Go, Read: Heidi MacDonald On HeroesCon And Non-Compliance

There's a nicely done, old-fashioned link-heavy survey post over at The Beat, posted yesterday, about HeroesCon 2016 taking place under the shadow of that state's noxious anti-LGBT legislation. Other than Joe Harris' statements a few months back I don't recall any professional deciding not to go in protest of that legislation -- my apologies if I'm excluding someone or not fully up to date on that.

This kind of thing is tough for comics. Comics isn't fueled by commerce as much as the aspirations and desires of its core communities with commercial goals kind of folded into the general package. It's really easy for that self-direction of various desires, their management and facilitation, to lurch into self-absorption and self-justification and for stands to be avoided or explained away in the face of challenges to that personal progression no matter how the individual views an issue in abstract. I fully respect anyone that doesn't want to participate in a fucked-up system, or a system that's acting fucked up, even as much as I believe from personal experience that a boycott is best understood as a focused strategy with set goals and not a perpetual framework that affords a personal buy-in on one's own time. That's me, though. Others disagree. I respect a variety of engaged choices in matters like this, and believe, perhaps naively, that if enough folks are making informed decisions with force and clarity change tends to follow even if they're not all the same informed decision. Some social constructs are dragons to be slain, while others are an imposition of order that ordinary people can stare down and wear out as fearful, medieval bullshit with little relation to life as it should be lived in the 21st century.

I'm pulling two things out of this article. One is that Equality NC seems to be the group that is the focus of related t-shirt sales and special editions, and benefited from last night's opening party. I would hope people in attendance might look into direct support as well, perhaps a donation matching some element of their trip (the state sales tax, for instance, is just under five percent). Two is that I hope anyone visiting who alters anything about their HeroesCon weekend because of this -- by not going, by reducing expenditures, by doing Charlotte-only expenditures, by making payment or doing work on behalf of any group -- will communicate these actions and their reasons to that state's governor's office, and/or an advocacy group and/or a newspaper, even, as you are a valued customer of that state and what you say should have some pull.
 
posted 12:25 am PST | Permalink
 

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