Below is a message from Resilience Executive Director Erin Walton, published on June 17, 2020.
During national LGBTQ Pride Month and every month, Resilience is proud to support LGBQT+ survivors of sexual violence. As we continue our work of empowering survivors and ending sexual violence in Chicago, we support everyone who is courageously protesting and working toward equitable treatment and justice for all people across the country and around the world.
Striving for social justice is essential to our work at Resilience because we have understood since our founding that sexual violence is both a product of oppression and tool used to maintain it. Women and girls, Black and Indigenous people, queer people, young people, and people with disabilities are all disproportionately the targets of sexual harm. Ending the inequities that expose marginalized communities to more and greater sexual violence is necessary to achieving our shared vision of a world without sexual violence for everyone.
Now is a time for listening to the people most directly harmed by anti-Black and transphobic violence and giving our solidarities what they need. Black people need our critical support now more than ever. We stand with the thousands of people who are marching and grieving the death of Tony McDade, a Black trans man killed by Florida police two days after George Floyd’s murder, and the deaths last week of Riah Milton and Dominique “Rem’mie” Fells, two Black trans women who were found dead within 24 hours of each other. Resilience stands with everyone impacted by the current administration’s decision last Friday, the fourth anniversary of the Pulse nightclub massacre, to reverse health protections for trans people under the Affordable Care Act, exposing trans survivors of sexual violence to greater discrimination and death. At the same time, we applaud the Supreme Court, which nearly simultaneously prohibited discrimination on the basis of gender identity in the workplace.
Our work is far from over. The Resilience community is a diverse one, made up of people of all identities who are deep in their passion for equity, healing and justice. We are grateful to be supported by you, an important member of our community dedicated to the healing and empowerment of all survivors.