Group Backed by LeBron James Pushes for Criminal Justice Reform

Politics|A voting rights radical backed by athletes launches a run focused connected transgression justness reform.

• July 26, 2021, 9:00 a.m. ET

More Than a Vote, the enactment launched a twelvemonth ago by salient Black athletes and entertainers to support African Americans’ voting rights, is launching a run focused connected the nation’s transgression justness system.

The campaign, called Protect Our People, kicked disconnected Monday with an occurrence of the HBO bid “The Shop,” which is produced by the hoops prima LeBron James and Maverick Carter, Mr. James’s adjacent person and concern partner. Mr. James was among the charter members of More Than a Vote.

The occurrence features a speech astir radical justness and constabulary killings betwixt Miami Police Chief Art Acevedo, Natasha Cloud, the pro hoops subordinate who skipped the 2020-21 W.N.B.A. season to absorption connected societal justness concerns; Benjamin Crump, an lawyer who has represented families of Black radical killed by police; Philonise Floyd, the member of George Floyd; the writer Jemele Hill; and Meek Mill, the rapper and transgression justness activist.

“2020 proved that erstwhile athletes talk retired astir the issues that substance to them, radical listen. As we said astatine the opening of this year, this effort was ne'er astir 1 election,” said Michael Tyler, a spokesperson for More Than a Vote. “The Protect Our People run volition replicate the palmy exemplary of harnessing jock activism successful electoral authorities and use it to the ongoing combat to determination nationalist sentiment and alteration transgression justness policies that regularly victimize Black communities.”