Jay Z helps bail out incarcerated dads for Father's Day
Jay Z isn’t the only one having a very
special Father’s Day this year. Thanks to the rapper, many fathers who are
currently behind bars awaiting bail will now be going home.
The Songwriter’s Hall of Fame inductee recently penned an
op-ed for Time in which he not only identified the for-profit bail
bond industry and “its predatory lending scheme” as one of the major factors
contributing to the United States being one of the most incarcerated countries
in the world, but also pledged to give money to organizations that would help
bail out men currently being held pending bail.
“If you’re from neighborhoods like the Brooklyn one I grew up in, if you’re
unable to afford a private attorney, then you can be disappeared into our jail
system simply because you can’t afford bail,” he wrote.
“Millions of people are
separated from their families for months at a time — not because they are
convicted of committing a crime, but because they are accused of committing a
crime.”
He later referenced organizations like Southerners On New Ground and Color of
Change that bailed out moms for Mother’s Day. “As a father with a growing
family, it’s the least I can do, but philanthropy is not a long fix, we have to
get rid of these inhumane practices altogether. We can’t fix our broken criminal
justice system until we take on the exploitative bail industry.”
Jay Z noted that while this is one of the issues within the American judicial
system that activists and filmmakers like Ava DuVernay have been calling
attention to in their work, it’s something he became “obsessed” with after
helping with a docuseries about Kalief
Browder, a 22-year-old black man whose family could not afford to post bail
when he was accused of stealing a backpack. He spent three years on Rikers
Island in solitary confinement and later died by suicide.
This isn’t the first time the Knowles-Carter family has proved philanthropic.
Most recently, Beyoncé celebrated the one-year anniversary of her Peabody
Award-winning visual album Lemonade by starting the Formation
Scholars scholarship program, which is aimed at young women studying
creative arts, music, literature, or African-American studies at Berklee College
of Music, Howard University, Parsons School of Design, and Spelman College.
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