I hate to keep posting news about PETA, but this is just too good. -Cordite
Ingrid Newkirk, president of PETA, announced recently that she is going to donate her body to her organization so that it may be used in a series of protests.

She has willed that her flesh be barbecued, her skin turned into leather products, her feet into umbrella stands, and her liver vacuum packaged.

"We hope it will start a trend" said Newkirk.

A letter coming out of Motor City Fur Con highlights a situation that furry conventions may need to be made aware of, and to take actions protecting against. This opinion piece will go over this situation, and why it's important that our community address this situation, and against possible weaponization of it.

Primarily, conventions are a big deal in the furry world. These organized efforts of staff and volunteers are an excellent opportunity for friends from great distances to come together and meet one another. Something that can seem quite simple on the surface creates great stress to those at the helm. Earlier this year we found a small group of furs overburdened and liquidating a company when they took on too much workload. The tragedy being there was probably no ill intention, but their small group taking on too much created vulnerability and eventually it all came tumbling down.

Leaders of conventions, and those that volunteer, sacrifice a lot in order to keep these essential functions for our fandom running. This sacrifice was emphasized through recent news out of Detroit’s Motor City Fur Con when the convention chair of FurSquared announced that in order to attend Motor City Fur Con, he lost his job. Now Alkali, a convention chair who has done an untold amount of hours for charity work and running panels at other various conventions, looks for subscription support in order to focus on creating content for the fandom he loves with his spouse Xanni. And in spite of this rock to his world, he is still running FurSquared this very weekend.

While Flayrah has been critical of leadership of conventions in the past, today the focus goes in the other direction, toward the attendees. Because the loss of employment of one of the volunteers of Motor City Fur Con was followed up by another troubling letter from the same convention about how other attendees chose to spend their time.

The 2020 Ursa Major Awards vote is ready to go! Send them your e-mail address, and you can vote for any of the nominations in 14 categories. (Last year's "Dramatic Series or Short Work" has been split into two separate categories.) Voting closes on Wednesday, March 31.

Please re-post this announcement if you're on an active furry message forum or social media site!

This year's nominees are... [Update (2 May): the winners have been announced!]

The Mid-Atlantic Anthropomorphic Association, organizers of annual Maryland events such as Fur the 'More and Fur-b-Que, have launched a $1000 educational scholarship in memory of former staffer Cobalt The Fox, who passed away in October 2017. Their press release follows.