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Favorite ThisWobble Women: Wormhole Cares and does Paige Rosenberg

Published: December 18, 2018

Editor's Note:

The Wobble Women series is back with more incredible women kicking ass behind the scenes in the bass music industry. If you have a suggestion of who we should profile next, please drop us a line at support@theuntz.com or post them up in The Untztoppable Facebook group.

By: Heather Hodder

Paige Rosenberg — Wormhole CaresWormhole Cares is the community-driven branch of Wormhole Entertainment and Wormhole Music Group. Focused on being a first response and safety outlet for fans and concertgoers at Wormhole Oakland events and beyond, Paige Rosenberg, 23, is Director, Outreach Coordinator, and Volunteer Organizer for Wormhole Cares.

Wormhole Music Group is a label from the fine folks that bring you Wormhole Wednesdays in Oakland, California. Their goal is to promote forward-thinking, next-level bass music sounds that defy genre and push boundaries. Wormhole artists include Secret Recipe and Phers—both of whom are on the lineup for the 2019 edition of The Untz Festival in Mariposa, California this June.

Sadly, Wormhole Wednesdays are ending. The team is reorganizing away from producing stacked, cutting-edge bass lineups on a grueling weekly basis, and moving towards a more traditional promotional organization that moves from venue to venue around the Bay Area, co-promoting and collaborating with other venues and teams with a more forgiving schedule. However, that doesn’t stop them from having two more Wednesday nights packed with music and free workshops on both nights on harm reduction and consent led by Rosenberg from Wormhole Cares.

Wormhole CaresThis Wednesday, December 19, join the crew 9pm to 2am at The New Parish in Oakland, CA for The Bamboo Bass Festival Pre-party featuring Stylust, SuDs, KOWTA back to back JLEON, Garde, Beat Kitty and more.

The final Wormhole Wednesday of 2018 will be on December 26, same time, same place, with Duffrey, Dastardly, Iggy B2B Shadow Spirit, Shwung B2B Tyler Jurich, and a whole slew of residents playing tag team sets. Get your tickets for the final hurrah!

Wormhole Cares started up March 2018 and is still going strong. The group’s role is multifaceted, as Rosenberg explains, “Wormhole Cares at events does more than educate and mitigate consent, harm reduction and inclusion. It provides a safe space for event attendees of all identities to feel welcome, comfortable and not alone.”

Paige Rosenberg — Zita Molnar PhotographyAfter many nights of going to Wormhole events, Rosenberg joined the Wormhole Street Team in June 2017. That July, she was asked by Morgan McCloud, who recognized her hard work and communication skills, to fill in for a door greeting spot that night for an EPROM show. After this night, she became regular, “I then worked a 2-hour door shift regularly from September 2017 to February 2018. I enjoyed welcoming attendees to Wormhole, an event I love with people I have come to regard as family— this weekly ritual many regulars engage in feels like going to family dinner every week, it’s so special.”

At the end of March, Rosenberg was brought in to help consult with Wormhole partners Benji Hannus, Gleb Tchertkov, and McCloud to start a Harm Reduction Group and discuss how this could be brought into events to both educate and be a resource to the community.

Wormhole CaresRaised in Thousand Oaks, California, Rosenberg has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for almost four years. She just completed her undergrad program at UC Berkeley, where she has used the educational resources to write the framework and mission statement of Wormhole Cares.

“I’ve attended workshops on consent, harm reduction, and inclusion/anti-discrimination every semester I’ve been part of the Berkeley Student Cooperative (BSC),” said Rosenberg, “Currently, I’ve attended 9 hours of workshops on each subject and have integrated these values as part of my life the past three-and-a-half years. I’m extremely grateful to have been thoroughly educated by the BSC and couldn’t be happier to spread this powerful dialogue to the bass community. I got resources from my friends who facilitate these workshops for the whole BSC community (17 co-ops and 1,250 students) and met with someone at the Gender Equity center on my campus. I went through their educational material and then wrote the Wormhole Cares mission statement. I printed copies and had them at our table that night,” explained Rosenberg.

Paige RosenbergCombining her studies, experience and initiative, Rosenberg came up with a plan of action, ideas for mini workshops, signage, and the framework of Wormhole Cares (the name was envisioned by her, too). Her initiative was admired so much by the Wormhole partners that they asked her to be director of Wormhole Cares. Yes, dear readers, she did all of the work pouring her heart and soul into the foundation of Wormhole Cares, before she was even named Director.

Rosenberg doesn’t try to underestimate the importance of this experience, instead she emphasizes empowerment, that she may be helping empower other women and anyone that felt without a voice before. Rosenberg stayed, “Throughout this journey, I remember how empowering it has felt to be regarded for my intellect as a young person and as a woman. Wormhole does not operate through gender, instead they recognize individual contributions; it is not identities of the individual, they just see the individual. So, I have been lucky that gender has not affected my work and contributions for Wormhole.”

As for advice to other women potentially facing roadblocks or gender issues in the workplace, Rosenberg recommends women to “Recognize your empowerment and not your vulnerability; it’s all about perspective. Perspective is powerful, it changes how you approach and handle challenges, tasks, schoolwork, and social interactions. You have the right to declare your safety and call-out non-consensual actions—and this is beyond a sexual context because consent is applied in all situations. If someone makes you feel uncomfortable, you do not have an obligation to talk to them and you don’t need to apologize about it. You are not vulnerable, you are powerful.”

Every Wormhole Wednesday since March 28 2018, Paige Rosenberg sets up the Wormhole Cares booth that provides a safe space for everyone. This month, the organization offers free workshops on related topics before each show. With purchase of your ticket, you get free admission to the workshop. Maybe you go for the free earplugs or maybe you go to listen and learn, Wormhole Cares accepts everyone.

Paige RosenbergHow Paige Rosenberg went from door volunteer on Wormhole Wednesdays to Director among other many hats of Wormhole Cares is inspiring. At 23, she has taken on a great deal of leadership for any young person. Staying in gratitude has helped her remain modest. Considering if things went differently, she is a pediatric cancer survivor, her life could have been over before she even reached double digits.

Rosenberg emphasized why she remains motivated: “Gratitude—it’s my perspective through which I see the world and live my life. This is because I am not supposed to be alive. When I was two, after being misdiagnosed at five different hospitals, I survived the deadliest type of pediatric cancer and a rare brain disorder that affects one in ten million. I was not supposed to live and if I did, due to the projected neurological damage, I would be disabled mentally and physically. However, my life has remarkably been the exact opposite. For as long as I can remember, I have been a public speaker for the hospital that saved my life (The Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles) as one of their miracle stories.”

Paige RosenbergRosenberg also has a deep connection to the topics of consent and safety. She suffered a concussion in June of 2016; a traumatic event further exacerbated because her consent and safety were violated. Rosenberg emphasizes that she wants to “prevent that from happening to anyone else; this is another driving force behind my passion for this work. Advice I learned from my personal experience with this topic matter: it is okay to be hurting, but don’t live in that hurting—focus on your blessings instead of your misfortunes; the former will bring you positivity, while the latter will cause you to be stuck in your pain.”

The importance of education on harm reduction is hard to dispute. Every year, too many people get seriously injured, or even pass away, from preventable causes. Many of these instances occur when people don’t speak up, whether they’re afraid of getting in trouble with the authorities or even their friends, when people do not have a safe space to discuss issues, tragedy may ensue.

One of Rosenberg’s defining features is taking tragedy and becoming stronger, embracing her differences and looking at the uniqueness of others.

According to Rosenberg, “your uniqueness is your most powerful tool. The characteristics and experiences that make you different from the ‘norm’ have pressure to make you dislike or disregard those aspects, but those aspects are what make each of us special. I knew growing up that being on a different maturity level from my peers due to serious health experiences bothered me, I hated the 6-inch scar across my stomach (I had looked into scar removal services) and disliked what made me ‘special’ because I wanted to be ‘normal.’ When I was 16 and stopped comparing myself to peers and started embracing my uniqueness, I began to love myself more, was my own best friend, and my badass scar of survival became my favorite feature.”

CoalesceCan’t make it out to the final Wormhole Wednesdays? Don’t despair. Wormhole Cares goes on. Stay up to date with all future Wormhole Cares activities perhaps for NYE 2019 and beyond. Stay connected through their Facebook page.

“For 2019, ideas I’ve had that I’m looking forward to manifesting are organizing large-group community service events for the Wormhole community, developing educational handbills, and gaining the 501c3 non-profit organization status,” said Rosenberg.

If you want to volunteer for Wormhole Cares, find out more information or just want to reach out, emails can be sent to: ​harmreductionwormhole@gmail.com​.

Additionally, Wormhole Oakland will once again host its own late-night stage at The Untz Festival this summer. If you miss the last December Wormhole Wednesday shows, catch many of these artists in June including Duffrey, SuDs, Phers (managed by Izzy Shere, who we featured as a wobble woman not too long ago) and Secret Recipe, the DJ moniker of Benji Hannus.

“I’m stoked to curate Wormhole Cares' first festival appearance! I envision expanding what the current booth has been to encompass couches and more to create a safe, welcoming, and comfortable space for event attendees to go to during the festival.”

Wormhole Entertainment and The Untz will also be part of NYE 2019 “Coalesce with Cosmic Synergy” which you can find more info about here on The Untz.


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