06/22/22 community meeting recap

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“These kinds of discussions are always slightly uncomfortable and always worth it”. I think that Zena Bibler said that, someone correct me if I’m wrong. This was my favorite quote from last week’s community meeting. Thanks to everyone who came - in attendance we had around 25 people, 1 baby,  2 dogs, and so much delicious food. We kept playing music inside for those who weren’t up for a discussion, and encouraged everyone to come in and out of the meeting as needed, to take care of babies/dogs/refill their plates. Our first discussion question was talked about in pairs first, then we opened up to the entire group: what is a community? Here are a few of the answers I grabbed, please write us if yours is distinct from these and missing!

  • Commitment to a higher purpose - a common cause

  • Being seen and heard

  • Creative environment

  • Shared belief systems/values

  • Accountability that is not transactional

  • Non-hierarchical

  • Open & able to change

  • Looking out for each other - feeling supported

Next I asked whether or not people felt Oxygen is a community - the answer was a resounding yes, with Paul noting that he felt that community is not necessarily a binary “yes” or “no” question. Rose said that “Oxygen has a similar heartbeat as it did 10 years ago”, which is what makes her feel like it is a community.

We next discussed COVID protocols - should we still require vaccines? Should we require a booster - if so, when? Do we need any other measures in place? I asked people to be willing to share their opinion even if they felt it would be going against the majority opinion, and that it was important for us (as a community) to build our resiliency with discussing difficult issues and disagreeing with each other. Justine posed that the vaccines are good for personal protection but don’t seem to help much with transmission - so if we were interested in protecting each other, we might consider masks. Dong Sung said that masks aren’t very effective when our faces are touching each other, and that vaccinated people are 3-4x less likely to transmit the virus.  Testing would be the best way to monitor & reduce transmission, but they are too expensive to provide this for everyone. Sriram detailed a medical conference he recently attended, with thousands of doctors - 1 in 5 got infected. There have been fairly big outbreaks at several recent tango festivals as well.  A couple people stated that they feel that contracting the virus is no longer avoidable. Several people noted that we are in a less serious situation than we were two years ago, or even last year. I pointed out that we need to keep in mind that this is not true for everyone - we have several community members who have not yet returned to dance because they feel it too risky to do so. Are there measures we could take that would allow these folks to be included? We did not come to any conclusions about this yet. 

So far Oxygen has avoided a major outbreak that we can trace to our events directly - around 3-4 weeks ago, we had to send our first contact-tracing emails because 4 community members all tested positive within a couple weeks of each other, but not at the same event. It’s unclear if this was because of contact at Oxygen, as there was & is so much community transmission. Dave asked if there were folks who would stop coming if we stopped requiring vaccines; only a handful raised their hands, but no one was willing to officially propose that we stop requiring them. We also received several emails from folks not at the meeting that feel strongly that we should still require them. If you were not at the meeting  - write to us and tell us what you think about Oxygen’s protocols. If you are not dancing with us because it’s too risky - is there anything we could put in place that would allow you to feel safe dancing again? We might not be able to accommodate the request but please let us know so we can brainstorm. 

I had on our agenda to discuss Oxygen’s commitment to slowly creating an anti-racist dance space, including reviewing what has been done and what we need to do next, but deciced to save this for the next meeting as there was some fatigue after the COVID discussion. 

We closed out the meeting with a brainstorming/dreaming session - what kinds of events would people like to see at Oxygen. Here’s the suggestions I captured, please write me if I missed yours. And also write us if you are particularly excited about any of these ideas (and excited about helping to coordinate them), or have some of your own.

  • “Oxygen in the wild” - group trips to other milongas

  • Community art project: mural painting, poetry reading, talent show, 5 min of talking about what you love. Could be part of the next community meeting?

  • Headshots of people in the space, to put names to faces

  • Birthday dances - each week or month we have a tanda for everyone who had a birthday

  • Quarterly meeting - ice breaker, getting to know you

  • Mixer tanda in the middle of practica

  • Cheers theme song cortina

  • Groundhog day practica - same song, different orchestra

Patricia made a fantastic offer to the group - she will bike with you to any Oxygen event and bike with you home. Please email her at patricia@upla.studio 

Nicole Smith emailed me with these words to share at the meeting on her behalf:

"While I am not able to attend tonight, I want to say that I am grateful that Oxygen Tango exists as a studio, as a community, as a movement. I am glad that you chose part of your home in my hometown of Inglewood. I know the last two years have not been easy, and I know that you all did the work. And I can’t wait to see it further blossom when I return. I miss you guys very much."

Please join us for our next meeting on September 24th.