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Please include this in the newsletter as well:
STATEMENT FROM THE VICE PRESIDENT, Mera Babineaux
For the last 3 1/2 years, I have been a member of the ICG, serving the last 2 1/2 as Vice President, a position that I volunteered to fill in 2017.
When I first spoke to Phil Gust about the Vice President position, I explained that I had a lot of interest in helping the guild grow. I wanted to help bring in members and chapters and find ways to reach out to the vast networks of Costumers and Cosplayers online and create more benefits to attract them to join the organization. I was also very excited to try to find ways to increase the amount of photographs and videos for the archives, because it is my personal opinion that they are one of the most important things about this organization through preserving a photographic history of the visual and living art of costuming. Once I was elected, I set to work on that goal.
The first time I met Marianne was at a park in Northern Virginia. It was between our respective homes and so I drove 3 hours up and she drove 3 hours down so that we could meet in person and discuss ideas after we were elected. Her little ones played while we discussed PR, existing committees, the guidelines, and toss around ideas. We agreed it was important to bring in new members and chapters, and do what we could to see the archives grow and get back online, and, that the guidelines needed to be updated.
2 and 1/2 years later, those were still the same goals for me and Marianne.
The first year was a lot of listening to people. Learning about what the members thought the ICG was and talking with non-members to get their opinions on the guild. I found that there were a lot of misconceptions of what the ICG is from members and non-members alike. I realized that we are an organization with an identity problem, and suggested that we work to remedy that.
The second year was a lot of watching nothing happen. To be fair, that wasn’t much different than the first year, but the first year I was busier because I was researching and talking with Marianne about ideas regularly. In October of 2018, Marianne and I realized that no one was going to get motivated to get more involved in the International guild (obviously chapters were active, but committees had gone silent) unless we led the way and tried to get members interested in a conversation. We already had the ideas, so we decided to present those ideas at CostumeCon in the hopes that it would begin a conversation with the members and the BoD. We called it a “5 Year Plan” and made a PowerPoint presentation. In the process of making the presentation, I looked at all of the profit and loss statements on the website and was very confused by the large differences in expenditures. I hoped that someone could explain them to me when we presented that part of the presentation at the annual meeting at CostumeCon in Boston this year.
But we never actually got to give the presentation. Only a few slides in, we were derailed by procedural objections, calls on the parliamentarian, and other interruptions. The plan sat abandoned on a thumb drive held by the recording secretary until it was uploaded to Slack in July. The content of the plan has still, to this day, never been discussed.
Marianne and I had also heard from a lot of members and non-members in those first two years, including 2 guidelines committees, that there were updates needed to the guidelines document. We took the suggestions of those committees (which were documented in the previous years’ annual meeting minutes), and added in their suggestions including non-discrimination language and moved some sections around for better flow, and created safety suggestions for large costumes. We also edited the grammar and tense shifts to make it a more professional document. It was uploaded and distributed to the BoD Yahoo group prior to CostumeCon. While we had hoped that it would be what the BoD and members wanted, it was tabled at the annual meeting to discuss further.
I spent the rest of CostumeCon being treated like an outsider without a clue, including being educated for 8 hours by Betsy Marks and Carole Parker over night into the wee hours of the morning on all the personalities I had offended and all of the long history of controversy I had just brought up again.
I had hoped that, once I got home, the lists would be active with conversations about the ideas in the 5 year plan and the guidelines, but again, nothing happened. If people were talking, it wasn’t on the lists or to me and Marianne. After almost 6 months of no discussion, in September, I made a motion to adopt the guidelines with the non-discrimination language, and all hell broke loose.
Now, as a side note, I am the mother of 5 genetically disabled children, and, in addition to all the costuming and production design that my husband and I do professionally, I’m also very active in Virginia as an educational and disabilities advocate. I’ve worked with parents, children, legislators, schools, and organizations to try and help special needs children in my state for almost 15 years. I was excited about what the ICG represented: a community of costumers and Cosplayers that promote fun and education through costuming. My kids learned functional skills and made so many friends through costuming at conventions and doing little crafting workshops with other kids when they were in the hospital, that I thought it would be awesome to bring those worlds together. The Mini Mighty Munchkin Cosplayers started 11 years ago when my children began getting the kids they met in hospitals to costume with them so they had something to do while they were in the hospital. I thought ICG would be a great place for these next generation costumers to create and learn and get involved.
Virginia also has a large community of costumers outside of the Northern Virginia area which is served by NOVA and GCFCG on the Maryland side. I travel around the state regularly and started working to attract some of these costumers to the ICG and began to help them form chapters. Earlier this month, 3 of those chapters in Roanoke, Richmond, and Tidewater submitted applications to be approved as ICG chapters, representing 33 new members, including some of the Mini Mighty Munchkin Cosplayers.
Now, prior to that, after the motion to adopt the guidelines, all hell broke loose on the BoD list. I didn’t expect it, but in hindsight I suppose I probably should have. Byron made a very good point in the beginning of the whole spiral; all of this has happened before, and happens every 5 to 10 years. A cursory review of those conversations available online over the last 40 years, and the oral history of long time members, shows that the same people object to any new idea or possible change unless they are specifically involved in drafting it or proposing it. And it happened again, and this time I was the target of their objections as was the material in the guidelines update. The process was mired in procedural stonewalling, just as the attempt to present the 5 year plan had been. It is very well documented in Yahoo Groups and Slack who made the objections and sought to derail any conversation from occurring, and so rehashing the nasty vitriol of the events that have unfolded since September is unnecessary, and I would invite you all to go read it for yourselves.
Suffice it to say that moving the guidelines back to committee wasn’t enough to stop the campaign that these individuals brought to stop any and all conversation on the ideas and issues that are before the board at this time. Marianne and I asked for the financials, as the budget is being drafted and proposed, and uncovered a tax question. This brought even more angst and anger. Thankfully, our treasurer still looked into the issues and was able to give and get information that appears to have resolved them, but the process was once again mired in vitriol. Then Yahoo re-announced it was closing its groups and the same anger towards the move to Slack reached mind-numbing heights. In the hopes of diffusing some of these issues I made apologies to the individuals that were upset for any part I had played in their ire, but it did nothing to end the onslaught of tirades and hurt feelings. And it continues now, even as I write this email, because 3 chapters and 33 members that I helped to bring together to join the ICG have now been objected to by the representatives from GCFCG and Northern Lights and stand accused of being seat fillers in some grand sinister plot that Marianne and I have supposedly created to push a vote on a presentation that we hoped to present and discuss, but were never allowed to. Let me be clear, there is no vote occurring or current motion to vote planned on the 5 year plan, and there never will be under my tenure as your Vice President... because I am stepping down from the position effective November 15, 2019.
Marianne and I have been accused of attempting to be dictators and overthrow the BoD by mandating our ideas. Obviously, this is hyperbole and misdirection as nothing can be done to change any of our documents or start new projects or ideas without a vote of the ICG members or board.
We have been verbally assaulted, harassed, and have even received blackmail email from a member who thinks that our ideas should be shamed in the public forum for the ICG until we are unceremoniously drummed out of the organization. Our ethics and morals have been questioned and we have endured keyboard assaults tantamount to character assassination and defamation, including libel and, presumably as conversations occur offline, slander. We have watched good people endure gas lighting in an attempt to manipulate their understanding of our intentions, and have endured an onslaught of flaming posts that could not have withstood 10000SPF sunscreen.
We are both emotionally and mentally exhausted, and all of the energy we brought to these positions and hope to do good things for the organization has been drained.
To the good people who hoped to affiliate their chapters as the Blue Ridge Costuming Society, Old Dominion Costumers Guild, and CosInternational, I am so sorry to have let you down in this endeavor. I know you are amazing Costumers and some of the most awesome people I’ve ever met and had the privilege to call friends.
To the costumers and Cosplayers outside of the ICG, young and old, and especially the Mini Mighty Munchkins who are the heart and soul of the future of costuming in my very humble opinion, I am sorry that you saw these conversations. Your work is important and I know it will continue. Even as my family and I leave the ICG, know that we will continue to do all that we can to help in any and all of your future endeavors.
And to those chapters and prospective members that were forming, I will not be here, but I’m sure that if you want to continue to form there will be someone in the ICG that would be willing to help.
It is clear to me that with the current barriers that some voting and non-voting members of the BoD are seemingly insurmountable. As it stands currently, this organization internationally barely functions. While chapters may be strong, the resistance presented in the ICG to these ideas was so strong that it appears that the idea of change itself becomes an anathema. The ICG should be an inclusive entity, not the exclusionary and elitist one that it is seen to be and, in fact, has proven itself, at least to me, to be in these last 2 months. The non-discrimination, harassment, and other updates needed to keep up with the inclusive movement and “Cosplay is not consent” movement are essential. And, quite obviously, a Code of Conduct is required.
Perhaps one of you, the members of the ICG or BoD reps, can take up this cause. My fight is over... I will refocus my efforts on creating an inclusive organization that can focus on the fun of costuming and cosplay and the educational, charitable, and historic contributions that it should represent.
Please consider my resignation effective at 11:59pm, November 15, 2019. As Marianne and I are resigning at the same time, essentially, I will not continue any longer than is required to ensure that candidates are found and elections are scheduled to replace us. My family and children will also be leaving the ICG and the Silicon Web chapter as of that date. We wish you luck, hope, and calm discussions for the future of the organization.
Cordially,
Mera Babineaux
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