The Women’s Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA) recently announced that they will be parting ways with previous tournament vendor MOTA Skates LLC.

This announcement came after MOTA Skates, and its founders, posted a series of controversial posts regarding the current Black Lives Matter movement on multiple social media outlets.

Large parts of the roller derby community have spoken out about the racist nature of these posts by MOTA Skates.

MOTA themselves were taken entirely by surprise by the accusations of racism, after having only been accused of racism a number of times in the past.

The founders of MOTA Skates have now released a statement that includes plans for founding their own roller derby association:

“We are trying to better ourselves. We are completely open to learning from BIPOCs, unless they say something negative about us and our actions. Positive criticism only!”

“Your voices are heard. But if you post something negative on our profile, we will not read it, and we will delete it.”

“We are aware of the offence we caused, but we are being totally vilified over nothing!”

“We are not racist, but we also have no privilege whatsoever.”

“We may have said and done racist things, but we didn’t *mean* them to be racist.”

“There is simply no way we could have known that our words would be taken this way.

There is nowhere we could have possibly learned about racism. None of our white friends knew about this either.”

“We are very aware. We have done lots of reading and studying the current situation and even learned some history, but we do not see anything wrong with our posts.”

“We took a stance on being in the middle, but America is too communist for this now.”

Julie Brandt-Glass, of MOTA Skates commented:

“Everybody is being so mean to me!

They say I’m not doing anything to help the racial justice movement, but that’s so untrue!

I even dedicated a whole workout to George Floyd! Do you know how many burpees I did? 30! #burpeesForFloyd

“MOTA Skates further announced that they will be rebranding.

Being experienced at this, they already had a new company name at the ready:

MOAT Skates

#moatavated

“We at MOAT Skates are absolutely dedicated to bringing the best products to the roller derby community; but also, the roller derby community is toxic and sucks!”

“We need to stay united, but also, we are out!”

“We at MOAT Skates are now going to found our own roller derby association, and nobody who was mean to us will be allowed to join.”

“The new MOAT roller derby association will have freedom of speech as one of its central tenets.

We are all entitled to our own opinion.

Peace and Love, MOTA.”