Source: Jason Armond / Getty
The time is way past making where you stand known. Today (June 2), Jay-Z and Team Roc have taken out full-page newspaper ads expressing their support of George Floyd, the Black man whose murder at the hands of police has inspired protests that have gripped the nation and the world.
Team Roc is the philanthropic wing of the “99 Problems” rapper and mogul’s Roc Nation. The ad features a long quote from the speech Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered during a sermon in Selma, Alabama, on March 8, 1965. That makes it the day after “Bloody Sunday” when peaceful civil rights protesters were attacked and beaten by police on Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Sound familiar?
“A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true,” reads part of King’s sermon—he would be assassinated a little over three years later.
The “letter” is signed by a number of celebs, activists and thought leaders including Michael Eric Dyson Van Jones, Charlamagne tha God, Angela Rye and activists from organizations like The Innocence Project and Until Freedom. A few notable signatures include the parents of Botham Jean, DJ Henry and Antwon Rose II—whose children were all killed by police.
The ad in today’s See the New York Times, the Denver Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Atlanta Journal Constitution, among others. There are more ads schedule to run in Wednesday’s newspapers as well.
Protests and demonstrations seeking justice for Floyd’s murder continue throughout the United States. Rest in power George Floyd.
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