Site Changes: Leaving Town for a Cause

One almost guaranteed way for an organization to get into the headlines is to move its convention from one city to another, either in protest or support of a cause.

Many times, those groups fit into what is defined as the SMERF (social, military, educational, religious or fraternal) market, and their principled stand - whatever it is - can be responsible for millions of dollars in lost economic impact for the cities they leave behind.

Recently, two such groups, Natl. Council of La Raza and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, declined to hold events in Kansas City, Mo., because a member of the Minutemen Civil Defense Corp., Frances Semler, held a position on the city parks board. She resigned from the board Jan. 22.

Both civil rights organizations objected to the Minutemen group, whose mission statement declares it wants U.S. boundaries secured against “the unlawful and unauthorized entry of all individuals, contraband and foreign military.”

In other cities, such as San Francisco, SMERF groups have canceled meetings because their membership felt kinship with a union that was in conflict with management there.

In Missouri, NCLR had scheduled its 2009 NCLR Annual Conference and Latino Expo USA in Kansas City, and incurred penalties when it decided to pull out, spokeswoman Lisa Navarrete said.

SCLC also had considered the city for its 2008 conference, according to a spokeswoman, but representatives of the organization did not return calls for further comment.

“This was not a debate about illegal immigration,” Navarrete said of the NCLR decision to hold its 2009 conference in another location (which, according to a press release, would be announced in a couple weeks).

According to Navarrete, NCLR did not call for other groups to pull their conventions from the Midwestern city, nor did it ask groups to boycott Kansas City as, she added, SCLC did. “They went further than we did or were prepared to do,” Navarrete said. “We did not lobby anyone to do this. We greatly respect organizations doing things on a matter of principle.”

Ed Hayes, director of the Missouri and Kansas state chapters of the Minutemen, said he felt that the boycott threat that SCLC officials were considering against Kansas City prompted Semler to resign. Semler could not be reached for comment.

Hayes disputed previous comments Navarrete made to TSW about the Minutemen using intimidation and having documented ties to white supremacist groups. He said the group was concerned about national security and illegal immigration from all countries, not just Mexico. The group does conduct its own patrols of the Mexican-U.S. border, he added, and reports illegal activity to the U.S. Border Patrol.

“If they're an extremist of any kind or they're a racist, we won't take them,” Hayes said of potential members, “and if we find out later they are, we'll dismiss them.”

With Semler's resignation, though, the point has become moot for the Kansas City Convention & Visitors Assn.

“We think it's all behind us now,” said Rick Hughes, president and CEO of the Kansas City CVA. “In my opinion, it was a national issue, immigration, that was not dealt with on a national level.”

Hughes added that he thought the groups could have used conventions in Kansas City as a platform to express differing opinions.

Navarrete expressed regret that Semler didn't submit her resignation earlier, rendering NCLR's decision to pull its convention unnecessary, but she added that the organization would consider the Midwestern city for future conventions.

For other groups, it's not just a matter of principle, but one of solidarity.

Many groups canceled SMERF meetings in San Francisco in 2004, 2005 and 2006 because UNITE HERE - a union for hotel, industrial laundry, apparel and textile manufacturing, casino and food service workers - and the city's hotel companies were struggling to agree on a new contract. During the troubled negotiations, hotels locked out employees and the union went on strike.

“I think part of the reason they reached out to us … was because of the type of organizations that they are,” said Jason Ortiz, a research analyst with UNITE HERE.

Ortiz said not all SMERF groups would move because of a labor dispute, but those that did “share the same philosophical values on a lot of policy.”

For the American Federation of Teachers, it came down to exactly that when the group moved its American Federation of Teachers Biennial Convention & Exhibition from San Francisco to Boston in 2006.

“American Federation of Teachers is a union,” said Leslie Getzinger, assistant director of public affairs. “It would be impossible for us to hold an event … at a place where there was an ongoing labor strike.”

The group chooses venues with an organized labor presence, and Getzinger said it had hoped that threatening to pull its event from San Francisco would pressure the hotel companies to negotiate a fair contract with UNITE HERE workers. When the hotels didn't succumb to the pressure, the group followed through with its threat and took its event elsewhere, losing deposits in the process, she added.

“In a lot of the decisions we make for those events … we try to use exclusively unionized (services),” Getzinger said, citing printing and shipping companies as examples. “It really permeates down our organization.”

This year the group will meet July 10-14 at Chicago's Navy Pier.

It's not always a group's leadership that initiates the decision to move a meeting. Often it is the membership itself that lobbies its leaders. That was the case for the American Anthropological Assn., which had planned to hold its 2004 and 2006 meetings in San Francisco. Instead, because of the labor dispute, its AAA Annual Meeting was held in Atlanta in 2004 and San Jose, Calif., in 2006.

“Many of our members were unwilling to go to a conference where they would have to cross a picket line,” said Bill Davis, AAA executive director. “Many of the members, I think, were in sympathy with the employees in that particular dispute.”

The group made the 2004 decision with very short notice, causing a significant drop in attendance at the Atlanta meeting, Davis said.

For that reason, AAA now pays much closer attention to the potential for labor disputes in the cities it's considering, he added. The association's annual meeting will return to San Francisco Nov. 19-23.