... "But some of us are brave." :: NWSA and the GA Boycott of HB 87

... "But some of us are brave."

Sisters, these are the moments when we are called, not only to be brave, but to be bold in doing so.

Today is the anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, when transgender women of color led the fight against unjust police repression and surveillance of trans and queerfolk in Greenwich Village, New York City.

Today, courageous youth and young people "came out" in the Georgia City Capitol and in the streets near the Gold Dome. They have come out as undocumented and unafraid, as has Jose Vargas, the queer Filipino Pulitzer Prize winning journalist formerly with the Washington Post, in the New York Times and last night on the Maddow Show.

This fight, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, is against the re-institution of Jim Crow legislation in the South and throughout the nation. The target is "migrant"-looking people right now - that means many of us, our families, loved ones, communities.

And if not now, history shows that unjust means of surveillance and state-sponsored violence often start off with a test population and then expand the technology to the general population once the technology of repression is honed and ready to be implemented at scale. That's the rest of us.

History shows that the impacts on women of color in these kinds of times can particularly inhumane: women have had their children taken from them and put under CPS even as they are put into deportation proceedings.

A woman who called the local police in a DV case found herself put under deportation proceedings. There are several documented such cases across the U.S.

When we look back, will we, NWSA, have stood against fear and hatred, or will we have done nothing in the name of financial expediency and procedural ease?

I urge us to begin and continue, publicly, the deeper process necessary to be able for us to honor the boycott of HB87 and to stand with love and justice, now, and in the future.

* * * * *

To summarize a few hours of research, here are some of the options thus far, most of which have not yet been explored, to the best of our collective knowledge:

I sent this list of options in a different version of this email to the NWSA Staff and Governing Council and have not received any reply, so I am posting it publicly.

Additional resources for moving the conference:

Other conferences that moved from Arizona last year:

* MALCS

* and a good 50 or so organizations who have said that they will not go to AZ as long as SB 1070 is on the books. http://altoarizona.com/az-boycott.html

 

Other conferences that moved their conference for another reason:

* American Studies Association (San Antonio, TX) - to honor a labor boycott of the hotel

 

What happened to a conference that didn't move AND didn't treat their membership with respect when asked:

* American Bar Association (bad publicity for the Association AND for the hotel: this has been used successfully in other conference negotiations to convince a hotel to allow an organization to break the contract without losing the deposit)

 

INMEX: www.inmex.com

* INMEX is a social justice event planning service that helps organizations negotiate contracts that can be re-negotiated in the event of labor, environmental and social justice boycotts; started by some folks who used to work with UNITE HERE. We (NWSA) could contact INMEX and ask for help. In addition, I would offer that NWSA could consider always using INMEX in the future.

Current organizations honoring the GA Boycott: http://www.wearegeorgia.org/action-center/boycott-signon-supporters/

 

Paulina Hernandez (Southerners on New Ground, one of the lead organizations calling for the boycott and Somos Georgia) and Lisbeth Gomez. Email: paulina@southernersonnewground.org

 

We can do this! We must.

 

If in good faith, NWSA has exhausted all the above options after carefully exploring and considering them, and only then finds that we cannot move the conference, the community organizers and many of us would be down to help NWSA make the conference a true support to the many multi-layered struggles happening in Georgia and the region, in principled, just, loving, brave and bold ways.

 

In sisterhood, love and justice,

Diana Pei Wu, PhD

Antioch University Los Angeles

Posted via email from Decolonizing Environmentalism