STATEMENT in support of Black Lives Matter, 5th June 2020

The International Day of LGBTQ+ People in STEM is in full support and solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, their protests against police brutality, and their struggle for equality. We grieve for George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and the countless lives lost due to racism. 

Systemic racism is far too common in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths and, as a collective, we have reflected on what we need to do to increase our efforts in challenging discrimination against Black, indigenous, and people of colour in STEM. 

Our first commitment is to revise the LGBTQ+ STEM Day toolkit before this year’s event, making it more explicitly anti-racist and intersectional, and providing more guidance to those organizations that use it. 

Our organizing collective is composed of people from different organizations, different countries, and different identities. That said, the majority of our collective are white and from a Western anglophone country. 

For this reason, we want more LGBTQ+STEM day events to specifically encourage leadership and explicit sharing of the experiences of marginalised queer-intersectional identities. We will also recruit more Black organizers to our collective, and we will collaborate with more organizations dedicated to supporting Black people in STEM. 

The International Day of LGBTQ+ People in STEM does not receive any funding directly, but if this were to change, we would only accept money from organizations equally committed to anti-racism. 

We stand firmly against racism and prejudice in all its forms, and we commit to collaborating only with individuals, groups, and institutions who share these values.

In solidarity, 

The Organizing Collective for the International Day of LGBTQ+ People in STEM