OH, THAT PESKY NONPROFIT INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX.
::::Coming This Summer:::: Agen(c)y: A QTPOC Cabaret on Nonprofit Dreams + Disasters
Curated by Devi
Does your boss want you to beg cops for a police brutality protest permit on your lunch break? Can no one at the staff meeting tell you why the mission statement language changed from “social justice” to “civic engagement?” Is your big queer longing to change the world buried under that overdue grant report to the Coors Foundation? You dream bigger than this. Tell it.
Check this site for the call for submissions or email us at agency[at]peacockrebellion.org for more info!
Queer and trans people of color are often low on the nonprofit hierarchy. We get pulled away from our tear-filled lunchtime venting sessions with nonprofit worker friends to get trotted out by management during funder visits so our organizations can seem “authentic” and community-based. Other times, we’re thrown into positions of leadership without the skills or support needed to survive a structure that was built to keep our communities from rising up—the “managed control of dissent” that Dylan Rodriguez describes in the INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence anthology The Revolution Will Not Be Funded. Too often, we reproduce the violence of the system. But our communities are re-defining social justice work as collective liberation work. Through what we do and how we do it, we’re rebelling harder than ever against violent systems. Peacock Rebellion wants to hear your stories of resilience: How are you surviving the nonprofit industrial complex? How are you dreaming and building alternatives to it? Yea, it's about venting, to validate folks' experiences and build community through shared experience. But it's also about dreaming alternatives and sharing strategies to build them. We hope every audience member leaves having shared and learned some specific ideas that they can implement in their lives. This show is an extension of the work and conversations that folx like Ella Baker and Grace Lee Boggs and groups of folx like INCITE!, Left Turn, Gay Shame, and tons of others have been in for years or decades...just in a performance format, and with some adjustments for this political/economic/environmental/etc. moment in hirstory. The call for submissions drops soon, so stay tuned!