An employer is always an employer.

On January 8 of this year, I was terminated from my roles at Nowadays for “insubordination” and “a failure to fulfill the obligations of [my] role.” This news was delivered by email, and I never received a formal warning that my job was at risk. I believe that these stated reasons were a pretext for terminating my employment, and that my termination was due to my involvement in organizing with my coworkers to improve certain terms and conditions of our employment. I have filed a complaint against Nowadays through the National Labor Relations Board on this basis. 

In the month leading up to my termination, much of the Nowadays staff had been organizing together around a list of shared concerns: the club’s silence on Palestine, the director’s announcement that the club was going to be “less political” moving forward, a lack of transparency regarding the finances of the club, a lack of transparency and agency related to how decisions are made, discriminatory treatment of workers by the director & owners, and a selective application of the club’s professed values. These concerns were shared with the owners and the director in a letter delivered on December 16, alongside a handful of requests that we made in hopes of starting to address our concerns. Throughout the letter we emphasized that our motivation in delivering these complaints was out of care and concern for the club, and that we wanted to do everything we could to ensure the success of the business. We requested  a response from them by December 23, and then seven of us (the club’s management team) signed the letter by name. During the week leading up to their response, I experienced retaliation in the form of one of my main responsibilities being taken away (writing the club’s weekly marketing email). When I asked the reason for this move, the director told me that their trust in me had diminished. On January 4th we had the first in-person management meeting since the team sent the staff letter. While everyone on the team contributed to vocalizing our shared concerns, I spoke the most during this meeting. Four days later, I was fired. 

I know that I acted with respect and professionalism throughout this process. I delivered my complaints clearly, confidently and with conviction.

Further, I never stopped doing my job as a booker for the club and I never stopped doing it well. As we repeated in our written letter and throughout the January 4th meeting, success of the business was of utmost importance to us, and my booking work was vital to that. I also had a personal investment, since my role at the club had always been public-facing. My booking work was very bound up in my own reputation as an artist. I would never do anything to jeopardize that. 

Lastly, the business's accusation of insubordination suggests that I was being punished in response to my role in employee organizing efforts. This was a collective effort through and through, with meaningful contributions from employees across a variety of departments and roles. However, my voice was the loudest, and by wrongfully terminating me, the business used me as an example to intimidate the remaining employees into abandoning our organizing.

I’ll be honest, I haven’t had much desire to address this publicly yet. However, recent public events online have left me realizing that I must set the record straight. It also feels necessary to update my professional contacts + the wider community at this point, who are still reaching out to me about things I no longer control. I haven’t had a clue how to respond to those communications at all so I’m hoping this will help.

When Nowadays sent a detailed email to people outside of the organization that included allegations of my failures over the last few months, my feelings were only briefly hurt. I know very well that my work speaks for itself, and I appreciate those of you that have sent me that reminder lately too. To be completely honest with you? I don’t think I realized how many people were paying attention to the work I was doing over the years until now. In many ways, that aspect of this experience has been very beautiful for me. Many of you have checked in to see how I’m feeling right now, which I so appreciate, but it’s a difficult question to answer.

I joined Nowadays as a resident in 2017, and as an employee in 2018. I felt like I knew that place pretty well. If you would have asked me in October of 2023 if I had any complaints about Nowadays or my job, I would’ve told you there were no serious concerns. I certainly could have never anticipated being fired so unceremoniously, and to this day the shock still hasn’t fully worn off. I also find myself still feeling genuinely confused about this decision and many others that were made over the last few months. 

 I hope it’s clear from these few details that the full story of what happened over the last few months at Nowadays is not just my story to tell. My experience just happens to be the most dramatic chapter of the book so far, which continues to be written every day. Once completed though, I strongly believe it should be shared for all the lessons that could be learned. But just so it's very clear: I want to insist that the priority right now for everyone reading should be the remaining staff of the club, not me. I was quite overwhelmed by news of my firing becoming public a few weeks ago, although I was incredibly touched to witness & receive so much support. And in many ways I was grateful (but also nervous) that the staff’s story was finally being heard. For months we wrestled with the question of whether to get the community involved or not, and it ultimately went unanswered because we weren’t sure how to do it without hurting the business, which none of us wanted to do. That all changed a few weeks ago, and finally the workers' experience was front and center for the core community, and we didn’t even have to do anything ourselves.

Unfortunately though, in an attempt to amplify our stories after so much silence, it seems like a bit of an overcorrection occurred. On this I owe it to my former coworkers to briefly set the record straight: I was not fired for being Pro-Palestine. Circulating this version of the story not only fans the flames of fear and paranoia for those that are speaking out, it also completely shifts attention away from what should actually be the focus: the remaining staff. It also does an additional disservice to these employees by not recognizing their efforts over the last few months, which were never without risk. Our organizing began because of Palestine. But we very quickly realized that Palestine was just the tip of the iceberg, revealing many workplace concerns that became part of the concerns we shared with management. Even at Nowadays, fighting for Palestine posed a severe threat to the status quo. Standing in solidarity with Palestine requires a necessary betrayal of the very systems that organize and operate life as we know it: colonialism, capitalism, white supremacy, western hegemony and so on. When we first started asking the club to publicly stand in solidarity with Palestine, I don’t think we realized how deeply this would throw us directly into the belly of the beast, or at least I naively did not. But it did and now here we are. Anyway, I’m not here to get into the details of that right now. Just please remember that everyone else involved in this organizing is still employed by Nowadays. And like I said, they should definitely be the priority right now and not me.

Nowadays was the axis around which my professional, social and creative lives happily orbited. As is the case for so many of us working in music & nightlife, those lines were often very blurred. In a very real sense right now, I am in mourning. Not only did I lose my dream job, I lost a number of friends as well. When you threaten a power dynamic that people benefit from, you’ll be framed as the aggressor. I know that I’ll be facing the ripple effects of this experience for a long time. I can’t deny that this has already been an incredibly difficult year. 

This experience is not without its fair share of silver linings though. I really want everyone to know how held I feel by my community right now. And I want to recognize as much as possible the groups of people who deserve so much credit for helping me feel this way: A significant number of the workers at Nowadays. Most of the resident DJ roster. A number of DJs we work with regularly at the club, based both in NYC and abroad. Trusted community allies. All of these people spent precious time & energy over the last two months rallying on my behalf in order to try to get my reinstatement on the table. We haven’t yet gotten the outcome we hoped for, but we sure have given it our best, and put on a stunning display of solidarity in the meantime. I’ll never forget it and am incredibly grateful. An additional heartfelt thank you goes to the community members and club regulars who put in their own efforts on my behalf these last few weeks after reinstatement was denied. It was an excellent reminder of people power. And lastly, another watery-eyed thank you goes out to so many friends & acquaintances for checking in on me, talking with me, listening to me, crying with me, laughing with me, getting angry with me, & being ever so patient with me. 

It might sound strange but I’m actually feeling very lucky in all of this right now. Don’t get me wrong - I’m devastated and wish this never happened. But sadly it has, and now nearly two months into my new reality, I’m coming to realize that there have been far more gains than losses. I’m grateful to have learned these powerful life lessons, to have the energy I’ve put into nurturing a sense of community be completely rewarded, and to have such principled efforts made on my behalf. As I've said several times now, my only ask of my peers and the community at this moment is that you prioritize the well-being of all Nowadays staff in every interaction you have with the club going forward. 

So what does the future hold for me and Nowadays? Well, my programming will continue through May, so in many ways I’m still feeling very involved in the parties that happen there. But the question of whether to keep my DJ residency after all of this has posed a major moral dilemma for me since I was fired. So much has happened over the last few months, and it’s gotten much uglier than it ever should have. I'm not going to sugar coat it: I feel enormously disrespected, publicly and privately. 

My biggest concern was that if I kept my residency, it would send a message to the outside world, particularly to younger DJs, that disrespect is just something to be tolerated if you don’t want to lose the gig at certain institutions, or if you don’t want to pose any risks to your career. So allow me to make very clear where I stand on this: it is NEVER acceptable for any entity - be it person, platform or club - to disrespect you. Your career doesn’t rely on one club or one connection to be successful, no matter how much it might seem that way. They don’t have nearly as much power as everyone pretends they do, trust me.

And while there is nowhere in the world I would rather play than Nowadays, up until last weekend I was on the verge of walking away. But then I started asking for advice from literally anyone who was willing to give it, and found that the overall feeling from everyone was nearly unanimous that I should stay, and that there was even a sense of agency that could be restored through that. I began to think of keeping my residency at Nowadays as an act of defiance against the attempts to silence me in that space. And I'm not about to let them take yet another thing away from me. So there it is - I’m staying.

My next date at the club happens to be this weekend. Looks like fun, doesn't it? ; )

I’ll be bringing a significant amount of intention, along with a sense of friction, to all of my remaining sets for the year. In many ways I think this attitude was activated during my November residency, and has certainly been my approach to every set since. My impulse is to only explore this framework further, and if all goes well, archive each of the sets online. 

So on that note - I’d like to share the recording from my January residency, which I played about three weeks after things shifted dramatically between me and the club. Feelings were still quite raw at that moment, and I felt totally unable to prepare for the set in the days and weeks before. I remember walking into the booth that night and telling our sound tech, “I have never felt less prepared to DJ.”

Nothing could have stopped me from following through with this one though, and my overwhelming feeling that night was still one of excitement. It was the first edition of our new party concept “Foundations,” which was an idea I had for new programming approaches in 2024. Foundations is meant to be an intergenerational conversation in the booth between a DJ and a formative influence of their choosing. I chose Radioactive Man (aka Keith Tenniswood), who I see as an absolute pillar of electronic music in the UK, and whose work means a lot to me personally. I first heard his name in my discovery of Two Lone Swordsmen, which is Keith’s collaboration with Andrew Weatherall of course. And anyone who knows me even a little bit knows that Weatherall is my all-time #1. Anyway, through this connection I got to know his solo work as Radioactive Man, and there I discovered an incredibly inspiring and unique electro sound. All of this is to say, it was supposed to be a very special and celebratory night. And I’m glad to report that in the end it actually was. Keith’s set was truly unbelievable, I was blown away by how fresh he made everything sound, even the classics. And I found that even though I was completely unprepared, I was able to channel a lot of my feelings through the music, and listening back now I hear an empowered sense of intensity and confrontation. I quite enjoy to to be honest. 

If you've made it this far, thanks for reading. That's really all of the updates I have on this for now. Stay tuned, as I'm sure things will continue to unfold in predictable & unpredictable ways. In signing off, I leave you with the apt words of Andrew Weatherall, lest you've forgotten: "don't let the grubby little opportunists get you down!"