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The entertainment industry has always had close ties with law enforcement, but with talent calling for a clean break, those bonds are more fraught than ever: “It’s just standing up for what we all know is not correct.”
In the weeks leading up to June 23, Kendrick Sampson was sleeping at most five hours a night and marching in a Black Lives Matter protest every other day.
At one rally in Los Angeles, he was hit by the police’s rubber bullets multiple times. Undeterred, the actor best known for playing Issa Rae’s love interest on HBO’s Insecure crafted a letter addressed to Hollywood’s power brokers: “We demand that Hollywood divest from police.”
With the help of Thor: Ragnarok‘s Tessa Thompson, he corralled a group of such A-listers as Michael B. Jordan, Viola Davis and Idris Elba to sign the open letter that blamed the entertainment industry and mainstream media for having “contributed to the criminalization of Black people, the misrepresentation of the legal system, and the glorification of police corruption and violence [that] has had dire consequences on Black lives,” and released it June 23.
“It’s not just a statement or a post,” he tells The Hollywood Reporter. “We need people holding these entities accountable. It’s about changing the way Hollywood operates.”
Sampson’s missive wasn’t the only one that week to address the industry’s long-standing relationship with the police. Four days earlier, on Juneteenth, a group of actors and artists including Sterling K. Brown, Gabrielle Union and Lee Daniels called on the industry to “break ties with the police” and demanded that cultural institutions, including studios and theaters, “publicly condemn the institution of police as a violent force that exists to further class divisions and capitalistic exploitation, which harm our communities.”
Read more HERE.
This article is so full of crap on so many levels. The systemic problem is the hysteria whipped up by the MSM. It is FROM the Hollywood Reporter so I guess it is what I would suspect.
Film/TV/Streaming have made vast amounts of $$$ from ‘police’ programming for decades, because we like it.
These programs have employed tens of thousands of folks from every race under the sun.
As the father of a caring 12 year Vancouver P.D. officer, who loves his work, I assure the ‘bad apples’ are few and far between. Perspective: in 12 years, my son has lost 81 days to injuries on the job, from puncture wounds (domestic dispute stabbing), broken arm (stopping stolen motorcycle), to concussion (breaking up Granville Strip bar fight) and more.
Policing is tough! Who’s going to look after it after forces are defunded or eliminated?
The brave, hard working, honest, intelligent, well trained, and caring people in law enforcement are as important to society as those in health care, they are all our line of first defense and when everyone else is fleeing danger the police rush into it .
Unfortunately we cannot always say the same about their Prime Ministers, Governors, Premiers, Mayors, Councils, and even some Chiefs, imagine having to work for any of those that have abandoned their dedicated law enforcement officers, it must be very demoralizing and heart breaking .
As a society we need to stand beside law enforcement, we need to stand up beside them when they are under attack and we need to demand politicians suppprt their police and let police and police leadership do their job .
There are not many bad police at all and even some that have made mistakes are not bad people, they like anyone can make mistakes and under pressure make errors of judgement but over al the police are the best of our society and we need to let them know we appreciate what they do to keep society safe, they deserve a thank you whenever the opportunity presents itself .
Bag Guy
I salute and thank your son, you must be very proud !
And Idris Elba sees no contradiction in the fact that he plays a detective in “Luther”
That’s right Idris. Defund da Po-leese!
I don’t watch late-night comedy (because there is nothing funny on late night these days), I get all the laughs I need by reading about these kind of antics on PSR.