Dear Price Community,
We are reaching out to you to express our shared grief, anger, and demand for change. We want to acknowledge the pain and anger being felt by so many in our community. Price Women and Allies (PWA) stands in solidarity with the Black community and we denounce the systems that exist to oppress and perpetuate violence against communities of color. We, as a community, must do better to speak out against the injustices and structural racism that exist in our own institutions.
The United States holds a long, painful history of racism and violence towards Black folks. George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and Tony McDade are just the most recent in a long list of victims of police brutality and systemic racism in the United States. This must come to an end.
The inclusion of Black women in the conversation is critical to effectively combat racialized state violence for Black communities and other communities. “The erasure of black women is a consequence of that fact that we don’t know their names and therefore we don’t know their stories," said civil rights advocate and law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw, who founded the ‘Say Her Name’ campaign to highlight police violence against black women. We are here to uplift the voices of Black women in the fight against racism and police brutality.
As pride month begins, we also remember the role the Black LGBTQ community played and continues to play in the fight against police brutality and systemic racism. Protesting police brutality and demands for equality were at the heart of the Stonewall riots, which propelled the LGBTQ rights movement in the United States in 1969. Black trans activists, like Marsha P. Johnson, were at the forefront of the fight. Today, these women are still at the forefront; one of the founders of the Black Lives Matter Movement, Alicia Garza, is a Black queer woman. Although LGBTQ community organizations build resilience for their community, many have a history of ignoring issues of race and ethnicity, and still struggle to place anti-racism efforts into their goals and programming. As an organization, PWA will work to bring these issues to the forefront of our conversations through events centered around the Black LGBTQ Community.
We encourage you to continue reading, watching, and listening to educate yourself. Knowledge is power. We have included a list of book, articles, and films by Black females we recommend as a starting point:
Why People of Color Need Spaces
Black Feminism and the Intersectionality of Gender and Race
Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad
So You Want To Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas
13th and When They See Us directed by Ava DuVernay
To our Black Price Community, we are here with you and will not be silent about your anguish.
Black Lives Matter.
In solidarity,
Price Women and Allies
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