TUF is a collective whose mission contributed to uplifting marginalized folks including people of color, women, queer, trans, and gender nonconforming identities and challenged white-cis-male power structures within electronic music, art, and media by creating spaces to connect and collaborate. But as we move into 2020, the collective is being dissolved by Black & Indigenous members.

Throughout our existence, we recognize our many accomplishments. However, TUF has also failed both its most marginalized members and our broader communities by claiming values of inclusion, without making the necessary commitments to stay accountable to these claims. TUF has grown to comprise a 70+ person membership with a white majority and without a racial demographic makeup reflective of those we sought to center, or a functioning structure and ethic of anti-racism in place. Consequently, TUF has not supported its current mission statement through structural and informal anti-Blackness, racism, and complacency. Although we believe that TUF has been an important entity in diversifying our local music scene, we need to hold space for new collectives to emerge that exceed where TUF fell short and that specifically address anti-Blackness in music, art, and media industries. 

Thank you to everyone who has supported and played for us, but what we need for you to do now is support marginalized folks from around the world. We are still committed to upholding our mission statement; this is work that anyone who has ever been part of TUF (both members and supporters) can bring to their communities: Book Black and Indigenous, trans and nonbinary, people and give back opportunities that these communities’ contributions made possible in the first place. We must create space for the marginalized creatives in our world.

Signed,

Black & Indigenous members of TUF