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JackTheBandit  ·  2784 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Who else went to Burning Man? 1st Time Burner AMA

Yea, that's so cool! My partner was volunteering at Playa Info. But yea, I met the founder of POC Camp at the end of my 1st burn last year. At that moment, I decided to help build actual infrastructure for the camp (it was just 4 people or less for the past 4 years.)

Basically, POC Camp is a lil sister/brother camp to Que Viva! Camp "Our camp is called Que Viva! camp, is dedicated to social change, both off and on the Playa, bringing artists, activists and issues like immigration and racial justice to the playa in a celebratory, magical, Burning Man way."

The founder of POC Camp wanted a place for activist minded activities / workshops and play. I wanted to moreso build a space where POC on playa can gather and find each other in an obvious way. Our ideas don't really conflict each other and we had a camp of 16 people this year, which is 4x anything done before.

We tested 2 workshops: Whine and Wine, a forum for non-poc to ask questions that'd be deemed inappropriate or insensitive over Wine (pretty successful.) and Soul Force: Why Black People are Magic, an exploration of black activists history in America (turned into an explanation session about why America cant give up guns to an Australian man.) Other than that, we were burning like everyone else and it was a great time.

Half the camp were burgins and all want to come again next year. I also noticed this year that more people of color were at the burn than my 1st. Non-people of color response to the camp was interesting. Some sensitive people felt they were somehow excluded even though almost 1/3 of the camp was non-poc. One of our burgins, that was trying to bring more people in for Whine and Wine, was told to go home because of the topic. Interesting behavior. This year there was an incident where a long time (10+) and one few black Rangers was tackled by a Pershing County Officer while diffusing a situation started by a jackass in DPW.