THE LGBT FOCUS GROUP

THE ASSOCIATION FOR THEATRE IN HIGHER EDUCATION

GRASSROOTS STATEMENT

Drafted April 26, 2006 by John Fletcher (primary author)

LGBT Grassroots Statement Subcommittee: Jen Danby (ex officio); J. Kevin Doolen; John Fletcher; Daniel-Raymond Nadon; Wendell Stone.

Final Draft prepared and approved by the subcommittee on May 22, 2006

Adopted by the LGBT Focus Group on June 16, 2006

RATIONALE

In response to concerns surrounding the conflict ATHE faced in San Francisco, 2005, about the site of our conference, our LGBT Focus Group voted to form a Focus Group subcommittee to investigate the conflict itself, and, through the drafting of an LGBT Focus Group Grassroots Statement, to clarify our Focus Group's stance vis-à-vis the relevant issues and to recommend guidelines for navigating future conflicts.

BACKGROUND

In the summer of 2005, UNITE HERE Local 2 called on visitors to boycott The Westin St. Francis, the site of ATHE's 2005 Conference.   A boycott represents the most serious level of protest UNITE HERE uses aside from a full strike.   By the time ATHE was aware of this situation, however, the organization was unable to escape its contract with the Westin St. Francis. (ATHE usually books the conference hotel two years in advance of the annual conference).   To break the contract with the hotel, as UNITE HERE urged ATHE to do, would have been to risk financial insolvency.   After much deliberation, research, and email polling of the membership, ATHE made the difficult choice to hold the conference at the Westin St. Francis as planned.  

Our Focus Group was not, and is not, of one mind about the decision to hold the conference at the Westin St. Francis.   Given the boycott by Local 2, some members felt that UNITE HERE's boycott should be supported and our conference cancelled or re-located.   These members rightly pointed out that UNITE HERE has proven itself especially amicable to LGBT equality issues.   According to the Harvey Milk Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Democratic Club in San Francisco, the UNITE HERE Local 2 was the first union in the country to secure domestic partner benefits for their workers and they successfully negotiated to get San Francisco hotels to donate to a fund for HIV/AIDS. Other members pointed out that much of ATHE's membership consists of people who themselves rely on professional unions and organizations (Equity, SAG, AAUP, etc.).

Still others in our group, while sympathetic to UNITE HERE, nevertheless supported the choice to preserve ATHE's financial survival by honoring the contract that was entered into prior to the boycott. Most of us were simply conflicted, recognizing that the circumstances offered no satisfactory options.  

During the conference, we all felt the effects of our communal disagreement.   Some of us stood with the protesting hotel workers or participated in agit-prop performances about workers' rights.   Some of us made arrangements to stay or meet elsewhere.   Others chose to remain at the Westin St. Francis.   In our actions, in our meetings, and in our conversations, all of us experienced first hand the complexity of the issues we faced.  

Though the LGBT Focus Group remains conflicted about the consequences of the decisions made, we are satisfied that ATHE's Governing Council and the 2005 Conference Committee acted in good faith and with admirable effort to navigate this unhappy situation.   Our statement, then, is not intended to mount criticisms of past decisions but to offer guideposts for future action.

STATEMENT OF SUPPORT

As LGBT persons, as theatre practitioners, and as academics, our Focus Group recognizes our indebtedness to, and affirms our solidarity with, grassroots efforts to work for justice and equality.   We particularly stress our basic support of workers and workers' organizations that strive for the rights, protections, and considerations due to workers as human beings in a liberal democratic society.

We note that, as a national organization, ATHE contributes to ongoing conversations and struggles about economic justice through its actions and public statements as well as through its inactions and its silences.   As members of ATHE's community, the LGBT Focus Group feels the right and responsibility to advocate, in general, that the organization as a whole move toward a more pronounced support for workers' rights.

We balance our support for workers' rights, however with the following realizations:

• ATHE's membership is diverse and that consensus on issues of employer-labor relations is not to be expected.
• Local political struggles--such as those between a specific employer and a branch of a union--are often complicated, demanding more than a default presumption of support for one side or another.
• Neither ATHE as a whole nor our Focus Group in particular is equipped to operate primarily as a lobbying mechanism for workers' rights.   ATHE's ability to research, devise, and enact initiatives related to workers' rights is limited by and ultimately incidental to our primary organizational goals.

RESOLUTION

In light of these points, and in light of the inevitability of future disagreements within our Focus Group and within ATHE as a whole, the LGBT Focus Group subcommittee submits the following observations and suggestions:

• As ATHE members, we affirm that we are citizens of the same community, bound by our common interests and passions as theatre artists and educators.
• As individual members of ATHE and as a Focus Group, we affirm our agency and responsibility in shaping the community that is ATHE. We recognize that ATHE's organizational structure affords multiple opportunities for members to create and revise its policies and positions.   We urge ATHE, and the LGBT Focus Group in particular, to continue to create, strengthen, and advertise these opportunities.   We urge ATHE's membership to take advantage of these opportunities for participation, recognizing that representation offers the best avenue to move the organization.  
• We affirm that ATHE's democratic process necessarily results in decisions that do not always represent a perfect consensus among all members.   We affirm that, in such situations, the will of the elected majority establishes the official position or action that ATHE as an organization is qualified to support. We recognize that ATHE cannot and should not be expected to endorse both majority and dissenting positions or actions simultaneously.   We affirm ATHE's right to clarify its own official positions as distinct from those of a dissenting minority.
• At the same time, we affirm the right and value of dissent from the majority.   We urge ATHE and the LGBT Focus Group to make every effort to afford dissenting voices a space to express their views respectfully.   We affirm the right for all members (including graduate student volunteers) to decline to participate in actions or stances they find ethically compromising.   We urge those who dissent to remain committed to participation within ATHE as a whole even as they disagree with a particular stance or action by the organization.  
• In light of the above, we urge all participants in communal discussions to act respectfully, operating under the presumption of mutual good will.  
• As a Focus Group of ATHE, we support ATHE's Vision Statement as articulated in ATHE's Strategic Plan 2005-2009: "An advocate for the field of theatre and performance in higher education, ATHE serves as an intellectual and artistic center for producing new knowledge about theatre and performance-related disciplines, cultivating vital alliances with other scholarly and creative disciplines, linking with professional and community-based theatres, and promoting access and equity."
• We support that in order for ATHE to realize its vision as an organization, ATHE needs to remain a fiscally sound organization. Further, as a Focus Group of ATHE, we support the need for the annual meeting to always take place.