MN Men’s Action Network: Winona County Passes Clean Hotel Policy

Good news today from the MN Men’s Action Network:


 

Hello all,

I am pleased to announce:

Winona County Passes Clean Hotel Policy
First in State

The Winona County Board of Commissioners passed a clean hotel resolution and travel policy on Tuesday September 7th which provides reimbursement for county employees only when staying in hotels that do not offer adult pay per view pornography. The Winona County resolution emphasizes that the “policy intent to reduce and eliminate business relations with businesses that provide in-room adult pay-per-view pornography shall extend to all Winona County purchases and not be limited to reimbursements”.

The resolution continues “that all organizations and entities of which Winona County, its agents or employees, are members shall contact those organizations and entities that continue to host events at businesses that provide in-room adult pay-per-view services including, but not limited to, the Association of Minnesota Counties (AMC) and request that future events be scheduled at businesses that do not offer said services.” Copies of the Winona County policy and resolution can be found on the MN Men’s Action Network: Alliance to Prevent Sexual and Domestic Violence website.

This is the first such resolution of its kind in Minnesota and, to our knowledge, the country. It is part of a broader state and national effort to employ a public health model which focuses on changing the environment in which so much sexual and domestic violence is occurring.

This policy was initiated locally by the Winona County Sexual and Domestic Violence Primary Prevention Project.  A community collaboration initiated in 2008 with the help of Joe Morse from Beyond Tough Guise, a local community group focused on engaging men and male youth in efforts to end violence against women and girls, and Lynn Theurer, the then director of the Winona County Community Health Services. Initial partners in the collaboration included the Winona Women’s Resource Center and Big Brother and Big Sisters of Winona. The clean hotels policy initiative was presented to Winona County Administrator Duane Herbert in the spring of 2010 for his thoughts and leadership in moving the policy forward. The MN Men’s Action Network has been providing technical assistance to the Winona County Primary Prevention Project and Beyond Tough Guise to assist in their collaborative development.

The Women’s Foundation of Minnesota released a report on the status of women and girls in MN in June 2010 in which they report 1 in 3 Minnesota women will be the victims of sexual and/or domestic violence in their lifetimes. Research has established distinct corollaries between the production and consumption of pornography and sexual and domestic violence. This clean hotel policy begins a public acknowledgment of this harm and provides us an opportunity to support those establishments which contribute to a social environment where respect, safety, and gender equality is the accepted and experienced norm.

The Winona County efforts utilized the MN Clean Hotel initiative developed by the MN Department of Health, Sexual Violence Prevention Program and the MN Men’s Action Network to further their policy development.

In the spirit of the Winona County Resolution, we encourage readers to contact their state, tribal, and local officials asking them to adopt similar policies. In this way, we begin a process of public and private divestiture in the pornography industry.

Specifically we ask you to contact the Association of Minnesota Counties (AMC) board of directors encouraging them to accept the Winona County Board request to adopt a clean hotel travel and procurement policy for their organization.

Thank you.

Chuck

Chuck Derry
Gender Violence Institute
MN Men’s Action Network
15510 Huber Avenue NW
Clearwater, MN 55320
gvi@frontiernet.net
320-558-4510

 

 

See also:

Clean Hotels Initiative

CleanHotels.com: A network of lodging facilities that do not offer in-room, ‘adult’, pay-per-view movies

Truth About LodgeNet: “Titles of LodgeNet™ pay per view movies” (explicit language)

2005: “No more hotel porn for Swedish government officials”
On 4/6/05, The Local, “Sweden’s News in English”, announced that Swedish civil servants, soldiers and politicians would be required to choose porn-free hotels whenever possible.

Omni Hotels Drops Porn, Reaps Rewards
“Every day mail gets hoarded into this office. It’s almost like Christmas,” says Strebel of the more than 50,000 letters of encouragement the hotel has received since banning the video pornography…

Major Corporations Profit from Porn
The profits from porn movies and phone sex flow through several “blue-chip” American corporations. These include Holiday Inn, Marriott, AOL Time Warner, Comcast, EchoStar Communications, DirecTV, Adelphia, Cox Communications, Charter Communications, Cablevision Systems and AT&T. If you own shares in these companies, you might consider discussing the matter with their shareholder relations departments, or simply selling their shares.

Press Release: Action Network to use RNC and Minnesota State Fair to Bring Attention to Problem of Sex Trafficking