PLEASE READ, ESPECIALLY FOR THOSE PLANNING EVENTS INCLUDING YOUTH!…read more
Crushing Colonialism, a nonprofit based in DC, used Washington Talent Agency (WTA) for two nights full of major international hybrid in-person and livestream events in May and June 2025. They made promises they couldn't keep and the quality of work was awful. They were horrendous at communication. The worst incident that occurred was p0rn being played by some hateful viewers during our live stream because they didn't follow our instructions to deny mic, camera, and chat access for viewers.
The person we originally spoke with, Sam, seemed incredibly friendly and excited to support our organization. He said that they could do the work that we required and they worked with our very limited budget. We were so excited to move forward with WTA.
We hired them to do photography, videography, and hybrid/live-streaming during two nights of international events. We had many higher level needs that were clearly expressed to them in numerous meetings, emails, and contracts, which included zooming in a couple or speakers, spotlighting ASL interpreters in the live stream, playing films in the zoom livestream as opposed to a camera fixed on the screen in the theater, and ensuring that viewers were easily able to access our language interpreters. They did almost none of this.
They were also supposed to give us a high-quality video copy of the events and they didn't. We had to spend a great deal on an editor who could only correct so much. There were plans to use some of the footage for a documentary and WTA knew that. Their volume settings were incorrect in the zoom so people watching the zoom weren't able to hear things properly at the higher quality the in-person audience experienced. The photographer was pretty good, but there were so many photos that weren't taken during one night of performances. Our organization and the communities we serve have been denied an important part of our archival efforts to preserve our culture.
The person assigned to our event wouldn't respond to anyone's emails or phone calls, including our language coordinator, who said that the primary reason we had so many problems with language access during the event was because WTA wouldn't respond to emails. As a result, the required coordination between all parties didn't occur.
BUT THE WORST is that they didn't set the zoom link to private for the viewing public, despite being told repeatedly that they had to do this for fear of hate speech or other inappropriate and harmful actions occurring. Well, that happened, including people playing p0rn in the livestream. Our events included youth. No one at WTA had the decency to contact anyone at the organization after this happened. I had to contact Sam and tell him everything that went wrong, including his person making some rude and unprofessional comments about our event, including that he told others at WTA to not accept our event.
I asked for a 50% refund, which frankly we should've been given a full refund since they didn't meet their contractual obligation and caused significant harm to online event viewers and our organization's reputation. But Sam refused to even ask his boss.
Not only did they rip us off and mistreat us, but we're still heartbroken regarding how much our communities lost because of their incompetence, carelessness, and awful behavior.