[URBANTH-L]AES conference statement

[Idasusser at aol.com]

Statement of the Board of the American Ethnological Society on the 
Lockout of Local 2 UNITE/HERE at the San Francisco Hilton and the 
Decision of the AAA Executive Board to Relocate the 2004 Annual Meeting

October 24, 2004

The  Board of the American Ethnological Society has unanimously agreed 
that we will not participate in a conference that crosses picket lines. 
We believe that expressing our solidarity with the locked-out members 
of Local 2 in San Francisco will have broad national implications, and 
will contribute to the struggle for the welfare of working people.

We appreciate that the AAA Executive Board has acted under 
extraordinary pressure as it has attempted to respond to a rapidly 
changing situation, that the membership of the Association is divided 
over many issues that have emerged very rapidly in the past week, and 
that every option available to the Association entails serious costs 
and risks both for the Association as a whole and for many members as 
individuals.  We hope to be able to assist in efforts to reduce or 
eliminate the costs of these changes to our student, unemployed, and 
underemployed members.

Collectively, as a board, we have significant reservations about the 
Executive Board's decision to move the 2004 meeting to a non-union 
Hilton property in Atlanta, and we will be issuing a formal response to 
this decision in the near future. Individually, many of us have already 
decided we will not attend the meeting rescheduled and relocated at the 
Atlanta Hilton. However, even as we will be working to formulate an 
official position on what to do with the AES-sponsored sessions 
scheduled for the meeting, we believe it has become a matter of urgent 
importance that fair labor practice must now become a priority 
consideration for the planning of all future Association and section 
meetings.  We hold ourselves and the Association accountable for having 
neglected this issue in the past.
    
We urge our colleagues to join us in an effort to ensure that the 
discipline of anthropology practices the same ethical standards in its 
professional culture as it demands of each of its members in their 
individual scholarly work.

For ongoing information on the union demands and negotiations, updates 
to the AES Board's position, news from other sections, and to join an 
interactive discussion open to all members of the AAA, please visit the 
AES website at http://www.AESonline.org.

Matti Bunzl
Virginia Dominguez
Aaron Fox
Kenneth George
Hugh Gusterson
Ralph Litzinger
Catherine Lutz
Ida Susser
Mayfair Yang
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