Please read this statement from the chair of Seattle Worldcon 2025 regarding the convention's response to the current political situation in the U.S. https://seattlein2025.org/?p=3420
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Thank you for this statement! Also re: The Situation, we need to SERIOUSLY consider making the con mandatory-masking as much as possible. Trump Admin's pro-disease policies mean we can't predict which disease(s) we’ll need to be masking against–we’ll be lucky if it’s just COVID.
Exactly! Seattle concom repeating some dark history with 'go online' advice to world fandom. Asking us to sit quietly at back of bus so that American fans don't have to sacrifice in-person con is NOT what solidarity looks like.
Once more: it ain't a 'worldcon' if only Americans can safely attend.
Leaving aside the ethics of segregated convention, @seattlein2025.org, will you refund in full the memberships paid by those fans who can't safely attend in person? Including, obviously, all non-US fans.
I'd strongly encourage the committee to engage with the offices of Senators Cantwell and Murray to compile a list of steps and recommendations for those who still want to attend in person to help secure visas and minimize the chance of bad encounter.
And I understand that we may not be able to make it safe for anyone to attend from outside the U.S. -- but at least make our elected representatives do something.
It's important to understand this isn't an LGBTQ problem, it's everyone entering the US from abroad's problem. CBP Officers now have to meet quotas of deportations, and if they decide that you are 'Working' at a Convention, or even just find anti-Trump stuff on your social, you can go into detention
And no, it's not just being sent back on the next plane. You go into detention with everyone else selected to meet today's quota. And then likely moved to a different detention centre in another state for weeks. And all of them are overcrowded hell holes, and you will leave with pneumonia or worse.
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https://deepcuts.blog/2021/06/19/jim-crow-science-fiction-and-worldcon/
Once more: it ain't a 'worldcon' if only Americans can safely attend.
How familiar.