The following statement has been approved by a majority of VashonBePrepared Board Members. Thanks to our President Vicky de Monterey Richoux for crafting this.

In recent weeks we've witnessed devastating news of yet more innocent Black people being killed by police. Use of undue force has been used against peaceful protestors while they were exercising their First Amendment rights, further inflaming the situation. These events occur not in a time of relative political, economic, and social ease, but after months of fears, tensions, illnesses and deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Systemic racism combines with the COVID-19 pandemic, or any type of disaster, to result in far more dire outcomes for people of color, including:

History shows that, following any disaster, our most vulnerable neighbors...