For background: I’m a recording artist, DJ, drag performer, event producer, raver, nightlife demon of 10+ years living in Seattle. I am also a person who became disabled, immunocompromised, and chronically ill circa 2023 from repeat Covid infections due to gigs/travelling.

My unique position has lead to me becoming a sort of Covid awareness activist/disability rights advocate in the nightlife sphere, which is never something I aspired to be or imagined I’d be but life does what it does. I don’t claim to be perfect or great at this role.

In the beginning of 2024 I began throwing SAFETYDANCE, the only recurring mask-required/Covid-safer techno party in Washington state and possibly in the country. The party has been a consistent success and maintained a loyal audience.

The party generally sees a large percentage of disabled/immunocompromised/covid realist attendees, but is also attended by a lot of my friends and acquaintances from the nightlife sphere who don’t necessarily live any type of covid realist lifestyle in their daily lives.

As I’ve been throwing this party in an attempt to both normalize Covid mitigation/awareness in nightlife and also create more accessible spaces, I’ve noticed a very gradual shift happening in my community. VERY gradual. This advocacy has been exhausting and often thankless work.

I’ve spent much of the past 2 years feeling ostracized or like a pariah at points, feeling like my nightlife community thinks I’m crazy or unreasonable, feeling like no one cares if I live or die. It’s been crazymaking. (Spoilers: everyone actually loves me and wants me around.)

A handful of months ago I decided to switch up my approach in my advocacy. Instead of just loudly scolding my community via social media and making generalizations, I began talking to my friends in the rave community one on one. Actually getting vulnerable and stating my needs.

Conversations that often started along the lines of “hey, so I’m disabled now, and that means something about my life and what I’m able to do, and it means something about what kinds of relationships I’m able to maintain and what kind of spaces I can exist in.”

I immediately noticed how much more effective this strategy was and was able to convince several of my friends to start masking up consistently at events and in their daily lives. “We love Michaela and want to protect her” seemed to be reason enough for a good amount of people.

Mind you I never wanted to be a martyr or a hero, I am simply a person trying to do what’s right and also not die. I am resentful of the fact that I’m now known as “the Covid girl” in the Seattle rave community but I guess someone has to fall on the sword or whatever.

Anyways, this past weekend was an annual rave camp out that a bunch of my friends organize. Some of them are people I’ve had the covid convo with, some are not. They took it upon themselves to rent air purifiers and supply/encourage masks at the camp out this year.

I did not have to bully or scold them into doing this, they just did it because they’ve internalized the information that it’s a worthwhile thing to do. So we had air purifiers in all the indoor spaces and a surplus of KN95s available at this rave camp out, great.

The pre-event emails mentioned this, and “strongly encouraged” attendees to wear masks indoors/on the dance floor. This was emphasized again during the announcements at the beginning of the party. I found myself wondering how serious anyone would take this recommendation.

One note of feedback I gave the organizers immediately (while thank them of course) was that I think it’s important to explicitly frame masking and covid mitigation as an issue of access and inclusivity. To explicitly mention that we’re doing this to protect our disabled friends.

I think most people hear Covid/masks and think “I don’t care if I get sick” or whatever. I think specifically mentioning disabled and immunocompromised people gives people an incentive and helps them feel good about masking.

Anyways, the rave starts. Usual suspects are masked. Myself, my disabled friends, couple of trans girls, handful of my close friends who I’ve had the covid convo with. Doesn’t initially seem like the recommendations are doing much.

But within the first hour of music, something cool happened. More and more people who didn’t show up with a mask put one on. Suddenly the entire front few rows of people were masked, many wearing the white KN95s with the metal clasp the organizers had provided. Something shifted.

The party maintained a pretty solid culture of masking on the dancefloor for almost the entirety of the 24 straight hours of music programming. It ebbed and flowed, but a solid 40-60% of the floor was usually masked up at a given time. It was really profound to witness.

There were times throughout the party where I’d walk into the lodge where the dancefloor was located and be shocked to see a solid 90% of the people around me masked up. Part of this was the acid and molly kicking my ass but honestly it was so beautiful to watch.

It wasn’t perfect. There were other times where I’d walk in and closer to 10% were masking, which frustrating and even hurt me at points. Like damn, did we forget about disabled people in the past 2 hours? Hard not to take personally when the issue of disability is so personal.

But generally speaking it was by far the most consistent masking I’ve seen at any party other than my own and that felt very significant. I was checking in with my disabled friends throughout the weekend who kept reflecting back to me how good it felt to see so many masks.

Also had a number of people thanking me throughout the weekend, despite me not being involved in organizing this particular event. People telling me this was me, it was my impact, that what I’ve been advocating for is finally seeing results and how important that is.

One on hand I feel proud. I do feel accomplished. On the other, I don’t want this to be “mine.” I think it should be normal to care about disabled people. I think it should be normal to care about your community’s health. It should be normal to protect each other.

In these underground nightlife spaces we have a unique opportunity to establish a cultural norm where we can live out our values. We’re not random sloppy ass people getting drunk at a club, we’re doing something that has intentionality to it.

Rave organizers talk so much about healing, liberation, “radical queer joy”, inclusivity, “safe spaces”, “harm reduction”, etc. so much but hardly ever ever consider disabled people in that ethos or bother to acknowledge the very real problem Covid still is. That can change.

One friend of mine in particular was reflecting my impact back to me on Saturday. She said something that struck me. She told me she was looking around and seeing all the masks, seeing these people choose to tangibly care for each other. “It felt possible,” she said to me. 🥲

Been having many conversations in the wake of this weekend with disabled, able-bodied, covid-realist, covid-lax friends alike. Seems that a lot of people acknowledge it as a potential breakthrough moment for how our community thinks about safety and inclusivity. I hope it can be.

All of that is to say: being vocal about COVID is not pointless work. We do not have to accept a culture of mass death in order to keep partying. It will be long and hard and frustrating but we can change peoples minds. A lot of people actually do want to do the right thing.

This thread wasn’t planned and I don’t really know how to end it but I’m really proud of my community and I feel inspired and hopeful in ways I haven’t felt in a long time. And I know it’s such a cliche to say this about doing drugs to techno in the woods with your friends, but:

It was so healing.

@mimizima_ amazing. thank you for sharing 🙏

@mimizima_ Who tf is going to a "rave camp out"???

@mimizima_ I needed to read this today. Thank you for taking the time to share this. Thank you also for DOING THIS WORK. I know how thankless it can be at times. This thread fills me with hope that starting small / working small can make tangible shifts in people's perspectives.

@mimizima_ Beautiful!! So happy for u! Masking is such a social problem - if a crowd gets over that critical number of say 20ish% then ppl won’t be so afraid &will mask once they see it as a majority behavior. This is likely easier with a crowd not afraid of standing out in the 1st place💕

@mimizima_ Thank you for sharing this. I appreciate all these insights. 💜

@mimizima_ That’s encouraging☺️ thanks for taking the time to share