End OTW Racism

End OTW Racism is a fan campaign with the aim of putting pressure on the OTW to implement antiracist policies and actions in order to prevent and adequately deal with harassment and abuse of fans of colour, especially on the Ao3. The campaign comes three years after the organisation committed to addressing issues surrounding racism on the fanfic site, attempts of which participants of the campaign, among others, have criticised as being lacking.
Between 17th - 31st May 2023, the campaign encouraged participants to do several actions including, but not limited to: adding 'End Racism in the OTW' to the title of both new and old fics, changing profile pictures on social media sites such as Tumblr or Twitter, and sending a message to the OTW Board of Directors. There are also plans for further action later down the line.
The OTW officially acknowledged the campaign in a June 12 communication., transformativeworks.org, 2023-06-12., AO3 News, 2023-06-12.
== Goals ==
# Updates to the AO3's Terms of Service that reflect a progressive, anti-racist and anti-bigoted stance on harassment and abusive (extremely racist and extremely bigoted) content.
# Improving admin tools for the Policy and Abuse team to tackle and moderate abuse claims better.
# Hiring a Diversity Consultant within the next 3 to 6 months.
# Transparency in the process and internal communications about this topic, including quarterly updates in the OTW Newsletter.
==FAQ==
The other relevant information about the initiative is summarized here. See the dreamwidth FAQ.
* The organizers are all longtime fans, both of color and white, and users of the AO3, but have decided to remain anonymous to protect themselves from racist harassment and to not entangle the campaign's message with their personal identities.
* They all support the AO3's no-commerce rule and its commitment to being advertising-free.
* In their opinions, the relevant committees are ideally the ones to update the AO3's ToS, as well as establishing the penalties for infringements and enforcing them; all in purpose of anti-censorship and inclusiveness.
* The organizers all agree that fandom racism is real racism, and that fighting bigotry to make fandom spaces safe, welcoming, ours is important for the real people affected by this issue.
== Participation ==
As of 2 June 2023, 1612 works in 594 fandoms were posted in the End Racism in the OTW AO3 collection. The End OTW Racism campaign also posted a stats roundup on its tumblr account and reported a total of 5602 AO3 fanworks with "End OTW Racism" in their titles., 1 June 2023.
Many social media users changed or adapted their icons, including that of Fansplaining. Other users, such as destinationtoast, sent out emails to the OTW. by destinationtoast, 21 May 2023. As of 23 July 2023 this tumblr post has 48 notes.
== Fan Discussions ==
Some fans supported the manifesto wholeheartedly, and others supported the movement without necessarily agreeing entirely with every point or wording. 
Meanwhile, others decided not to support the current campaign for a variety of reasons.
A major criticism of the campaign is that it advocates censoring the archive, that is, changing AO3's maximum inclusiveness of content policy to allow deleting fanworks deemed racist (and that fanworks that many people disagree are racist would also be deleted). The campaign and its supporters have argued that they are not advocating for censorship or any particular policy solution and that their goals are being misrepresented. Some campaign supporters have suggested that the charge of "censorship" is an excuse to not engage with the issues highlighted by the campaign. Both sides of the argument have cited the campaign's own FAQ in making their case., 2023-07-20.
From fail_fandomanon:
===le-bjorn Acknowledgment===
After EOTWR's tumblr account posted about an upcoming OTW Board meeting in January 2024, Tumblr user kutputli reblogged with criticism about EOTWR for not acknowledging le-bjorn's November 2023 callout post or followup posts. le-bjorn, a former OTW volunteer, went viral after claiming that they were reprimanded "for my use of 'from the river to the sea, palestine will be free' on the OTW volunteer slack" , and they followed up with a detailed google doc of screenshots showing many arguments in the OTW's Israel-Palestine Slack channel. kutputli wrote,
le-bjorn reblogged kutputli's reblog, saying that,
===Where Discussions Took Place===
====Tumblr====
The campaign has a tumblr account and did link roundupsTumblr post by @end-otw-racism. Archived from the original on June 15, 2023. of supportive commentary from other users, including beatrice-otter, elumish, and seepunkrun. The blog also received questions from users. 
Olderthannetfic's blog received a flurry of anonymous tumblr asks, many of which were critical about the campaign. 
====Dreamwidth====
A few days after the campaign started, chestnut_pod posted meta about structural issues in the OTW: Be more democratic, be more autocratic, OTW. This post generated a lot of discussion in the comments and elsewhere.
The anon forum Fail-Fandomanon hosted lengthy and detailed discussions about the campaign alongside concerns about OTW's internal operations. 
End OTW Racism supporters also posted about the campaign on their personal blogs.
====Twitter====
====Reddit====
A positive post about the campaign to :/r/FanFiction was deleted.Twitter thread by @fiercynonym. Archived from the original on June 15, 2023.
The campaign was briefly discussed on :/r/AO3: #EndOTWRacism: Why It’s So (Needlessly) Controversial, and What Should Be Done, 31 May 2023..
== Additional Campaigns ==
=== Vote to End OTW Racism ===
After the May action concluded, the End OTW Racism group started a campaign to encourage supporters to vote in the upcoming 2023 OTW Board Election. This action included sharing information about how to become an OTW member and posting about the candidates' platforms. Supporters were also encouraged to attend the OTW Board's public meeting on July 2.
On July 6, a few weeks after the 2023 OTW Board candidates' bios and platforms were officially released, the End OTW Racism mods shared a summary for each "on how [they] feel [the candidates] align with [their] campaign's goals." The summaries were a few sentences long for each candidate, and the EOTWR mods positively or negatively highlighted statements, or lack-thereof, from the candidates.
The post sparkled backlash from fans, OTW volunteers and even some of the Board candidates themselves. Fans expressed their disappointment because they felt the post was purposefully downplaying the lived experiences from the Asian candidates, and even the formal non-profit experience of one of the Asian candidates against that of a candidate with a white-sounding name; fans accused the movement of being USA and anglophone-centric, fail_fandomanon, 2023-07-18., of having a bias against Asians and specifically being sinophobic, and of exploiting the buzz of the 2023 OTW Management Controversy only to then turn their backs to the very volunteers and fans affected by it.
== Other Effects ==
In the course of fan discussions on chestnut_pod's post and fail_fandomanon about internal org structures, a former PAC volunteer revealed that immediately following the May 2022 CSEM Attacks against the OTW they had been suspended for two months, with no explanation, by the Legal Committee, over the objections of the PAC chairs. This revelation led to the 2023 OTW Management Controversy.
==Meta/Further Reading==
*fail_fandomanon discussion threads:
**Re: OTW - Planned Protest? (2023-05-08)
**OTW/AO3 protest (2023-05-11)
**Re: Archive of Our Own / AO3 / OTW (2023-05-16)
**Re: Archive of Our Own / AO3 / OTW (2023-05-21)
**Archive of Our Own / AO3 / OTW (2023-05-23)
**AO3 / OTW (2023-05-25) - mostly discussing comments in chestnut_pod's post
**OTW / AO3 / Archive of Our Own (2023-05-27) - various tangents, including Legal and PAC
**Archive of Our Own / AO3 / OTW (2023-05-29)
*synonymous dreamwidth account, created 2023-05-29 for tracking related discussions
* (Jun 2nd, 2023)
*As #EndOTWRacism Fights for AO3 Policy Changes, Fandom Racism Bubbles to the Surface by stitch, published in Teen Vogue (May 30, 2023)
* (June 12, 2023)
*Just got a second official warning (post by le-bjorn) (November 25, 2023); poster asked End OTW Racism to provide a signal boost.
==References==
category:Race & Fandom
Category:Organization for Transformative Works
Category:2023 Events