How we got here…
In 2020, amidst a transnational reckoning with the enduring brutality of anti-Black white supremacy, Dhamma Dena committed to and received a substantial grant to support BIPOC leadership and programming at the center.
This initiated a massive effort, bringing new teachers, Board members, and students to the center, establishing trust with communities frequently excluded from US Buddhist institutions, and creating conditions to holistically support BIPOC teachers and practitioners. Dhamma Dena has increasingly become a refuge for Black, Indigenous, people of color, disabled, immigrant, trans, feminist and queer practitioners and teachers. We are the sangha who animate and resource this space, and we would like leadership that reflects us.
In May 2025, the existing Board held a special meeting in which they voted off one member and voted on the spouse of another, effectively shifting from a majority QTBIPOC Board to a majority straight, white Board in which two out of three members are married. This new Board member was added while our qualified BIPOC, disabled and trans sangha members who had applied were turned down.
Shortly following this shift in Board membership, in June 2025, the Board initiated a formal pause on programming, and emailed all scheduled retreat teachers, saying their retreats were no longer approved and that they could submit a proposal for their retreat to the new Board. Many of the teachers chose not to continue teaching at Dhamma Dena in response to this email, leaving the beloved QTBIPOC retreats off the calendar.
This new Board configuration has not affirmed their intention to carry forward the 2020 commitment to BIPOC leadership, which threatens to reverse the last five years of that vision, during which time Dhamma Dena became a center with majority BIPOC teacher-led retreats and majority BIPOC retreatants in 2024 and 2025, while still offering most retreats open to all.
In response to these changes, we held a community-wide sangha meeting in June 2025, where the Board was asked to open seats to new Board members and affirm their commitment to BIPOC and Queer leadership and programming. At the time, there were two queer trans BIPOC long-term community members who had submitted active applications. The Board said they would consider this and respond within two weeks; they did not. Subsequently, we reached out and asked if they would be willing to open the board, they said “no for now,” and that they needed more time.
March 2026: Call to Action
Eight months have gone by and the Board has not communicated any updates on a timeline or process for opening up the Board. Two weeks ago Dhamma Dena’s two staff members sent in a letter outlining the unacceptable labor conditions under which they have been working, and stated their intended resignation unless there is movement to a member-elected board.
The existing board responded by removing the staff from access to the shared drive and accounts and replied again saying they needed more time. They did not attend the meeting that they had scheduled, which the staff had asked to use to discuss the possibility of a member-elected Board.
It is clear from numerous statements, actions and inactions made by the three current Board members that they are not capable of holding dissonance and diversity, of being in genuine relationship with the full breadth of the sangha, and of leading Dhamma Dena as a truly multicultural center that includes all of us.
We are thus calling on the entire Dhamma Dena sangha community and friends to sign this petition for a member-elected board.
