A RESPONSE TO THE ORLANDO TRAGEDY

Hello Family,

It is with a heavy heart that I write to you today. Early yesterday morning the LGBTQ community suffered a great tragedy when a terrorist invaded one of the few safe spaces for LGBTQ individuals and enacted a mass murder of 50 people. People like me. As a queer individual I have used bars and clubs similar to Pulse to find a safe space and to be with my community. And it was this community that was attacked yesterday.

GEO is a special family in that we are made up of so many unique groups of people from around the country and world; GEO is a global family. We are not isolated when violence is perpetrated in other cities, we are not insulated when violence is enacted against communities different from our own; we are an intersectional family and an attack on one of our communities is an attack on all of us. Not only was the Orlando massacre an act of violence against the LGBTQ community, it was an act of violence against queer people of color. Violence perpetrated against any part of our family is violence perpetrated against all of us.

With this in mind I would like to say that GEO remains committed to the betterment of working and living conditions for all of our members. Sometimes this means acting at the campus level and sometimes it means acting at local, state, and national levels. GEO does not tolerate hate nor discrimination, and we remain dedicated to helping eradicate it one step at a time. The leadership of GEO will continue to examine how we can do so.

In the meantime, if you would like to help out those in the hospital and the victim’s families there is a GoFundMe set up:

https://www.gofundme.com/PulseVictimsFund

In Solidarity,

Nick

Nicholas A. Haas, E.I.T.

Co-President, GEO 6297