[Eg-oversight-board] North Carolina and the LGBT Community

[Galen Charlton]

Hi,

On Thu, Mar 31, 2016 at 10:48 AM, Grace Dunbar <gdunbar at esilibrary.com> wrote:
> I'd love to do something similar but since we don't have a mission
> statement (?!?!) that details our support of free software, our
> encouragement of diversity, an our general code of conduct for
> the project... I think we'd have to take a slightly different tack
> in our statement.

I agree with Grace that the EOB should consider adopting a broader
statement of the project's core values. In the short term, I suggest
that the EOB consider issuing a statement along these lines:

_BEGIN_
Per the Evergreen Event Code of Conduct
[https://evergreen-ils.org/code-of-conduct/], Evergreen event
organizers are dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for
everyone, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, disability,
physical appearance, body size, race, or religion. We do not tolerate
harassment of event participants in any form.

It is now important to reemphasize that committment.

In particular, the Evergreen Oversight Board is disappointed that the
North Carolina General Assembly has chosen to pass legislation that
nullifies city ordinances that protect LGBT individuals from
discrimination, including one such ordinance passed by the Raleigh
City Council. Since the 2016 Evergreen Conference is to be held in
Raleigh, the Oversight Board is taking the following steps to protect
conference attendees:

* We are working with the conference venue and hotels to ensure that
their staff and organizations will not discriminate on the basis of
gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, physical
appearance, body size, race, or religion.
* We are informing the conference venue that had House Bill 2 been in
effect during the conference site selection period last year, the
Evergreen Project would not have chosen Raleigh.
* The Evergreen Conference will refund in full registrations from
individuals who feel that they can no longer safely attend the
conference.
_END_

I also suggest to the EOB that the code of conduct be updated to
replace the two instances of the word "gender" with "gender, gender
identity and expression".

Regards,

Galen
-- 
Galen Charlton
Infrastructure and Added Services Manager
Equinox Software, Inc. / Open Your Library
email:  gmc at esilibrary.com
direct: +1 770-709-5581
cell:   +1 404-984-4366
skype:  gmcharlt
web:    http://www.esilibrary.com/
Supporting Koha and Evergreen: http://koha-community.org &
http://evergreen-ils.org