08/16/2017
We would like to apologize for not posting a statement sooner. Our small size, and regular need to maintain confidentiality for and of those we serve, caused us to question our ability to speak out on the events of August 12, 2017. For that, we were wrong.
While we are a very small, local non-profit, we still have a platform. As a non-profit with “empowerment” as our main goal, we cannot sit silently and watch as hatred and violence march through streets calling for the disempowerment of groups, and glorifying actions and mentalities that have oppression and violence at their core.
If Equipped wants to hold as its mission the empowerment of survivors of violence, we must, as part of that mission, speak out against oppression in all forms, whenever it arises. As holders of any public stage (regardless of size), it is our responsibility to the individuals and communities we serve, and our responsibility to society in general, to decry the ugliness of racism, white supremacy, Na**sm, and all forms of racial, gender-based, and religious oppression. Equipped is publicly and unflinchingly opposed to any and all groups who perpetuate and reify such abhorrent and dehumanizing ideologies.
Equipped stands in resistance to racism and hatred. We are listening – and we will no longer rest in the comfort of silence.
“The fact that we are here and that I speak these words is an attempt to break that silence and bridge some of those differences between us, for it is not difference which immobilizes us, but silence. And there are so many silences to be broken.”
― Audre Lorde
