[Foundation-l] Concerns for Safety

[Andrew Whitworth]

On Fri, Mar 7, 2008 at 10:17 AM, Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com> wrote:
>  I fundamentally disagree with Dan that the WMF is
>  responsible for ensuring the safety of every attendee, or that everyone
>  should be able to attend regardless of their personal threshold of fear.

There is a lot of grey area between the WMF being responsible to
ensure safety for all, and the WMF having complete disregarding for
people's safety. Now, I know that there is a threat assessment in
progress, and that's a wonderful step to be taking. Everybody knows
that safety isn't an absolute, and I think that most people will agree
that this threat assessment is a satisfactory response.

Maybe safety isn't the issue here, a lot of people just wanted to be
heard and have their concerns be taken seriously, and there isn't a
lot of evidence that this was the case until just recently. People are
making the claim (and I certainly cant substantiate it) that concerns
were raised prior to the final selection of Alexandria, and that those
concerns were summarily dismissed. Based on the attitudes that people
have expressed here on this list, I find it easy to believe that
people's concerns were ignored all the way down the line.

>  Sometimes not everyone can go, just like
>  not everyone has Internet access to read Wikipedia.

I can't go, and you don't hear me complaining about that. There's a
difference, however, between a person who can't go, and a person who
is told that they just shouldn't because our organization just doesn't
care about them.

--Andrew Whitworth