Bondage Expo Dallas Stands with Black Lives Matter

Content Warning: Discussion of murder and violent acts committed by police

Our organization stands with the Black Lives Matter movement, and we will continue to do our best to elevate Black voices in our own community and within our organization.

We are fed up. We are fed up with the murder of BIPOC people by police and white people across this country. We are outraged and saddened by the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police. We are further outraged by the violent abuse of protestors by police in Minneapolis and across the country. The kind of violence that happened like the massacre in Tulsa and hundreds of years before that, since the inception of this country being colonized on stolen land from the Indigenous brown people who are now being called “immigrants.” We are fed up with the inequity and hypocrisy. We’ve seen too many police get acquitted or never even brought up on charges. We’ve seen police kneel for photo ops and then apologize for kneeling. We have to make it stop.

We believe that the policeman who killed Mr. Floyd should be held accountable for his actions as well as the policemen who chose to be complacent in his murder. We also call for charges against those police who, on March 13, murdered Breonna Taylor while she was sleeping in her own bed. On May 6, Indianapolis police killed another innocent man – Dreasjon “Sean” Reed. In our local community, we watched the devastating news of Botham Jean – who was murdered in his own apartment by off-duty police. Stephon Clark was shot in his own backyard by police who claimed he had a gun – he had his cell phone. 

These are just a few of the many tragic murders at the hands of police and why we are demanding justice, an end to white supremacy, and better laws and leaders who are committed to stopping police from killing people regardless of guilt or criminal background. 

We stand by protestors who are demanding justice for all the BIPOC lives taken at the hands of the police. People like Justin Howell, who was shot by police in the head with a “less-lethal” round during the protests and is now in critical condition. Jamel Floyd was in police custody already when they pepper sprayed him – fully aware Mr. Floyd had asthma and such an attack would kill him, and it did kill him. Locally, we watched Brandon Saenz cry during a press conference hoping to find the police who shot him in the face with a rubber bullet – taking his eye, and fracturing the entire left side of his face.

We’ve seen police kneel for photo ops, then immediately stand to tear gas crowds of innocent, unarmed people, including children. We watched as protestors in our community were victims of the barbaric “kettling” tactics where they were rounded up and tear gassed without a place to escape. We cannot stand by and support police or other white American domestic terrorists committing such atrocities.

Organizational Responsibilities & Accountability Changes

• We are committed to equitable representation and will continue to ensure our organization includes Black people in positions of power, influence, and oversight. We commit to expanding our BIPOC representation as well as the integration of more LGBTQ+ people as active members of our event productions as presenters. 
• We will continue to have and to expand our Scholarship program for BIPOC, including private tuition. (this was decided after BED 2019 and set to be implemented for BED 2020.)
• We are committed to increasing BIPOC representation in our educators and the scholarship fund is a part of that—having access to educational opportunities is essential to supporting that.
• We will continue to have, and expand, spaces in our event that are curated by BIPOC for BIPOC. We will continue to have panels that include topics related to inclusion, where hard but necessary conversations can happen. 
• We ended the Image contest because it fails to reflect diversity or representation (that was decided after the 2020 contest).
• We are committed to listening to BIPOC voices and will continue to defer to those voices in matters related to what we need to do to ensure they feel safe at any event we have. We will an anonymous feedback form where people can send us their input on what we need to do to make our events safer and more accepting of BIPOC. We will continue to have a response and support team and provide anonymous reporting forms so people can feel safe reporting racism at our events/by our team.