Rap music mogul Jay-Z and the social justice arm of his ROC Nation company, Team ROC, are teaming up with other social justice groups in an effort to bail out protesters arrested after taking to the streets following Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm’s announcement on Wednesday that police officer Joseph Mensah will not face criminal charges in the fatal February shooting of Alvin Cole.
“In today’s disappointing ruling, DA Chisolm found Officer Mensah not guilty,” wrote Team ROC in a recent Instagram post. “Contrary to the decision, Officer Mensah was not justified in killing Alvin Cole.” Team ROC went on to implore fans to call Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers to demand a special prosecutor be appointed on the case.
Included in the Instagram image, Team ROC disclosed its partnership with the groups Until Freedom and Gathering for Justice. Gathering for Justice, Breitbart News reported in 2017, has received sizable grants from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations. The organization was founded by leftist actor and singer Harry Belafonte.
In another Instagram post, Team ROC announces a new ROC Nation album, REPRISE.
“Today, we support the release of REPRISE, a collection of songs to bring awareness to social injustice happening across our communities,” wrote Team ROC. “Please join us as we support and amplify the incredible work of these organizations fighting to end police brutality, hate crimes, and other civil rights violations.”
All of the album’s proceeds will go to the social justice groups, Justice League NYC, NACDL Foundation for Criminal Justice, Grassroots Law Project, Gathering for Justice, Until Freedom, and Equal Justice Initiative, a group that says it is “committed to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment in the United States, to challenging racial and economic injustice, and to protecting basic human rights for the most vulnerable people in American society.”
Moreover, besides the direct funding from Soros’s foundation, Bryan Stevenson — the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative — also serves on the board of the U.S. Programs division of the Open Society Foundations.
The group argues that lynchings carried out in America between 1877 and 1950 have helped create the climate today in which, the organization claims, the U.S. criminal justice system is biased against black people.
“Lynching reinforced a narrative of racial difference and a legacy of racial inequality that is readily apparent in our criminal justice system today,” the group claims. “Mass incarceration, racially biased capital punishment, excessive sentencing, disproportionate sentencing of racial minorities and police abuse of people of color reveal problems in American society that were shaped by the terror era.”
These are not the only protesters Jay-Z has been bailing out of jail. The rapper and his wife Beyoncé have quietly donated tens of thousands of dollars to pay bail for protesters arrested in Ferguson, Missouri and Baltimore.
Additionally, Beyoncé has been named the most charitable celebrity of 2016 for the advocacy of the Marxist political organization Black Lives Matter, a group in which she and Jay-Z have been donating to for years.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, on Parler at @alana, and on Instagram.
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