Before I get to
far into my topic today I have to give you some personal history so you’ll
better understand everything I’m going to be covering. DragonCon is a giant convention that takes
place in Atlanta every Labor Day. It’s
Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Comics, and everything else you can think of crammed into
three hotels. The real appeal is that
everyone is staying in these (and the surrounding) hotels. Because it’s inside the hotels, and the hotels
are more or less connected, it doesn’t ever really stop. Sure the signing areas close down and the
dealer’s room is locked up; but at night it becomes a drunken parade of
cosplayers.
I first went to my first DragonCon 11 years ago. I’ve met people
there who’ve become such dear friends that I consider them family. I met my wife there and drunkenly proposed to
her to get her attention. Years later I
proposed to her there again; this time it wasn’t a joke. I haven’t been the past couple years because
of other life events, but we were planning on going back in 2014.
Over the years
DragonCon has gotten more and more successful.
That makes its founders quite a bit of money. Ed Kramer is one of those co-founders and I
knew he resigned from DragonCon in 2000.
You see that was when Kramer was first accused of molesting three teenage
boys. So while he wasn’t involved with
running DraconCon he was still getting paid by them. I didn’t know that part. His 2011 dividend from the convention was
154,000.
DragonCon has
been trying to sever ties with Kramer, including trying to buy out his
shares. Kramer is unwilling to do that
and has filed litigation against DragonCon to stop any attempts to remove
him. So that’s where we are now. Those 120 dollar weekend passes and DragonCon
shirts add up fast and unfortunately part of that money ends up going to a
child molester. I can’t support
that. I’m not going back to DragonCon
while he is still profiting from it. Maybe this Labor Day I’ll invite all my
friends to my house, dress up silly, and drink till the sun comes up; that's pretty close to what I did at the con anyway.
I applaud you for taking a principled stand.
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