John legend quoted Lena Simone as he accepted an Oscar for his song Glory “It is an artist’s duty to reflect the times in which we live” and he is practicing what he preaches! He has launched an initiative to end petty incarceration in the United States.
“We have a serious problem with incarceration in this country,” Legend said in an interview. “It’s destroying families, it’s destroying communities and we’re the most incarcerated country in the world, and when you look deeper and look at the reasons we got to this place, we as a society made some choices politically and legislatively, culturally to deal with poverty, deal with mental illness in a certain way and that way usually involves using incarceration.”
California’s Proposition 47 reduced penalties of pety theft and small drug offenses to misdemeanors. “Once you have that tag of a felony on your name, it’s hard for you to do anything,” Legend said. “Getting those reduced to misdemeanors really impacted a lot of lives and we hope to launch more initiatives like that around the country.”
Legend will be visiting Texas and D.C. this month in order to bring more awareness to this issue that is plaguing thousands of families!
