"Anti-Violence is Anti-Genocide" Statement FAQs

Why is AVP posting about this ?

AVP was born from the understanding that we can’t aim for healing and liberation if we stay silent. There’s no room for division in the fight against fascism and systemic oppression. When violence is done to one marginalized group, it’s done to all of us. And in the same way, when any community wins liberation, it plants the seeds of freedom for everyone.

Over the past year, AVP has faced a lot of challenges, but we’ve continued to show up—to protest, to grieve, and to rage against the genocides happening around the world. We’ve been wanting to speak these words for a while, and now, we can finally say them out loud, with full hearts.

As a community that stands alongside our queer and trans Arab clients, siblings, and colleagues—and all those who are committed to this fight—we must speak out about the pain and grief we share. This pain is woven into the resilience we uplift as we survive the generational, governmental, social, and systemic harms that keep trying to break us.

If we truly believe that “Our Existence Is Resistance,” then we can’t stay silent when colonizing forces continue to harm so many across the Global South and beyond. AVP stands in full solidarity with Palestine, and we will continue to amplify this call for justice.

For the last year we have discussed how to address what has escalated in Palestine/Israel, and during this time we have faced criticism from our Arab and Jewish allies, staff, and community at large regarding a lack of a statement as an anti-violence organization.

It goes without saying that we support peace and safety for all civilians in any and every region facing conflict, however, pinkwashing and propaganda used to marginalize and silence innocent Palestinians is counter to the morals of an organization fighting for the freedom and safety of LGBTQ+ people in the U.S. and around the world. Inclusivity and empathy should not be conditional when innocent people are being harmed and killed, no matter their color, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity or where they are in the world.

Why now?

AVP has always stood for the belief that we can’t strive for healing and liberation in silence. However, we acknowledge that for too long, we have been silent about the ongoing genocide of Palestinians. This silence has caused harm to the communities we serve and represent, especially our queer and trans Arab siblings, colleagues, and clients who have been directly impacted by the violence. We failed to speak out sooner, and for that, we are truly sorry.

There is no excuse for our delay in addressing this critical issue. We didn’t need to wait until someone we know personally was attacked to take a stand. Genocide, colonization, and violence against marginalized people anywhere in the world should have always been enough for us to act.

The power struggles we witness every day—whether through police violence in New York City or the brutal military occupation in Palestine—are interconnected. The NYPD’s mirroring of tactics of surveillance, racial profiling, and violence against Black and brown communities from the Israeli Defense Forces is not a coincidence: the NYPD (and many other police departments) receives training from the IDF. Both systems are part of a global web of state-sponsored violence that aims to control, silence, and erase marginalized people.

We fully endorse a ceasefire and an arms embargo. AVP stands in support of an immediate ceasefire in Palestine and calls for an end to the military funding and support that fuel this ongoing violence. Just as we demand an end to state violence here in the U.S., we demand an end to the occupation and apartheid in Palestine. The oppressive systems of power that harm marginalized communities in Palestine are deeply connected to those that harm people here in the United States.

We commit to amplifying the voices of those impacted by these atrocities and holding ourselves accountable to the values of anti-oppression and liberation that AVP was founded on.

You’re not an anti-war organization, why are you writing about this?

To be anti-violence implies to be anti-war, and to be anti-genocide is not anti-semitic. To side with healing, health, love, freedom, liberation, interdependence, mutuality, fairness, color and vibrancy necessitates that we at AVP cannot stand by while intergenerational traumas continue to be inflicted by systems of power that mobilize their privileges to oppress those that they can.

We Serve & Stand Up For Peace

We do not withhold services from ANYONE in crisis. A statement of solidarity for an end to violence is just that. When we issued a statement about George Floyd and Black Lives Matter in 2020, that was not made in exclusion of any non-black life, it was the specific matter at hand, just as our statement about #StopAsianHate was. Calling for a stop to the killing of innocent Palestinians is not and should not be conflated with prejudice and wishing harm towards Jewish people as individuals and as a community at large, whether one identifies as Zionist or not. As the Anti-Violence Project, our foundational beliefs are in our name, and not doing the bare minimum of making a statement regarding a conflict that directly impacts the communities we serve, our Arab and Jewish staff who provide these services, and allies who believe in our mission of ending all violence, it would be irresponsible to continue to observe in silence.

Breaking Bread, Building Bonds

In 2023, AVP hosted ‘Breaking Bread, Building Bonds,’ a roundtable to hold an intentional and collaborative space to discuss how hate shows up in our different and intersecting communities, and to continue working towards addressing the root causes of violence, and building towards a future where all our communities are safe and thriving.