AST Convention - petition to change the location

[navane]

Originally Posted by ASTalumna06

No offense taken to the bold! Financially, this would hurt AST more than it would hurt Georgia.

I didn't intend for that comment to be a specific commentary or slight to AST - I'm glad you received it in the way I intended. It's just that these huge entities have so many convention customers that one is a drop in the bucket. This would be especially difficult for a smaller organization.

Now, in the other example that we just saw, Alpha Phi Alpha was able to financially and logistically absorb the costs of moving their event. I doubt that the State of Arizona was too upset by that; but, the men of Alpha Phi Alpha were able to live their values and their conscience.

As I mentioned, there are companies and organizations with a lot more money than us that are pulling out of the state and refusing to do business there. For example, this story just hit the news yesterday: https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Culture/a...ry?id=63188842

AST is not Amazon, nor do we have Amazon money, and we certainly wouldn't make the national news if we moved our Convention. However, I think stories like this are where some people get the idea and motivation to also try and make a large statement.

This move by Amazon is a bunch of fluff and hot air. So, they're not going to film their online TV show in Georgia? Big deal. They admit that they were only just scouting for locations and Georgia hadn't even been selected yet. There are a million and one other places to film their internet TV show. The show is new, with no episodes, and no one has even heard of it. Yawn. Now, if Amazon wanted to take a real stand, they could say that they will no longer ship any of their Amazon products to the State of Georgia.

Oh wait.....that would cost them a lot of money.

I'm sure people have their own reasons for signing the petition, but I wonder if it's more so "Let's hurt them where it counts" or "We're a women's organization and should not force sisters to travel to a state where they may feel their rights are being trampled". Perhaps it's a little of both. But as has been stated, not everyone is going to be happy either way.

And this is where I get stuck on issues. We should stick to the core values of the organization to the best of our ability and advocate from that position. However, some topics are obviously rooted in an organization's values and some are not as clear.