IBARW 4: Carl Brandon Society founding letter

[oyceter]

At Wiscon this year, Victor Raymond passed around copies of a letter the nascent Carl Brandon Society wrote to the Wiscon ConCom... on May 27, 1999.

http://carlbrandon.org/wiki/index.php/Founding_Letter

I meant to type this up for the letter's ten-year anniversary, but haven't until now. I'll also upload a PDF version of the letter sometime during the week.

Ten years, people. TEN YEARS.

And POC are still being ogled at and made to feel unwelcome.

Yes, there's been progress, but there still needs to be much more.

Comments

[daedala]

*sadface*

The appalling thing is that Wiscon is one of the very few concoms that is actually getting these complaints. Some volunteer concom person said somewhere something like, "I've never heard anything about issues here!" and I wanted to jump up and down and scream, "Then NOT ONLY DOES YOUR CON HAVE ISSUES BECAUSE WE ALL DO, YOU'RE NOT TRUSTWORTHY ENOUGH TO BE TOLD ABOUT THEM."

Which is, you know, not necessarily that bad -- most people in positions of power aren't trustworthy enough to be told about things -- but just do not congratulate yourself on how well you're doing just because you've never heard you're doing it wrong. :(

[daedala]

Er, what I meant by "not necessarily that bad" was "not necessarily unusually bad." I didn't mean to minimize the problem.

[oyceter]

Yeah, sigh. I feel like I go through life with such a low bar for people, and yet, most of the time, so many organizations don't even get across that bar!

[daedala]

Right! It is such a low bar! Why NOT step over it?

Instead of saying over and over, There is no bar.

[chomiji]

I'm praying and praying that the Verb Noire team and other POC have a better experience at WorldCon this week, but I'm also terribly fearful that they won't.

[oyceter]

Me too, although I am guessing there will be a lot of shenanigans going around.