Our principles
We are abolitionists, transparent, compassionate, and hella queer. These are not just slogans—they are the living, breathing commitments that shape every event we organize, every relationship we build, and every decision we make within our collective. They guide us as we create spaces for Palestinian art, queer joy, and collective liberation.
We Are Abolitionist
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Our Commitment: We work toward a world without prisons, policing, and all carceral systems of punishment, control, and hierarchy. We believe in building community-based solutions that address harm through accountability, transformation, and healing.
In Our Practice: This means we actively dismantle top-down leadership within our own collective. We share power, rotate responsibilities, and make decisions together. We reject the "non-profit industrial complex" grind culture that burns people out. When conflict or harm arises, we seek transformative justice processes, not punitive measures.
We Are Transparent
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Our Commitment: We operate with radical honesty and openness in our processes, finances, and decision-making. We believe that transparency builds trust, fosters collective ownership, and holds us accountable to our community.
In Our Practice: We use shared documents for our budgets and meeting notes. We communicate the "why" behind major decisions. We are clear about our capacities, our challenges, and where we are learning. This openness is how we practice integrity and invite others to build with us.
We Are Compassionate
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Our Commitment: We center care, patience, and mutual aid as essential, radical political acts. We recognize the full humanity of each member, honor individual capacity, and prioritize our collective well-being over productivity.
In Our Practice: We have clear community care agreements and actively check in on each other. We design sustainable workloads and say "no" to projects that would require martyrdom. We view our collective not as a machine, but as an ecosystem that must be nurtured and cared for to thrive.
We Are Hella Queer
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Our Commitment: We celebrate queer and trans life as a central, joyful, and transformative force. We actively challenge cis-hetero norms, binaries, and patriarchy in our art, our event spaces, and our internal structures.
In Our Practice: We platform and center LGBTQIA+ artists, storytellers, and voices. We use gender-inclusive language and ensure our events are safe, celebratory spaces for queer community. Being "hella queer" is both a political stance and a practice of creating the vibrant, liberated futures we imagine.
Living Our Values: The Pod Model
To put these principles into daily practice, we are building a Pod Model of distributed leadership. Instead of a single director, our work is sustained by functional pods—like Care & Capacity, Operations, Communications, and Artistic Programming. This structure actively embodies our abolitionist and transparent values by sharing power and making our work visible.
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