Protest of AIC Meeting in Denver

Terry Belanger once said that you always do the second most important
thing you need to do.  So, being in a procrastinating mode, I thought I
would add my two cents to recent distlist discussions.

For the record, Denver was among the Colorado cites that defeated
Amendment 2.  By withholding business from Denver a message is sent, but
is is sent to the most appropriate place? (I'm just asking this
question--I'm not sure).  By keeping revenue out of Colorado, we can
potentially make the point that prejudice has economic ramifications.

When organizations contemplate meeting sites, one of the issues that
should certainly be considered is whether or not the membership will
feel comfortable attending a meeting in a location where portions of
that membership are not regarded or treated equitably-- be it for
religious, ethnic, racial or sexual preference reasons.

Decisions where to hold meetings are as likely to be as political as
they are economic -- whether or not we chose to acknowledge this
reality.  It is not necessarily politically "incorrect" for AIC to go to
Denver as originally planned.  Denver was supported as a meeting site
prior to election day, so we can assume that Denver has something to
offer.  When we consider that AIC has already committed a significant
sum of membership money in preparation for this meeting, it may be more
a disservice to its membership to make changes for a meeting that is not
far off.

What we can do is meet in Denver, but let the Chamber of Commerce, the
Hotel, and other portions of the business sector know how we feel about
this issue.  Let them know they are getting our business now, but may
not be getting business in the future, and why.  Members can try to keep
our expenditures to a minimum-- no additional purchases, no extra
shopping sprees.  Let's face it, money talks, and that may be the only
way to make biased individuals take a second look.

Hopefully, this issues will stimulate some discussion at AIC.  For those
who think its hard to get a handful of conservators to agree on
anything, this could prove to be a very lively discussion.  I would be
very interested to know how the American Library Association is handling
this issue--they meet in Denver in January.

Hilary Kaplan
Georgia Department of Archives and History

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                  Conservation DistList Instance 6:31
                 Distributed: Sunday, December 6, 1992
                        Message Id: cdl-6-31-008
                                  ***