Tonya Carter founded Second Assembly, a new collective for queer women of color. (Photo by Eritrea Mehary)
By DCist contributor Lenore T. Adkins
Sometimes a movement starts at the club.
At least, it will this weekend when Tonya Carter throws her first event with Second Assembly, a new peer-based collective she formed to empower and celebrate queer women of color. Saturday’s bash at Ivy City Smokehouse will officially introduce D.C. to her new collective.
XYZ: The Party features four women of color who’ll spin tunes deep into the night. Second Assembly will throw these parties quarterly at upscale “warehouse-eque venues that will set the stage for the wildest queer parties in D.C.,” according to its mission statement.
Venus X, M.I.A.’s former tour DJ, is headlining the first party on Saturday. Other music will flow from DJ Earthchild, a D.C. native and resident DJ at 305 Fitness, DJ Chan Don, an Atlanta native now living in the District, and DJ CYD, who has spun for Nike and Superdry clothing and currently lives here.
It may sound obvious, but partygoers should expect to dance.
“[In D.C.], unless you’re going to a house party … you don’t really see people dancing,” Carter, 30, says. “So first things first: it’s a dance party.”
They’ll blast tracks across genres that include house, trap, disco, hip-hop, and favela funk from Brazil. Carter was finding that when she’d hit up certain clubs, white DJs would play music from people of color for predominantly white crowds, but when she’d roll in, “It was like, ‘Why are you here?’” she says.
“People of color are tastemakers and influencers in those arenas and they’re not being highlighted justly, I believe,” said Carter, 30. “If you’re directly playing their type of music and you don’t have any representation from the people that created it, it’s not balanced.”
There’s a special $5 cocktail they’ll be slinging to mark the occasion. The Lime Paloma contains tequila, lemon-lime soda, a splash of lime juice and a pinch of salt.
Carter knows plenty about parties. From 2010 to 2012, she threw raves around the city under the now-defunct Premiere DC before joining the U.S. Army and serving a stint in Afghanistan. She established Second Assembly out of what she says is a need for queer women of color to see themselves excelling in all fields.
In addition to quarterly parties, Second Assembly will also host lectures, dinners, and panels featuring queer women of color—including environmentalists, journalists, influencers, and actresses—who are crushing it in their careers. The aim of those events, which Carter says are still in the works, is to show the standard of achievement that’s possible beyond society’s narrow definition of success.
“You share the same characteristics of [successful] people and when … they mirror you, basically it motivates your life,” Carter says, adding that she did not see women like herself in positions of power when she was growing up in the D.C. area.
As her movement grows and members—both queer women of color and their allies—find a sense of community within Second Assembly, Carter wants it to be membership and peer based, so that members can offer their input on the types of programming they want. She’s in talks to secure sponsorship, in hopes that the collective’s programming won’t be reliant on membership fees.
Carter wants her group to feel like a community, something she wanted to reflect in the name of the collective.
“It felt good, it felt organic and it felt very true and it tied everything together,” she says.
XYZ: The Party takes place at Ivy City Smokehouse on Saturday from 10 p.m.-3 a.m. Tickets are $10 in advance or at the door for $15.
