Until recently, Sockeye, a predominantly white program, had no substantive dialogue on social justice and racism. It took yet another killing of an unarmed black man by police, followed by global protests for us to address this issue. We realize our silence and inaction is and has been both a cause and a symptom of an unjust system built on white supremacy. In this way, we recognize our complicity in white supremacy culture and the harm this has caused.
We mourn and protest the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Manny Ellis, Charleena Lyles, Tony McDade and the countless other Black lives lost at the hands of the police and ex-police.
We want to acknowledge that we have slowly distanced ourselves from the Seattle ultimate community, specifically teams and organizations working towards racial equity both in and outside of ultimate. It is beyond overdue that we reach out to leaders in the Seattle community to mend these relationships, to create positive change, and to collaborate.
We also want to recognize Molly Brown for their swift and aggressive action in support of this movement and their continual leadership in combating inequality and speaking out against oppression. We are humbled and inspired, and want to encourage the ultimate community to meet this standard and beyond. Sockeye commits to matching Molly Brown’s $30,000 financial redistribution goal with an ambition of exceeding that number by year’s end.
We stand behind the Black Lives Matter movement and the goal of defunding the police. We support the reallocation of taxpayer dollars into initiatives that support Black communities, and a comprehensive reimagination of our broken criminal justice and carceral systems.
In 2020, we will restructure our program to support Seattle in fighting systemic racism.
We will start by:
- A collective financial commitment of $30,000+ to a variety of funds (including but not limited to activist orgs., legal funds, BIPOC businesses, community orgs., or political campaigns).
- An individual goal of volunteer hours to be completed prior to the 2021 season. The formation of a community outreach committee will help to identify volunteer opportunities for players to achieve their goal and create a lasting presence in our community.
- Individual and collective commitment to self-education by committing practice time to the examination of material regarding racial inequality and the continual self-examination of our own privileges and biases and how we contribute to an inequitable power structure.
Black Lives Matter.
Defund the Police.