[URBANTH-L]AAA 2005 and 2006

[Robert T. O'Brien]

Hey, all.

Just wanted to post some thoughts about the upcoming 
conferences.

As you all probably know, the 2005 meeting in DC is going to 
happen with no labor issues (at least none directly related 
to us and the use of the hotels -- the copy editing of the 
journals is another story). I'd like to know if folks going 
to DC might like to plan something to get report backs on 
what's been going on over the past several months and to work 
together to move labor issues further within the AAA. Please 
email me offlist if you are interested and/or have 
suggestions.

Regarding 2006, the Executive Board has finished contracts to 
move our meetings from San Francisco -- site of the ongoing 
MEG hotel union-busting efforts -- to San Jose. Paul Nutti 
(AAA Internal, External, and Gov't Relations Department) has 
written a press release and posted this on the AAA site: 
<http://www.aaanet.org/press/pr_2006annmtg.htm>. 

As you may know, this move was supported by the Labor 
Relations Commission. We looked at the possibility of ongoing 
labor problems in San Francisco and found that they were 
highly likely. We then examined alternative locations with an 
eye towards both a good meeting and good labor relations and 
made suggestions to the EB.

We are now the fourth group to move our 2005 or 2006 meeting 
in San Francisco. The American Sociological Association, the 
Organization of American Historians, and the American 
Political Science Association moved out of San Fran 
altogether. The American Educational Research Association is 
remaining in San Francisco, but has moved all of its events 
to the Moscone Center, which is not involved in the dispute.

I'm looking forward to an exciting meeting in DC. I hope to 
meet with many of you there.

Rob

****************************************
"Neither we nor our most distant decendants will build the New Jerusalem or the Garden of Eden; but we have, if we choose it, the pleasure of clearing the ground, hoping that one day other hands will cultivate something more like a garden -- a flawed and human garden, under sun, clouds, fog, and rain, with our own ants and slugs and weevils, but alive with our own raspberry  bushes, too, our weeping cherries and roses, our own vines, and our own fig trees."
-- Michael Steinberg, _The Fiction of a Thinkable World_

Robert T. O'Brien 
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Anthropology 
Temple University 
robrien at temple.edu 
215-803-5181

AAAUnite Ad Hoc Committee
http://AAAUnite.blogspot.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aaaunite/