Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week begins on February 20th, 2022, but the work for it begins now! In 2021, for the first time, six places in the United States recognized ASAW: DC, Colorado, Michigan, Washington, Virginia, and Minnesota!
We can keep this momentum going – the process for requesting your state to recognize ASAW is fairly simple, and we at TAAAP are here to make it even easier, including a template for submission as well as details on how to submit in every state in the links at the bottom of this page. Submitting a proclamation request to your governor or mayor is a 5 step process:
- Have an address in said state. You can also, in most cases, submit a proclamation request for a district, commonwealth, city, or county. This will still require that the person who submits the request has an address in that location.
- Check the deadline for proclamation requests. Some states are not currently accepting proclamation requests due to COVID-19. Most states have a 30 or 45 day deadline – for ASAW 2022, that would be January 20th or 5th. Each state’s deadline is in the State Proclamation Info document below.
- Contact any organization you would like to sponsor the proclamation. We encourage you work with any local aro-focused organizations, queer organizations, or any organizations you are a part of to make the request more personalized and more relevant to your local government. This database hosted by Aces and Aros is a good place to start. We’ve also included a list of both queer and ace and aro groups in each state in the State Proclamation Info document below. Some states/areas may not even require a sponsor organization. If you need a sponsoring organization and cannot find a local one, TAAAP is willing to sponsor as long as you give us a heads up. Please be sure to do this, as most areas limit ceremonial proclamations to one or two per organization per calendar year, and we will need to keep these numbers in mind once Ace Week rolls around! Information for using TAAAP as a sponsor is included in our template; for any other group, simply insert their name and a quick 2 or 3 sentence blurb about what they do.
- Copy and paste our template into the request form. Our template, linked at the bottom, provides info for: an event description/message, 6 whereas clauses, and a description of our organization if you use TAAAP as a sponsor. The proclamation request forms for different states, cities, etc will require different information, but our template did our best to account for any questions you may be asked. You’ll have to customize a few parts, including the names of your elected official and your location. If you need further help, contact us at [email protected] and we will do our best to help.
- Wait for a response! For states that have a deadline far out from the actual week, it may feel like you are waiting forever for a response. We encourage you to remain hopeful and let us know if you are successful! You may also want to get in touch with the local government’s LGBTQ+ liaison, if there is one, as well as the office in charge of ceremonial proclamations.
That’s really it! We hope this is a useful springboard for getting ASAW recognized in your local area. A ceremonial proclamation may feel small or overly formal, but it provides our community legitimacy and visibility, and provides a starting point for pursuing legal inclusion and rights for aromantic people.
Note: We don’t know the process for requesting a proclamation anywhere outside the US. Some of this may be relevant internationally, and we hope it helps, but we can’t guarantee that the process is similar at all.
The template we linked is based on the Ace Week Proclamation template created by Seattle Aces and Aros. This was also spurred by Ace Week’s/Asexual Outreach’s effort to get Ace Week recognized in multiple states. Credit and thanks to them for providing us a starting point.