T.I. is already set to star in a movie that covers the Flint, Michigan water crisis, but now the rapper is partnering with Ebenezer Baptist Church to address the national concern for mass incarceration.
According to The Washington Post, the conference starts June 17 to June 19th at the historic church in Atlanta, home of the late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
T.I. will contribute in efforts to bailing out those in jail of poor and working-class citizens. Reverend Raphael Warnock stated the goals of the conference include helping communities to fight the rise of prison industrial complex in the U.S. systems that unfairly imprison of color.
Auburn Seminary of New York, The Temple of Atlanta, and Ebenezer Baptist Church, among other interfaith partners will also be in attendance during the conference that is nationally titled, “The Multifaith Movement To End Mass Incarceration”. The initiative is set to leverage the spiritual power, people power, and other resources in faith communities toward ongoing efforts on ending mass incarceration, as said by Auburn Seminary.
The initiative has two stages, the momentum phase that goes through June 2019 and the implementation phase that begins June 2019 and ends May 30, 2023.
Momentum will establish the groundwork for implementation as well as identify additional partners at the end of the three-day conference. Other agenda items during stage one include adopting policies and practices of alternatives to incarceration from the municipal, state and national operations.
Whereas, the implementation phase will provide training and resource sharing among faith-based leaders within their communities that will show a visible resistance to the prison system.
The Central Park Five, also known as the Exonerated Five will also be apart of the summit. Speaking to The Root, Yusef Salaam, explained just how the important the conference is to prison reform.
“This conference is very important in ending mass incarceration and the systemic issues around black and brown people,” Salaam said to The Root. “Since the film, When They See Us, has come out, a lot is being done to expose the trauma of being black in America; of being stigmatized in America, and I want to use my platform to expose this ugly reality, especially as it pertains to young people, so that there will never again be a Central Park Five, there will never again be a Kalief Browder, and we can finally change this system for good.”