We have good news today from Sacramento and we’d like to thank everyone who sent feedback to Assemblymember Fiona Ma on her proposed legislation AB74, The Raves Safety Act. Your voices were heard and our suggested amendments were introduced at the State Assembly Agriculture Committee that addressed two of our most significant problems with AB74.
First, the Title of AB74 was changed from the “Raves Safety Act” to “Concert and Music Festival Safety Act”. We felt that the previous title reinforced the trend in media and government to single out electronic music events for discriminatory treatment, since sporting, concerts and many other types of events can also have health and safety issues.
Secondly, the threshold in which an “approved event plan” would be required for events on state property was raised from 1000 attendees to 10,000. Promoters of large events already work with venue management, health and safety staff as well as law enforcement on safe event plans but we considered such requirements to be excessive for much smaller events.
We are grateful to Fiona Ma’s office for hearing our voices along the way, including on these last critical issues. It was an act of good faith on her behalf to amend AB74 based on community concerns. In her public statements, Assemblymember Ma acknowledged that events should continue and that young people should not be deprived of their right to dance and enjoy music by the world’s great electronic music producers.
That said, we are concerned that because of the recent rave hysteria, local authorities will require unreasonable ratios of security and law enforcement to attendees, in effect, banning electronic music events because of excessive safety requirements. We need to stay vigilant and work with local authorities on what constitutes a fair and realistic event safety plan. If our community’s events are effectively prohibited because of draconian event plans, we may need Assemblymember Ma’s help in creating realistic standards for event safety.
With that we would like to thank everyone in the community who has written letters of support, spoken at public comment or helped in any way to follow through with this process. It has been an emotional and charged journey but we are stronger because our voices have been heard!
Feel free to drop Assemblymember Ma an email thanking her for all the revisions & amendments and asking for her support of electronic music events in the future. It is important that our legislators hear from us not only when we disagree, but also when they do the right thing.
We will continue to have monthly Save The Rave meetings as, unfortunately, there are always new issues so please get involved and participate! http://www.savetherave.org/join
We will continue to keep you updated via our e-mail list and Facebook group and page as well.
Thanks and we’ll see you on a dancefloor soon!
-Save The Rave
Save The Rave 