Austin Swing Syndicate general updates and announcements
We miss you. We miss The Fed, our home away from home. We hope that you are healthy, safe, and making the best of the current situation. While we do not have plans for return at this time, we want to reach out to you and see what sort of dance-related activities you have been participating in during shutdown and assess your comfort level with potential COVID-sensitive class formats. Please take our survey and check in with us!
A MESSAGE FROM OUR PRESIDENT DEB TINDLE
It’s almost July! We hope you all are healthy and safe. Our Ballroom continues to be silent, awaiting the day we can all dance in person again! We, the Board, have been busy behind the scenes working on plans to ensure that the Austin Swing Syndicate survives the current pandemic. We look forward to hearing from Public Health Authorities about when it will be safe to gather and dance. In the meantime, we hope you are tuning in to the numerous online classes and musical performances. We are building a library of fun tutorials for our website too!
We want to thank our community members who have been donating to us! It warms our hearts to see these donations coming in, and we are excited to announce a new opportunity to support our organization. We’ve had our thinking caps on, and we have come up with a great plan. We will need YOUR help.
We are an Arts Organization. And we are so proud to say that we have been self-sustaining all these years. That is extremely rare for an Arts Organization. We have actually paid our own way. That shows that there is and has been an ongoing desire for this organization to exist. The COVID-19 crisis is a huge challenge, but we believe we can survive. We are uniquely positioned to survive this pandemic. We fear that the worldwide Swing community may permanently lose many events and perhaps even many smaller communities. But the Austin Swing Syndicate can survive and become a future beacon, lighting the way back.
We are establishing a new level of membership. The Sustaining Member. This membership costs $250 per year. Benefits of this level of membership include free admission every Thursday, including Live Music Nights. You also get a special membership card, three admission cards to give away, a Syndicate T-shirt, and a Syndicate sticker. These membership dues are tax deductible as well. Obviously, during COVID-19, we are not dancing. Therefore, during this time, the Sustaining Membership revenue will be vital to meeting our contractual obligations such as rent. We are looking for 250 people to become Sustaining Members. During normal operations, that will allow us to know that our most basic expenses of rent and staff are covered all year.
Please consider joining the Austin Swing Syndicate as a Sustaining Member. You can sign up today in our online store.
We miss you. We thank you for your support, and we can’t wait to see your faces once we can safely return.
– The Austin Swing Syndicate Board
The Fed is still closed due to COVID-19, but you can still dance in your living room with this 3-hour Spotify playlist brought to you by the Austin Swing Syndicate DJs! It’s like dancing in the main ballroom in your pajamas! 
Lay low and keep your spirits high!
This playlist is brought to you by: Joanna Lucero, Mike Roberts, Keli Hawthorne, Nik Brauer, Lizi G, Jason Levitt, Jennifer Reed
Want to keep supporting the Austin Swing Syndicate? Donate here: http://austinswingsyndicate.org/donate/
We believe Black Lives Matter, Black Austin Matters, and Black Lindy Hop Matters
We invite you to join us in donating to the Austin Justice Coalition via our Facebook fundraiser. The Austin Justice Coalition is a Racial Justice Group that educates and builds community power for people of color who live in Austin, Texas. This group helps those who need support, community, and liberation during a time of systemic injustice in America.
100% of the donations to this fundraiser will go directly to AJC in support of the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement. If you would like to learn more or donate directly, please visit their website: https://austinjustice.org/ If financial support is out of reach, please consider other actions such as donating time, amplifying voices, or sharing this fundraiser.
Thank you for your help.
– The Austin Swing Syndicate Board
It should go without saying that without the rich and beautiful culture, history, and life of Black artists, dancers, and activists, we would have never gotten off our feet twenty years ago. To be silent now is to diminish their work, their memory, and their legacy. There is not now, nor will there ever be, any place for racism in our community—what happened to George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Mike Ramos, Eric Garner, Bettie Jones, and an outrageous number of other victims cannot be tolerated.
We invite you to join us in donating to the Austin Justice Coalition via our Facebook fundraiser. The Austin Justice Coalition is a Racial Justice Group that educates and builds community power for people of color who live in Austin, Texas. This group helps those who need support, community, and liberation during a time of systemic injustice in America.
100% of the donations to this fundraiser will go directly to AJC in support of the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement. If you would like to learn more or donate directly, please visit their website: https://austinjustice.org/ If financial support is out of reach, please consider other actions such as donating time, amplifying voices, or sharing this fundraiser.
Additional Resources:
Ways to donate to and support communities of color: https://nymag.com/strategist/article/where-to-donate-for-black-lives-matter.html?fbclid=IwAR0tWrQae_U5VeF60yHkFh1Yd9T08V8D_sEqoMldrpwWkStuOxoME2mHcvw
Groups like Brooklyn Community Bail Fund and www.bailproject.org are raising money for protesters who have been arrested.
Ways to support the protests, such as serving as emergency contacts for the protesters: https://issuu.com/nlc.sf.2014/docs/beyondthestreets_final
We believe Black Lives Matter, Black Lindy Hop Matters, and Black Austin Matters.
Thank you for your help.
Sincerely,
The Board of the Austin Swing Syndicate
Lindy Hoppers for Black Lives Matter image courtesy of the Frankie Manning Foundation.
Come celebrate New Year’s eve dancing to a live band, the one and only swinging Waller Creek Vipers. You wanted NYE’s back, but if you want this to stay on track we have to sell 123 tickets, so show your love and go over to eventbrite and get your ticket!
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/roaring-20s-nye-party-tickets-88456454637?aff=ebdssbdestsearch#
Tickets $30
Dance will be at the TFWC Mansion (affectionately known as the Fed)
2312 San Gabriel Street, Austin, TX 78705
Feb. 21st – Nominations close
Feb. 27th – Election Town Hall (Biographies posted this week)
Mar. 5th – Online voting begins
Mar. 12th – In-person voting, polls close at Midnight
Mar. 15th – Election results (including exact vote counts) sent to members by email by this date
Mar. 26th – New Board first meeting
Nominations for our Board of Directors are now open! Please email elections@austinswingsyndicate.org to declare your candidacy, or with any questions. Elections for the three open Board of Directors spots will be held in March. Joining the board is a great way to give back to a community you love, help us decide what our next priorities should be, and get in on the inner workings of the organization. Plus you’ll get to hang with fun people, it looks great on a resume, and you get in free to our dances/events.
Being on the board is a two-year commitment. Officers (President, VP, etc.) are elected internally among directors once elected. The elections are run by the Elections Committee, a neutral group nominated by the current Board.
Looking for love in all the wrong places? Well forget about that and come to the Valentine Dance instead on Feb 13th!
Live music, Jonathan Ng and the Stray Hearts.
Members $7, non-members $10.
Schedule Update:
Birthday jam (followed by shim sham) will be on 1st and 3rd Thursdays starting Jan 2020.