Jay Z Joins Effort to Bail Out 100 Dads for Father’s Day

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Jay Z with Kalief Browder

It’s a Father’s Day 100 Dads won’t soon forget.

Because they’ll get to spend it with their kids instead of cell mates. All thanks to new father of three (you prob haven’t heard) Jay Z, backing Color of Change’s fundraising effort to bail out 100 Dads today.

The racial justice org did the same thing last month for moms.

Sadly it’s needed given that one in 9 children have a parent behind bars. A truth bomb Jay Z launched in his penned TIME article, For Father’s Day, “I’m Taking on the Exploitative Bail Industry.

In the think piece Jay Z shares the heartbreaking reality of being locked up with no way out:

 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. 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.

And why the rap mogul has made it his mission to take on the exploitation of the bail bond industry:

 …when I helped produce this year’s docuseries, Time: The Kalief Browder Story, I became obsessed with the injustice of the profitable bail bond industry. Kalief’s family was too poor to post bond when he was accused of stealing a backpack. He was sentenced to a kind of purgatory before he ever went to trial. The three years he spent in solitary confinement on Rikers ultimately created irreversible damage that lead to his death at 22.

The sad reality of nearly 700,000, on any given day, that get locked up without a conviction or a way to pay for their freedom.

Thankfully, there are some that found a way out today.

Happy Father’s Day!!

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