Dawn Robinson is done staying quiet.

In a candid YouTube video, the En Vogue founding member addressed the November 2024 departure of Rona Bennett from the iconic R&B group, and she did not mince words. "When people are bullies, they need to be called out," Robinson said. "So that is what I'm doing today."

Bennett, who joined En Vogue after Robinson was pushed out in the mid-90s, had been with the group for 22 years before learning she had been excluded from the group's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame performance the same way the public did: by seeing it online. No phone call. No conversation. No warning.

"She wasn't even informed," Robinson said. "You did 22 years with someone. It's like being at a job and your job just lets you go and doesn't tell you why. Doesn't give you a heads up."

Robinson read Bennett's public statement aloud on camera, pausing to react in real time. In the letter, Bennett wrote that she had been approved during the summer to facilitate her own event happening at the same time as the Hall of Fame performance and was never told the group would be performing. Robinson called it "coldblooded and evil and mean and nasty."

She was equally unsparing about the group's official response, which she described as cold, dismissive, and utterly devoid of accountability. The statement, issued by Cindy Herron, Terry Ellis, and a recently returned Maxine Jones, made no mention of why Bennett was let go, offered no acknowledgment of her contributions, and pivoted quickly to anniversary milestones and future plans. "22 years and this is what she means to you," Robinson said. "They would have done better to not say anything at all."

Robinson was clear that she has no axe to grind with Bennett personally. She reiterated what she has said publicly before: that her resistance to including Bennett in earlier reunion performances was not about animosity, but about wanting to celebrate the music she helped create before Rona joined the lineup. "I always said Rona's very kind. She's very nice, never rude to me. And I was never rude to her either."

What Robinson does have strong feelings about is a pattern she says she has watched play out repeatedly inside En Vogue's inner circle. She was forced out in the 1990s, she says, after standing up for herself when the label stopped her solo project while having fully supported Terry Ellis doing the same. Amanda, another former member, came and went. Maxine Jones was sued by her own groupmates, called them "skanks" in an interview, and then rejoined the group. And now Rona Bennett, after more than two decades, found out she was out the same way a stranger would.

"V can't keep a member to save their lives," Robinson said. "It's ridiculous."

She made clear she has no interest in going back. "You guys would rather me go back to that group just to say that I'm back in En Vogue? I'm not putting myself back in a situation where I get kicked out again."

Robinson closed her remarks with a message of solidarity for Bennett, encouraging her not to let the experience poison her trust in people broadly, and reminding her that her entrepreneurial track record, her life coaching work, her books, and her solo music prove she has always had a foundation to stand on independent of the group.

"What I love about your situation that's different than mine," Robinson said, "is that you have so much support."

As for Cindy, Terry, and Maxine, Robinson had a final word: karma.

"She waits. She allows you to put the noose around your own neck and hang yourself."