Maureen’s reading has been updated to October 17 at 7:00 pm.

Dear Friends,

Your DAISSI board has continued to meet and to plan in light of the latest information about COVID-19 and in particular the guidance and orders from our public health officials.  We express our profound gratitude for all of our essential workers in our community and across the region: our first responders, our grocery store employees and pharmacists, cleaners and house and yard workers for seniors/elders, community care givers, and the staffs of medical clinics and hospitals, and others.  With all of you, we also give thanks for the good work our communities have been doing to “flatten the curve”, which saves lives and brings nearer that eagerly-awaited day when we are able to gather together once again.

As a society, we are working on your behalf to plan, to adapt, and to continue to operate with these changing circumstances in a way which is responsible and positive.  As part of that, we know it is not appropriate for us to use DAISSI resources to try to plan a Pride Festival this Summer as we had hoped.  The level of uncertainty about whether we would be able to gather at all is simply too high, and beyond that vendors and performers are faced with their own uncertainty and difficulty that means making commitments is impossible.  While we hope that physical distancing and other interventions are relaxed by this Summer, we cannot today plan a Pride Festival.
We have been proactively responding to the changing circumstances as new information is available to us, and will continue to do so on your behalf.  We will do everything we can to be able to gather to celebrate Pride in some form as a community if we can this year. We don’t yet know when that will be, or what form it might take.  We are also trying to use this time to work well in advance on what we want to accomplish for Pride next year.  The vision of Pride as a temporary village/festival at which we can constitute ourselves as a community in all our diversity and beauty is all the more potent in light of the separation we face today.
We have also been exploring our options for how we can best hold our Annual General Meeting (AGM) in this period.  The AGM is the meeting at which the community can renew their membership in or become a member of the society. At the AGM your representatives on the board present the society’s financials, and we collectively select the board members who will serve as the community’s representatives until the next AGM.
Our financials for the past reporting period were pulled together in anticipation of the AGM this Spring. We will be circulating those through this same mailing list in the near future, so that all DAISSI members can have access to that information in a timely manner, with more detailed reporting and narrative to be provided at the AGM as soon as we are able to have it.  Our bylaws require us to hold an AGM within 15 months of the last one, so we are hoping to hold an in-person AGM this Summer.  In the event that public health orders continue to prohibit us doing so, we will arrange an online AGM this Summer.
In relation to the AGM, we have also heard some in our community expressing concern about the state of their membership in DAISSI as an organization.  Membership dues can always be paid, for new memberships and membership renewals, at an AGM. Daissi has never refused someone membership for their financial inability to pay their dues. Indeed, we do not make a habit of purging our membership rolls proactively. We treat all of the LGBTQ2SIA+ on Salt Spring Island as though they were members with whom DAISSI shared in a relationship of mutual support, accountability, and responsibility.  We are all in this together, and your official membership, though an opportunity to provide DAISSI with some financial support, is largely a formality of our structure as a Society.
Finally, and most importantly, know that we all continue to walk together, to sit together in this space of waiting.  These are trying times, sometimes difficult, sometimes frustrating, and for some of us they are perhaps even peaceful.  
While we are limited in the direct support we can provide, if there are needs you are aware of in our LGBTQ2SIA+ community on Salt Spring, please let us know.  It may be possible for us to connect those in need with resources, and as we are a volunteer-led organization, your awareness of that need may be a calling to you to help support your community.  
We would love to see weekly videoconferences for our community, or perhaps a phone tree to ensure we check in on one another.  Do you have an idea, a need you are experiencing, or an ability to help?  Through these trials we now face together.perhaps we can work together to keep our community healthy, connected, and hopeful.
With love and support, and hope for the day when we can be reunited in Pride,
Your DAISSI board.Juli, Jean, Miranda, Shellyse, Bill

Salt Spring Pride Festival 2020

Volunteer Kick Off Party, March 15. 2pm

Hello All you wonderful Folks!

This is our second Invite and Reminder with, as promised – more details!

Who is Invited? When? Where?

As people who have volunteered so far (or might volunteer) to be part of co-creating the 2020 Pride Festival you are cordially invited to attend the Kick Off Pride Party/potluck gathering on March 15, 2020 at 2pm-5pm, cleanup and debrief 5-6pm.

Address: 180 Old Divide Road (home of Sharon and Jean).

(AND YES. It’s true. Pride dates have changed from September to July. Summer fun and madness! The evolutionary Salt Spring Pride Festival 2020 July 24,25,26.)

1. Food. This is a potluck. Daissi is supplying a roasted turkey prepped and cooked by Deb. Lisa is providing cranberry sauce.

No time to prepare food? Attend anyway. Just help out where you can if needed.

1. Recycling and Garbage no paper products please. Bring your own napkin – some are provided
   take home all your recycling and non compostable food
2. Clean Up and Debrief 5-6pm “ish” rsvp please if you can help with clean up and/or debriefing
3. Accessibility Assessment of this Venue: See the Inventory below for details on Mobility/Wheelchair, Alternative Seating, Rest Area, Alcohol and Drugs, Hearing Impaired, Seeing Impaired, Transportation, Allergies,
4. Parking, Drop-off, UpHill Walk to House: Parking assistants – Kath and Laura parking is on Old Divide Road.
   Old Divide does not have heavy or fast traffic, so side of the road parking is OK but watch for cars when crossing.
   Do not park up at the house as that is reserved for disability parking, drop offs, and one spot is kept open for turn arounds (obvious)
   park on Old Divide Road and walk up a rather steep driveway to the house. It is about a 2-3 minute walk. Kath and Laura will be your greeters and parking assistants to help maneuver the one lane driveway. Kath at the bottom, Laura at the top. You can drop off your food items at the front door and drive back down. (or car pool from the street to the door). It will be obvious.
5. Lost or forgotten Items – Don’t! unless it is a cell phone, all lost items will be put outside the front door for your pick up. You have a week – then it goes to the Thrift Store. Yikes! But to keep using a private home for gatherings please understand forgotten items are a super major hassle.
6. Program Circle: introductions. Welcome. Envisioning.
   Site Map: At this party we hope to show you the Site Map of the Farmers’ Institute on Rainbow Road, Salt Spring Island, where the Festival has been booked. Together we can visualize how that space will accommodate the ideas suggested so far – workshops, vendors, camping in the “Pride Village”, children’s area, Performance Stage, Wellness Tent, games, and more.
   Roles: together we can identify the volunteer roles needed to secure and support the site and the activities of the Festival.
   Volunteer Shifts: We will have a Wall Chart of volunteer roles that you can sign up for, or even create your role.
   Brainstorm Mural: Discussion. The festival program will be what you can offer. Truly – Pride this year will be co-created by all of us together. Bring your ideas based on what you, or you in partnership with your friends, feel inspired to offer and implement. We have so many talents within our community to share with each other. Daissi and the Pride Committee will do its best to provide the space for your offerings and a few guidelines. Daissi plans to sponsor a few keynote events/workshops.
   Socialize: meet some new comers, catch up with old friends.

Again – The address is 180 Old Divide Road, off Cranberry Road, en route to Mount Maxwell.

Parking is on the street.

Food and passenger drop off can be up the driveway at the house.

Please rsvp to help us plan this event. Also OK to just show up.

Looking forward to getting together with all of you, and enjoying the launch of our collective creative Queer energy!

Your Daissi Board: Juli, Miranda, Bill, Jean, Kristan, Gorgon, Shellyse

Sunday April 26, dinner, Lions Hall.

Queer Environmentalism: Can Our Difference Make a Difference?

“Queers who Care” plans spring feast and evening of conversation and connectionSave the date! Sunday April 26 “Queers who Care” will offer a light-hearted evening of feasting, conversation and connection at the Lions’ Hall, with a chance to explore the notion of queer environmentalism. Can we bring the lens of queer difference to environmental issues? Are there ways for queer difference to make a difference? The evening is sponsored by DAISSI.The environmental movement’s focus on protecting and restoring the diversity of natural landscapes, and the queer liberation movement’s focus on protecting and restoring the diversity of human identities and erotic practices, have much to say to each other. The organizers of Queers who Care believe that we can fruitfully link our experience as LGBTQ2SIA+ folks and our support for human diversity with supporting the flourishing of natural diversity and protecting all our relations from harm.Queer folks’ experiences may educate us in special competencies. As LGBTQ2SIA+ people, we have each in our own way found courage to choose what is right for us, in contradiction to the dominant culture’s prohibitions and interdictions. We have been forced to experience immense losses and deep grief. We have created communities based on love and the celebration of difference, rather than communities rooted in fear and the exclusion of difference. These are all essential skills for the work of environmental justice.The event Sunday April 26 will be a chance to celebrate with delicious food, conversation and connection. People attending will be offered some fun group activities to develop ideas and select a workshop on an ecological theme that can be integrated into Pride 2020. We will have a chance to vote with DAISSI dollars on which idea we would like to see included in Pride, guiding the organization on the allocation of community resources.

March 15, 2pm to 5pm
As people who have volunteered so far to be part of co-creating the 2020 Pride Festival you are cordially invited to attend the Kick Off Pride Party/gathering.

There will be a few more details to follow but I wanted to get this date out to you now so that you can be sure to mark it on your calendar.

And please forward this invitation to your friends, both Queer identified and Allies, of all ages, who you know will want to be part of co-creating this festival through their volunteer efforts!

This will be a potluck with Daissi supplying a roasted turkey.
At this party we hope to show you the Site Map of the Farmers’ Institute on Rainbow Road, Salt Spring Island, where the Festival has been booked. Together we can visualize how that space will accommodate workshops, vendors, camping in the “Pride Village”, children’s area, Performance Stage, Wellness Tent, games, and more.

We will also have a Wall Chart of volunteer roles that you can sign up for, or even create roles we haven’t considered.

Truly – Pride this year will be co-created by all of us together. Bring your ideas based on what you, or you in partnership with your friends, feel inspired to offer. We have so many talents within our community to share with each other. Daissi will do it’s best to support and facilitate your offerings.

The address is 180 Old Divide Road, off Cranberry Road.
Parking is on the street.
Food and passenger drop off can be up the driveway at the house.

Please rsvp to help us plan this event.

Looking forward to getting together will all of you, and enjoying the launch of our collective creative Queer energy

Queer Themed Play March 18th

On March 18 at Mahon Hall, Theatre Alive is presenting a staged reading of a wonderful play by Martin Sherman (Bent and others). It’s Gently Down the Stream, a funny, emotional roller coaster with three gay characters. It features an older man with a younger lover who is obsessed with the cultural history of LGBTQ performers and history. He films his older lover telling stories of famous gay personalities, activists, tragedies, and more. A third man enters the picture.

This is an amazing play, with many references to true queer history and real people. It is also very funny and loving, with references from everything from World War II to the near present. You’ll laugh, but you will probably also cry. Bring tissues. Bring your friend. Bring your lover. Straight or gay, male or female. Come learn how storytelling is vital, and that moving on with your life will keep you alive.

TheatreAlive: Produced by Chris Humpheys
Play: Gently Down the Steam, by Martin Sherman
Directed by Suzanne Rouger
Cast: Scott Merrick, Adam Morris, Wyatt Floerke

Wednesday, March 18 at Mahon Hall, 7 pm

No Advance Tickets
$20 at the Door