SXSW gets more transparent about its politics
The conference will have a lot of political content this year.
On Jan. 29, a Sunday night, South by Southwest issued a statement about President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, specifically a controversial executive order limiting travel that had been put into effect Jan. 27.
“SXSW is alarmed by the Trump administration’s decision to ban citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the U.S.,” the statement began. “We stand against discriminatory laws and unequivocally support civil rights for all persons everywhere. Participation by speakers, artists, and filmmakers from around the world is crucial to the creative mix of ideas that makes our event meaningful.”
The statement wasn’t just a philosophical disagreement. It was also practical. Attendees and speakers for the conference, which runs March 10-19 and sprawls across areas from technology to music to style to film to sports, could have been directly affected had the so-called “travel ban” not been blocked by the judiciary.
Hugh Forrest, the conference’s head of programming, said that while the executive order hasn’t yet had a significant impact on the event, it created a potential disruption that had to be addressed.
“We are certainly very concerned about the travel ban,” Forrest said. “It’s changing so much that it is hard to know where this will stand in 30 days.”
One SXSW music performer, King Raam, pulled out of performing this year, and it’s unclear if other attendees or performers will opt out, Forrest said.
Addressing the executive order was unusual for SXSW, in that the festival typically doesn’t make direct political statements. Instead, SXSW chooses to let its panels and performances speak for themselves.
It has booked high-profile political thinkers from former Vice President Al Gore to U.S. Sen. Rand Paul to then-Texas Gov. Ann Richards. That culminated with an opening keynote featuring Barack Obama last March, the
first time a sitting president had attended SXSW.
Over the past few years, there’s been an increase in SXSW content related to policy, government and activism. The conference itself has become more open about its political leanings, promoting progressive causes and at times taking public stances on issues.
One week after SXSW’s immigration statement, the conference announced Texas Competes Managing Director Jessica Shortall as a keynote speaker — a booking that could be seen as a direct response to the Texas Legislature’s current debate about a transgender bathroom bill.
“We feel very strongly on the bathroom bill,” Forrest said in announcing Shortall. “We are against discrimination in any form. Period, exclamation point.”
Political roots
Although it has grown into a seven-day event with more than 1,000 panels and 37,660 participants in 2016, the tech-focused leg of SXSW called Interactive has always had some undercurrent of politics and activism at its heart.
Longtime attendees who were at SXSW in the late 1990s remember how the politics of some early participants were outside the mainstream and open to the wild possibilities the growing World Wide Web offered.
“There were definitely techno-Libertarian, freewheeling elements in that period in Austin,” said Paco Nathan, a technology expert who now works for O’Reilly Media and who helped arrange panels and speakers from around 1996 to 2002.
“There was a controversial (panel) called ‘Hacktivism’ which featured people taking proactive means online for political protest, much of which is probably now relatively illegal,” Nathan said. “It resonated with the audience at the time.”
Nathan joked that the mix of “intellectuals, tinfoil hats and gutterpunks engaging in discourse” included science-fiction authors, artists and online freedom advocates and eventually attracted individuals such as alt-right celebrity Alex Jones.
Brooks Coleman, an artist and musician who works in robotics and clothing, said a lot of the activism at SXSW in the early days focused on specific causes. “Back then, the tech bubble was still growing and had not popped yet, so a lot more of the day-job techies were willing to invest in art projects,” he said.
Doug Lenat, a frequent speaker at SXSW who now runs a company called Cycorp, said, “There has always been a steady undercurrent of the responsible, social use of technology, ever since the beginning of SXSW, which is continuing this year.”
Current climate
As the focus of SXSW broadened, the amount of programming increased and buzz spread. From 2007 to 2012, the event’s attendance spiked and its makeup changed.
In recent years, attendees such as Matt Weinberg have found value in SXSW. Weinberg, a former Obama appointee in the U.S. Small Business Administration, served as senior adviser in the Office of Investment and Innovation and came to SXSW the past two years to spread the word about federal funding available for investment firms and startups.
Weinberg said he was impressed by the number of mayors and Cabinet secretaries attending the event and the interest in civic tech — but said the event’s attendees are not so easily pigeonholed into specific categories.
“Individual people discussing ways to promote equity or inclusion, discussing ways to democratize the success and wealth of the tech sector, those are genuine,” Weinberg said.
“But you look around SXSW, you see the parties that are being held, the egregious displays of wealth, a big rock band in a small venue. As a business development play, it makes a lot of sense, but I can’t say in total SXSW values mirror the Obama administration.”
While some of the more high-profile speakers over the years have leaned toward the left, such as Sen. Al Franken and Chelsea Clinton, the past two years drew about an even number of Republican and Democratic senators and representatives.
It seems obvious, though, that SXSW had its fans in the Obama administration.
In addition to booking the president and first lady Michelle Obama to speak in 2016, SXSW worked with the administration on a South by South Lawn in October, and some of the participants in that event also attended the Obamas’ last White House Christmas party.
“It doesn’t seem like a secret that SXSW had a good relationship with the Obama administration,” Forrest said, “and that the outlook for a relationship with the Trump administration seems much more hazy.”
Trump at SXSW?
Shortly after the November presidential election, Forrest wrote on the website Medium about a SXSW meeting in which the outcome was discussed and a decision was made to add two days of panels specifically about how a Trump presidency could affect the technology sector, a track called “Tech Under Trump.”
Forrest said “Tech Under Trump” is not intended to be a forum for Trump bashing. “I think we want to aim this more to A) inform people on what the new administration aims to achieve in terms of tech and B) to inspire people to bridge some of these gaps that we learned about as a result of Nov. 8.”
SXSW is not pursuing Trump or members of his Cabinet as potential speakers for 2017. “No, that is not currently a goal,” Forrest said. “These relationships typically take quite a while to build. It’s not likely or imminent for 2017.”
Forrest said SXSW has an important role to fill, even more so in contentious times.
“A lot of people want to be inspired and are looking for inspiration,” he said. “That goal is even more important for 2017.”