#39 __ the protest

On my seventh day of protesting, I decided to take it easy and go to a drum circle. I was low on energy but felt it was important to show up on Juneteenth. It was the first time I’d heard live music since the beginning of quarantine — nearly 110 days — and it was pure catharsis. In the endless cycles of the drums, I heard the echoes of techno and house. I danced idly on the grass while talking with friends, pausing at times to chant for Breonna Taylor and echo the refrain of this uprising: No Justice, No Peace. It was a time to process and reflect on a month of fury and anguish.

After months of stasis under quarantine, the Brooklyn rave community has activated — quite literally overnight — to demand justice for Black lives. Every day on the streets, I’ve spontaneously encountered dozens of ravers. Social media has become a deluge of information, support, and outrage throughout the community. DJs, producers, and dancers that had never before taken a political stance were suddenly in the thick of it — marching, chanting, making signs, organizing, and putting their bodies on the line. It’s already a running joke: “are you going out?” has suddenly resurfaced in our conversations as we plan our next move on the streets.

The overlap is more than superficial; protests and parties have much in common. Big, noisy crowds that have to keep moving. Managing the energy and tone of the group by keeping spirits up as people tire out. Moderating tension with agitators. Working in legal gray areas that generate potential conflict with the police. Even just preparing for the protest feels eerily reminiscent of pre-rave rituals. The intentions might be different, but the behaviors that make a successful and invigorating protest are all familiar to us.

But why has this particular movement captured our community so thoroughly?

It begins, as all things do, with history: this culture is fundamentally Black. The story of house and techno (and so many other genres) is one of Black celebration. It is the continuance of Black traditions that extend all the way back to Africa and the Caribbean. Many people, including veterans of the scene, don’t know this history; it has been the tireless work of so many warriors in our community to reclaim these truths and spread that knowledge.

This history defines the music’s relationship to the law. As sources of Black and queer joy, the law has always been hostile to the dance floor. Combined with the pressure from the war on drugs, the party often finds itself on legally dubious ground. Under these circumstances, to experience the rave at its fullest potential requires some comfort outside the boundaries of the law.

As a result, the Brooklyn rave community has already been learning and practicing many of the fundamentals of police abolition: mutual aid, community self-accountability, and harm reduction. One of the first rules of the rave is that we never, ever call the cops. We know how dangerous they are, and we know that their presence is a threat not just to the party, but to the many marginalized people that seek shelter on the dance floor. We handle our own problems — imperfectly, with so much left to improve on — but better than the police ever could. We take care of each other — not nearly as well as we should, but the pandemic has seen an explosion of mutual aid networks throughout the community.

In the past, I often wondered if we were deluding ourselves when we took life lessons away from the rave. The cynic in me said it was just sugarcoating our hedonism. Maybe that’s still true. But every day I am thrilled by what I see happening in my community. We are learning, growing, evolving into something deeper and stronger than we ever were before. I see a hundred activists out on the street, fighting for a better world. That’s the true spirit of techno.

Thank you so much for reading.

See also:

• #26 __ queerness
• #11 __ hedonism
• #10 __ community

If you’d like to explore or discuss this with others in the community, come join the raveNY Slack group.