Following her appearance on the A + E special, Shining a Light, Alicia Keys is spearheading a call to action on a serious issue.
The Grammy award-winning mother of two has joined the #cut50 initiative to reform criminal justice laws and the issue of racially motivated incarceration.
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“We was a country, we sell ourselves as the land of the free, except we have more people in jail than the whole world combined,” Keys said in a video exclusive for People.com.
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The campaign, “We Are Here,” calls for support with 1,000,000 signatures on a groundbreaking petition to present before Congress and the White House to motivate changes to current criminal reform laws including “drug treatment and rehabilitation programs as well as programs to help prisoners upon release.”
Linked to her Facebook page, Keys said, “‘No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another,’ – Charles Dickens. Too many children will go to bed tonight with a parent in jail. Let’s be part of the change.”
Keys and the reform group hope to garner enough signatures before the end of the year.