NARSOL conference 2023: It’s a wrap
By Sandy . . . Even before the 2023 conference took place, plans had begun for 2024, which will be in Atlanta, Georgia.
Meanwhile, the 2023 conference drew to a close at noon on Sunday, June 25. Saturday afternoon’s sessions were a wide variety of break-out sessions and workshops with topics ranging from civil commitment to legal topics to a first-hand account by a mother and daughter about life with someone on the registry.
Saturday night’s awards banquet lived up to the standard of excellence set by previous years’ banquets. The food was delicious; the socializing was wonderful; the speaker, attorney Paul Dubbbeling, was inspirational; and the awards program, as usual, recognized a group of well-deserving advocates in a variety of fields.
NARSOL Advocate of the Year was awarded to Vicki Henry upon her retirement
from public advocacy. The Braveheart award, which recognizes a person not associated with NARSOL who has worked to further our cause, went to Senator Gary Winfield of Connecticut. The Hawthorne Award, which recognizes the importance of the legal field in our advocacy, was awarded to Paul Dubbeling (photo above).
Susan Walker of Colorado was the recipient of our Lifetime Achievement Award upon her
retirement from public advocacy. NARSOL’s Excellence in Leadership Award was bestowed on NARSOL’s chair Robin Vanderwall, and Fred Darnell, our invaluable webmaster, received the Excellence in Service Award. (Robin’s photo is in the main pic above.)
Raffle and contest winners were announced, and the banquet ended on a joyous note.
Sunday morning’s opening presentation was an interactive exercise facilitated by Brenda Jones in learning and refining how to analyze a bill and prepare testimony to offer in legislative committee hearings.
The conference ended with Dr. Emily Horowitz, NARSOL’S 2021 Braveheart Award winner, reminding us of the reality of the sex offender registry for those on it and why we choose to engage with this advocacy and then encouraging and inspiring us to continue in our battle.
Our conference attendance was approximately 160 in person and 120 via the livestream.
The amount of behind-the-scenes work and activity, all by volunteers, required to hold a conference is staggering, and it starts more than a year prior. Until next year in Atlanta – super-early registration available at a discounted price – volunteers at NARSOL will be working behind-the-scenes and will then bring you NARSOL conference 2024.
Congratulations on another assembly of like minded as to the registry. A sex offender registry is a very peculiar use of the database. It was the first example of human indentured servant to a database machine. The involuntary servitude inherent in the regime reflects the people’s traditional intent. But that retributive intent has been denied by our leadership from Congress to the highest courts.(1994-2003) Therefore a question is begged. Was the SOR database regime intended to divide the people or was the intent to unite the people?
We already know the people (Ds&Rs+Is, respectively) were united behind in their intent to use the database to divide some Americans (the sex offender) from others.
United in their intent to divide the nation and he are.
The ultimate question is:
Who would benefit most from such an all encompassing human disposition relative to the database machine? Surely not the whole of the people, some are divided out at the foundation of the ” new” thing or regime. It must be a few who benefit most from attempts to install trust in the database driven infrastructure, faith in it’s accuracy, its security and it’s fairness. Those who would benefit from unfettered application, use and access to the ubiquitous machine. Many believe a recent election was “stolen” via the database driven electronic polling and so forth. And why shouldn’t they? In America anything is possible. Because in America everything is for sale at the right price. In 1994 the child molesters and rapists were the first Americans sold out to the purveyors of database property benevolence but the rest of the people went right along, they just didn’t know it. And the purveyors certainly didn’t want to shine light on this inevitable truth. Is see the current Administration is proposing a 40B investment in high speed internet access for the people. As if big tech firms do not have the private funds to do so. Come On Man!