From: LASAGA@corral.uwyo.edu (LASAGA)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: More on Boycott (Denver Post article)
Date: 23 Jan 1993 13:50:19 -0600
Organization: UTexas Mail-to-News Gateway
NNTP-Posting-Host: cs.utexas.edu


The following is from _The Denver Post_ (Sun, Jan 17, 1993), pages A1,A14.  

Article is reprinted here without permission:                   
                                   
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"Other states, cities wary of becoming next target"

by William Claiborne


   At least a half-dozen states and cities in the United States have 
recently been targeted for convention boycotts by special-interest groups,
costing hundreds of millions of dollars in lost tourism revenue and 
prompting nervous officials to give second thoughts to policy decisions
that could potentially bankrupt their budgets.

   While activists have long used the boycott as one of their principal 
weapons, an increasing number of groups have broadened their targets to
include not just corporations or industries, but entire states that are
heavily dependent on tourism and convention business.  Public officials
said they expect the trend to grow as the interest groups' successes
become more widely known.

   State governors are expected to take up the boycott issue when the 
National Governors' Association holds its winter meeting in Washington
this month.  Still, NGA Executive Director Raymond Scheppach said, 
"Politically, it's an issue they are not going to talk publicly about
very much.  They're very sensitive about it."

   Most governors, he said, are not only sensitive to what they regard
as the unfairness of most economic boycotts but also believe they are
ineffective because while "they get a lot of publicity, they are
fairly inefficient in reaching a solution to the problems being 
protested."

_Recent targets_

   Besides Colorado--targeted by national groups after voters in November
approved a constitutional amendment erasing laws that protected gays from
discrimination--recent targets of threatened or actual boycotts include:

  -Alaska, which on Dec. 22 shelved plans to reduce its wolf population by 
   killing hundreds of the animals from helicopters after environmentalists
   threatened to boycott the state's $1 billion tourism industry.

  -Louisiana, which stood to lose at least $87 million in anticipated
   revenue when 15 national organizations threatened to pull their 
   conventions out of New Orleans if former Ku Klux Klan leader David
   Duke was elected governor.  State tourism officials breathed a sigh
   of relief when Duke lost.

  -Miami, which snubbed South African black leader Nelson Mandela in 1990
   because of his refusal to repudiate Cuban leader Fidel Castro and 
   became the target of a tourism boycott that cost the city an estimated
   $8.1 million in revenue.

  -Utah, which along with Louisiana became the target of a boycott by
   abortion-rights advocates because of strict anti-abortion laws.  Utah
   officials contend there was a negligible effect.  New Orleans estimated
   the boycott cost the city 17 major conventions worth $116 million in
   business.

  -San Francisco, which demonstrated that boycotts can be a double-edged
   sword after it lost about $45 million worth of convention business
   from agriculture associations because of a 1988 decision to support
   a ban on table grapes.  Earlier this month, San Francisco became the
   sixth U.S. city to join the convention boycott against Colorado,
   decreeing that none of its agencies could hold meetings there because
   of the anti-gay-rights amendment.

   Although state officials in Colorado said it is too early to quantify
losses from the boycott there, several major 1993 conventions have been
cancelled, including the U.S. Conference of Mayors and meetings planned
by the National Organization for Women and the American Association of
Law Libraries.

   In Alaska, John W. Manly, press secretary to Gov. Walter Hickel, an
independent, said there was a "cruel irony" to the environmentalists'
threatened boycott because a principle victim would have been promoters
of the growing "eco-tourism" industry, which includes wildlife tours.

_Caution urged_

   However, Wayne Pacelle, director of the Fund for Animals, which led the
Alaska boycott threat, defended the use of economic boycotts as a weapon
against states.

   "We recognize that it is a political tool that needs to be cautiously
exercised.  But we also knew that reasoning would not appeal to Walter
Hickel and that the state legislature would not do anything because of the
hunting lobby," Pacelle said.  "We felt this (tourism) industry was
dependent upon wildlife-sensitive people.

   "They can't have it both ways," Pacelle said.  "If they want tourist
dollars from people in the lower 48 states, they have to respect their
values...  It's one of the issues that struck a deep chord."

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