I don’t know what information other people have

    • Luna: I know you from <several interactions>

    • Desdemona: Her experience with Cleaner Tapes and other personal stories

    • Maya: Questioning the entanglement of sex and music and music organizations

    • Desdemona: Cleaner Tapes started as a sex toy brand!! I don’t seek out people to have sex with at shows I go there for music.

    • Jay: Mixing performers + drugs + sex can be a dangerous combination. Again we should draw from kink event organizers. More structure is better

    • Maya: Music + sex + drugs is complicated, I also dabbled on Samhain. Need to approach it from the power imbalance perspective like you can’t approach people while you’re working. I think the safety staff at events should commit to be sober.

    • Jay: I agree we should have sober safety staff with vests. The expectation should be that you should be aware of your visibility and position within building community trust.

    • Luna: There’s a huge difference between attending a party and throwing a party. You are “at work” in a lot of ways. It’s reasonable expectation.

    • Dylan: we’re veering off topic. We should have a response for Des.

    • Violet: What was your experience with leaving Cleaner Tapes?

    • Dylan: My own experience being a small business owner in a sketchy industry

    • Desdemona: I am not welcome at Cleaner Tapes shows

    • Violet: going back and forth trying to figure out how the Cleaner Tapes relationship ended up

    • Dylan: Trying to separate the cleaner tapes thing from this discussion.

    • Jay: This is a great trial run for running something “anti-clique” - if Des is event staff then we hold her accountable to the rules that we write here.

    • Desdemona: I don’t want to book shows I just want to hang out and occasionally play shows

    • Violet: Proposal!!

      • Write out tiered org structure

      • Delay booking Des until some future date

        • Skip being booked for next event (to help build community trust), volunteer for one event, then vet Des with our policies after that

    • Maya: set a date for follow-up meeting in 2 weeks??

      • We should have a rough draft of doc by then

      • Luna takes point: running scheduling poll, hosting and planning code of conduct meeting

    • Luna: what if we held community meetings in the future to get feedback?

      • Des: We should use conflict bowl for that!


  • Discuss the draft code of conduct (did not make it this far)

    • Vetting process for joining

    • Leadership structure

    • Interpersonal rules and consequences