Black Lives Matter: We are taking a stand.
Silence speaks volumes and equates to complicity. We have a responsibility to stand up for our Black employees, customers, partners, and developers who are in pain. We have a responsibility to live up to our values of being good people, which means educating ourselves even when difficult and uncomfortable, and turning that knowledge into action to fight injustice. We are honoring our responsibility by taking a stance: Black Lives Matter. Fastly stands in solidarity with the Black community, and against systemic racism and inequality.
The Black community has long suffered at the hands of discrimination, white supremacy, and gender violence, and the killing of George Floyd is another painful example of how injustice has played out for decades. We have a responsibility to use our platform and our privilege to support the Black community — and to commit to the ongoing work that entails.
The tech community as a whole can and must do better. For Fastly, part of that work means acknowledging that we are early on in our journey of diversity and inclusion, but now is the time to step up. We’ll be making donations of $50,000 each to the Black Visions Collective and Louisville Community Bail Fund, two important organizations fighting on the frontlines for a more just and equitable society. We’re also initiating participatory philanthropy — a framework that allows for historically marginalized groups to inform our corporate giving — by asking our Black employees to choose an organization for additional donations.
We know this is only a start and we have more to do. We’ll be sharing our progress and implementing new initiatives along the way to hold ourselves accountable: things like providing more training to staff, creating space for difficult conversations as well as celebrations of lived experiences, and opening up touchpoints for Black employees and our communities of color to give honest feedback — putting them at the center of how we design our solutions, without placing the burden of labor on them.
We choose to do better. We choose to be anti-racist. We choose to use our privilege and platform to speak up. We choose to stand in solidarity with the Black community.
Fastly’s Inclusion and Diversity Council
