You know what, I'm gonna draw line & say: SFF professionals, be they authors, artists, musicians, writers of not-fiction, and anyone else who falls under this umbrella need to *stop agreeing to be on panels and participate* until each individual WorldCon proves it will do better. https://twitter.com/tinytempest/status/1285000515110137862

There need to be concrete steps to this and I don't know what all of them should be, but at a minimum:

Stating publicly that they will have a certain percentage of marginalized people on the program, and NOT just on panels about being marginalized. Then follow through.

To have programming staff that is under a mandate to ensure that program items do not contain problematic, bigoted language or premises and that panelists are appropriate to the topic OR that each panel is diverse along at least two axes (gender and race, race and ability, etc.).

A promise that ALL (every single one of) the Hugo and Astounding nominees have an equal opportunity to be on panels in general and in particular on panels that relate in some way to their nomination. And, unless specified by said panelists, they should have more than one item.

And every single WorldCon, virtual or in person, needs to have a free membership/scholarship/funding program for BIPOC and other traditionally economically disadvantaged marginalized peoples for both fans and also pros who will be on programming.

The rules of the convention need to be modified in such a way that these things cannot be disrupted by "well we can't because of..." if that's a problem. Perhaps these things can be added to rules, I don't know. But a lot of this is on the individual concoms & can be implemented.

I'm sure others will have other things to add to this list. Please feel free to add to it by responding to this thread. Perhaps someone will make an open letter. Whatever. It will only be a catalyst for change if SFF pros actually stand together and make this happen. Will they?

I'm fairly sure many BIPOC SFF pros would stand together to demand these things, perhaps a large percentage of folks from other marginalized communities will as well. But white people: will you? Will you ever use your cultural power to make things better for the rest of us?