I'm not entirely sure about that. Lucas does have the power to keep the original version from being shown. He owns the movie, and if AFI wants to show the film, they have to cowtow to Lucas to get it. Sure, they could take a vocal stance against it, and it would be nice if they did, but it's really something the majority of people don't care about/won't notice, and it will just cause discord between Lucas and the AFI. Not saying I agree with it, but I can certainly understand why they would avoid the confrontation in that case.

I do, however, find it funny that, viewing the list of films they are presenting, Star Wars is now the only one that contains absolutely no date at all, replacing the year with the words "Special Edition" in parentheses.

Rocky (1976)
Beauty and the Beast (1991)
Star Wars (Special Edition)

Well, glad your e-mails managed to get through to them (sorry to say I never sent one myself), although now it would be nice to know which special edition. I'm putting my money on the 2004 version because if there's anything better than film revisionism, it's film revisionism caked on top of old revisionism!