Greetings from me, and my blood pressure medication.
RWA has filed for bankruptcy, per a Bloomberg story that is behind a paywall.
The URL alone is enough to give me a stroke, so I’m sharing that over the headline:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-05-29/romance-writers-group-goes-bankrupt-after-dei-fight-around-courtney-milan
I’m sharing the URL straight because the part after the date, called the “slug” is the part that made the top of my head blow clean off.
So what actually happened?
Most likely: With years of terrible conference hotel contracts booked into the future, something attendees and even board members complained openly about to me as far back as 2017, and an utterly disgraceful handling of a single ethics complaint that led to the mass exodus of membership and disaffiliation of many major chapters of RWA, the organization has filed for bankruptcy.
But no, we need something snappy. Something that will get clicks!
DEI? Courtney Milan?
No, y’all. Just no.
You can read the bankruptcy filing here if you’re interested.
If you’re new, or weren’t part of romance at that time, and you’re wondering why the attempt to blame DEI, which is utter horseshit, here’s a very brief recap. On December 23, 2019, RWA suspended Courtney Milan after an ethics complaint.
Shit went very, very sideways after that. Board members resigned, including every single board member of color. Then the president, Carolyn Jewel, resigned, followed by full-time staff members, and finally president Damon Suede resigned as well.
I wrote about some of the ongoing problems with RWA, and then in February, after doing a four-part podcast series about what had happened, I resigned from RWA.
Along with apparently MANY MANY thousands of other people per their own bankruptcy filing who ALSO left the organization.
But sure, blame the one person of color. Sure. It wasn’t the visible racism, and alienation of membership by hamfisted leadership.
And many other people wrote about the particular and actual why RWA imploded, including the impeccable Kelly Faircloth at Jezebel. The racism and structural bigotry was baked in. They had (and apparently still have) a problem reckoning with how the organization and it’s leadership wasn’t equipped or willing to advocate on behalf of everyone in their membership.
But sure, it’s this one person’s fault.
(I’m a little incensed here, folks.)
They even cite DEI in their filing!
Subsequently, predominantly due to disputes concerning diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) issues between some members of a prior RWA board and others in the larger romance writing community, membership decreased to approximately 3,000. Due to COVID concerns, the Debtor held its annual conference virtually in 2020 and 2021, and subsequently its membership reduced further. RWA was able to postpone its obligations to the respective Conference Centers these two years by agreeing to add two future years to the applicable Conference Center Contract to 2028.
First: this is some Performative Bullshit. If I understand correctly, a bankruptcy court judge is not likely to care why they’re filing. This is all smoke and distraction, performative bullshit pandering, and also, deeply irresponsible.
Second: Courtney Milan is not to blame here. I don’t know why that needs to be said but it’s easy to blame a person of color (and collect clicks, if you’re into shoddy headline and slug writing) than to own up how the massive mismanagement of a six-month disgrace and prior examples of institutional bias alongside a conference contract set that choked them may have left the organization in a precarious position financially.
It is APPALLING that on their way down the final swirl of the toilet bowl, the organization had to point blame anywhere but itself, and specifically mention DEI so that one person now has to manage a LOT of sudden public attention, which she has said on the record has not been and will not be great for her mental and physical health.
Why? Why would you do that except to be performative and cruel? Is the racism that profitable? Clearly not, they’re bankrupt.
The racism is the problem. The racism is always the problem, and it’s not the fault of the person or people who point it out.
I am so fucking angry and appalled. Good thing I have a blog so I know where to put all that rage.
