“We Won’t Let Hate Win:” Ariana Grande to Return to Manchester for Benefit Concert

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— Ariana Grande (@ArianaGrande) May 26, 2017

Today, Ariana Grande released her first full statement about the Manchester bombing to offer her condolences to the families suffering and to announce her return to the city for a benefit concert. The devastating attack at Grande’s concert at Manchester Arena on Monday night claimed 22 lives and injured many more.

After the attack, Grande tweeted that she was “broken” and “from the bottom of my heart, i am so so sorry. i don’t have words.” Any attack at this scale is horrifying but the act of violence was especially upsetting considering Grande’s fan demographic of young girls, and many attendees were children and teenagers.

In her statement, the star talks about how her concert has always tried to be a safe space for fans and how she wants to fight against the hate and fear that has come out as a result of the tragedy. Here it is in full:

“My heart, prayers and deepest condolences are with the victims of the Manchester Attack and their loved ones.
There is nothing I or anyone can do to take away the pain you are feeling or make this better.
However, I extend my hand and heart and everything I possibly can to give to you and yours, should you want or need help in any way.
The only thing we can do now is choose how we let this affect us and how we live our lives from here on out.
I have been thinking of my fans, and of you all, non stop over the past week. The way you have handled all of this has been more inspiring and made me more proud than you’ll ever know.
The compassion, kindness, love, strength, and oneness that you’ve shown one another this past week is the exact opposite of the heinous intentions it must take to pull of something as evil as what happened Monday.
YOU are the opposite.
I am sorry for the pain and fear that you must be feeling and for the trauma that you, too, must be experiencing.
We will never be able to understand why events like this take place because it is not in our nature, which is why we shouldn’t recoil.
We will not quit or operate in fear.
We won’t let this divide us.
We won’t let hate win.
I don’t want to go the rest of the year without being able to see and hold and uplift my fans, the same way they continue to uplift me.
Our response to this violence must be to come closer together, to help each other, to love more, to sing louder and to live more kindly and generously than we did before.
I’ll be returning to the incredibly brave city of Manchester to spend time with my fans and to have a benefit concert in honor of and to raise money for the victims and their families. I want to thank my fellow musicians and friends for reaching out to be a part of our expression of love for Manchester. I will have details to share with you as soon as everything is confirmed.
From the day we started putting the Dangerous Woman Tour together, I said that this show, more than anything else, was intended to be a safe space for my fans. A place for them to escape, to celebrate, to heal, to feel safe and to be themselves. To meet their friends they’ve made online. to express themselves.
This will not change that.
When you look into the audience at my shows, you see a beautiful, diverse, pure, happy crowd. Thousands of people, incredibly different, all there for the same reason, music.
Music is something that everyone on Earth can share.
Music is meant to heal us, to bring us together, to make us happy.
So that is what it will continue to do for us.
We will continue in honor of the ones we lost, their loved ones, my fans and all affected by this tragedy.
They will be on my mind and in my heart everyday and I will think of them with everything I do for the rest of my life.

Ari”

Since the attack, Grande has reportedly reached out to families to help with funeral expenses, and her benefit concert will go to raising money for the victims and their families as well.

(via BuzzFeed, Featured Image: Wikimedia Commons)

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