There has been a lot of talk from Queer Burners: Toaster (me) about what this web site is meant to accomplish. There is a mission statement that anchors its meaning. At the 2012: Queer Burner Leadership Summit where there was a deliberate attempt to get Queer identified and Queer friendly camps to work together and support each other.
To rally our culture inside a community inside a city of like minded (BRC) to strengthen our participation by uniting and overcoming challenges that might come our way. Uniting Queer Burners for their creative and proactive efforts in the BRC and beyond the trash fence.
Our community does not end at a blue flag at the end of a dirt patch in the Black Rock desert. We are layers and layers of titles, identities and passions and aspirations that put something like this somewhere in the wide matrix of our individual lives.
That was the intent and at the beginning of 2012 there was an effort to start taking that a step further with Quire.
The Leadership Summit (QBLS)
In it’s first year there was a degree of success getting leaders to talk to each other and on some levels has sustained. Not everyone has opted into this network an no official membership has emerged to keep leaders active with each other with the exception of the Facebook page. That does get a lot of the cross-posting.
There is no reason why a bunch of people who are camping in the desert 7 days a year should sustain a network that:
- helps cross-promote community service events
- fund raisers
- member support
- individual and groups special projects
We are not those people. We have adopted a lifestyle based around the 10 principles and have merged that into a life of self expression that in some ways is different than many of our counterparts out there. (I will explain more about this, but trust me it is a perception*)
Quire
In the agenda for the QBLS this subject was listed as the “Queer Burner Fund, llc” and presented to the attendees as a proposal to create a legal entity that will let Queer Burners [dot] Com do new things. Those ‘things’ continue the points made above but also:
- create a window for funding artists connected to the community
- create a channel for a financed civic project
- sponsor and insure our own events
- create an emergency fund
Why do we need something like Quire for the above points? We can do all of these things without it, but creating a legal entity named Quire provides the community the ability to produce using a limited liability structure and a financial format that does not put an individual or persons at risk while working to do those things.
Quire also lives beyond an individual like me who would be trying to manage people, money and resources while hoping to avoid being sued if someone got hurt on any endeavor. That could have included the QBLS!!! If someone got hurt or food poisoning over lunch I could have been sued and there would have been nothing I could have done about it.
Quire, beyond the legal crap, is a good platform for Queer Burner leadership to engage. Use the web site (linked to Queer Burners [dot Com) to help cross promote and seek resources. Leaders will have a private registration with a lot of control on the data exchanged on the site.
Conclusion
There has been some (SOME) criticism against what this site is. It usually comes from people in the burner community that have not bothered to really engage what is here – OR – have no use for it. We invest in what we think is missing. From my point of view we have this world or amazing queer people unlike any other demographic that talk to each other 7 days a year.
At the Burning Man Leadership Summit this year I met three queer Regional Contacts with very different points of view on this project (queerburners.com). One was supportive but had a hard time grasping why this was ‘needed’. Another gave me the impression that I was just off the mark. The third was extremely supportive.
Fact is there are many queers who are burners; they blend in and engage the community as a whole feeling no different than the others. There are burners that are queers, loud and proud, and project life through EXTREME radical self expression.
Queer Burners Project (queerburners.com) is not unlike it’s own theme camp with a lot of couches and a posting board in the desert. We have leaders and followers. Since we are all over the world (literally!) and have leaders in all these places, let’s help each other along the way.
Quire allows for a network inside the Queer Burner structure to help with all those lovely points above and protects those who do. We as a community are still leaves on the branches of another community to the trunk of another.