Statement from Dancing Well: The Soldier Project on the Value of Black Lives

Dancing Well: The Soldier Project believes that racism, discrimination, and violence have no place in America today. We acknowledge the unfair treatment that Black people have experienced over hundreds of years and call for reforms to help prevent such appalling tragedies in the future. The disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on communities of color and the rapid rate of Black people being killed by police show the crucial importance of coming together to quickly address and dismantle systemic and structural racism. We stand and call for rapid reform.

Dancing Well acknowledges that we have not adequately served the more than 2.15 million Black veterans in the United States. We want to listen, learn and lead in a way that removes barriers to engagement within our organization. We will take action to serve more Black veterans and their loved ones through working collaboratively with Black veteran organizations on our recruitment efforts. We will actively pursue enlistment of more people of color to serve as volunteers and members of our Board of Directors. In hearing more Black voices, we hope to better understand and accomplish what we need to in order to be more equitable and inclusive in our actions.

We believe that Black and White lives need to be valued equally. We envision a world where every person, of any race, has the opportunity to thrive, and we will work together with others to learn how we can best make this vision a reality.