I'm an artist, latterly a collector. Besides youthful appearances at Stop The War marches and signing online petitions, I'm no activist. Politically engaged, anti war, broadly anti capitalist, animated partly by green concerns; I read the paper but I don't wave the placard these days.
I helped out a little on the Pakistan floods campaign, mainly sharing art and editing copy, and on hearing about the unfolding disaster in Turkey and Syria this February, I wondered if I could do anything.
With message groups in full swing and a discord fast forming, Burka had already prepared a logo and various assets, brand guidelines, through the night, somehow. As the name tezquakeaid seemed to stick, I thought to grab the twitter handle, then linktree, instagram soon after, inadvertently becoming defacto social media manager, I guess?
It was on me to schedule and launch the first couple of Twitter spaces, and not clam up or drop the mic. I've only appeared on a couple before this, never my jam, but it's such a big part of crypto culture, an important way to get the word out to, and in from, a global community. Without calmer hands at the tiller, our spaces would have tanked long ago.
LeChatNoir, myself and a few others share the socials between us. In those first months of Feb and March it was a lot, so sorry if we missed you. We do what we can, share as much as we can, retweeting until our thumbs or our lives intervene. Or someone else takes over.
You can see a full list of all the people who are involved on joyn, who've been a huge supporter from the outset. I can't stress this enough: tezquakeaid is a rotating assembly, a loose-knit, non hierarchical, decentralised group of friends and strangers, artists, collectors, developers, community managers from teia and objkt, maybe fxhash at one point, DNS, Teztown, people from across the ecosystem, sharing the work.
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The fast response to TezQuakeAid was incredible really, both awful and incredible; the amount of attention it received so quickly, in both artworks minted and pieces collected.
The first phase of the initiative raised around 120,000 tez, or $100,000 at that time, in what felt like two or three weeks. Obviously with numbers on that scale, we have to look closely at where the money is being directed. Many within the team devote real effort to research and outreach to various charities and NGOs. Many are suggested. Many more are quietly parked. Leads go quiet. Hard won contacts don't reply. Most often these are precarious organisations in fragile places, fluid ecosystems, at times of disaster and anguish, amid a sea of online disinformation and counter misinformation, in places where crypto may be illegal or even impossible. The first phase of TezQuakeAid, that 120k, was shared between Ahbap, Inara and the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Organisations of this ilk, you can't just transfer them 100 grand, wallet to wallet. So the Tezos Foundation has been an important part of the off ramping process, converting tezos to fiat, tranche by tranche, keeping receipts, to be shared with us and the wider community of supporters. An audience both optimistic and suspicious. This is crypto after all.
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A key driver of the initial success of tezquakeaid: amongst our number are trusted, respected voices from within the tezos community, with firsthand accounts from said same members coming from within the places affected.
A real danger with these sorts of endeavours is an innate white saviour complex. It's a familiar throughline of altruism or charitable endeavour, deeply rooted in colonialism and missionary Christianity, Live Aid being the very obvious example of this; arguably causing more problems than it hoped to solve, not only in terms of misdirected millions but in its 40 year impact on how Africa is perceived detrimentally by the wider world.
NGOs and Charities are often corrupt institutions, from boardroom to ground level, from money laundering to racketeering. These kinds of rescue operations have been shown to attract the wrong sorts of personalities. Saviours, messianics, narcissists are so often drawn toward roles within uneven power structures. When you step in to help someone its good to question your motives. Why are you doing it? For your own clout? Is your help performative?
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Something I'm personally wrestling with these past weeks, as a few of us artists are variously raising funding to support refugees in Gaza, is why am I doing this? Rattling the tin I mean.
It's admittedly a much more contentious political situation that I am trying to help with, and not as appealingly apolitical as a natural disaster. As I grind and subtweet, hector and cajole, against the familiar refrain of big artist press releases, portentous ai and vapid gallery shows, I can feel a bitterness and anger at people not wanting to get involved, to help, seeping into my bones.
Is this anger a response to the ills of what's going on, or a more familiar social media adjacent feeling? Is it easier to feel bad about shilling NFTs to an unresponsive community, than to think a bit deeper about the awful precarity of people's lives, the people I am purporting to help. What are my own motives for doing this, personally? Is it so I look good on social media? Is it because I really, truly, genuinely want to help? Or is it to feel better about my white privilege? These are open questions.
I guess if you have a heart or a soul or you feel pain or empathy, you are drawn to help. But we often feel powerless, like there's nothing we can do. Maybe this is the first time in my life I've ever been able to help this easily and effectively.
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As mentioned, the strength of the first wave of tezquakeaid was in harnessing such a cross section of people from across the ecosystem, artists and collectors, community leaders from global north and south. In its efficacy it can perhaps become a framework, a very loose structure of responding to emergencies and places and communities in need of support.
As we all know, there was another earthquake, in September in Morocco, then only days later, a generational flood in Libya, killing thousands of people.
In response, and very quickly, the same crew, more or less, have been able to reassemble, dust off the discord, kickstart the old message groups again. And we very quickly thought, what can we do to help now, because we already have an existing infrastructure in place, are something like a trusted voice within the Tezos ecosystem, have a line of communication with the Tezos Foundation. And more importantly, we still have 3000 tez in our wallet from the first initiative. We were able to ask each other and the wider community, what shall we do with this money, what do you want to do? It was originally earmarked for Turkey and Syria, but we've managed to consolidate it with funds raised from the second initiative, and shared 10k with International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent.
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As we move forward into what is potentially a very complex and potted future, and this is something I've felt from talking to friends within the tezos ecosystem as much as my mates in real life, is that this ability we have to mobilise very quickly in a very agile, largely non-hierarchical way, and raise money, real money through art sales, and off ramp it almost immediately, to places and people and communities that need that support very quickly, minus a huge amount of the bureaucracy that exists in any medium to large size organisation. I personally feel that this ability we have is new found, and is the true secret sauce of crypto, for NFTs. Its something I haven't experienced in any other part of my life. I don't know of any real life friends who are doing this on the scale that we managed to, or of any other means it may be possible. Even friends I have spoken to who work in the charitable sector are a little astounded at the response that tezquakeaid mustered.
A funny thing is, that I still have to keep it on the downlow, really. That I do this. Because in Britain, there is still huge antipathy towards NFTs. The common perception in the creative industries is that even now, all they represent is grifter culture; tech bros with monkey pictures, scammers, pyramid schemes, and all their affiliated baggage from early 2021.
In real terms, if you talk to a normal person in the street, thats all they think this is. Many artists within our community strive for validation or acceptance from old world institutions and traditional museums or galleries, and the builders and the collectors dream of mass adoption by consumers, as if thats a palpable or desired goal. Whereas I see this as the true use case, the much mythologised "utility". This is it for me, really, this is where it's at, and I think that perhaps as a community, we need to try to corral this, this energy and altruism that we are somehow able to harness.
As the various voices within tezquakeaid look ahead, at ways to broaden the potential reach of the project from earthquakes to encompass wider disasters, perhaps the codification or establishment of a not-for-profit company, at the very least a legal framework. There has been mooted talk of TezEmergencyAid, I personally like the sound of TezEarthAid, but all of that is down the road.
Obviously, we've much work to do, but when you look ahead down that road, it feels that, you know, this future is soon going to need it.