- Meek Mill, Philadelphia 76ers partner Michael Rubin, and New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, co-founders of the Reform Alliance, hosted a VIP holiday experience on Saturday for families adversely affected by the US probation system.
- The Reform Alliance treated 50 children from families impacted by technical probation violations to a NBA Store shopping spree and a trip to a New England Patriots football game on the team's charter plane.
- Over the course of the day, Business Insider shadowed and spoke to Rubin, a few special guests of Reform, and members of the invited families.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
Onboard the New England Patriots' private charter plane, on its descent into T.F. Green Airport in Rhode Island, Philadelphia 76ers partner and Reform Alliance co-chair Michael Rubin reflected on the cause behind a remarkable day in progress that he'd helped orchestrate.
In less than a week, Rubin had arranged with Meek Mill, New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, and Brooklyn Nets co-owner Clara Wu Tsai, his co-founders in the Reform Alliance, to put together a "once-in-a-lifetime" holiday experience on Saturday for families who have been adversely affected by the probation and parole systems in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York.
Rubin and the Reform Alliance co-founders, a group that includes Jay-Z, launched the criminal justice-reform organization in January following Meek Mill's release from prison in 2018. Meek's release on bail came five months after the rapper and entrepreneur was controversially sentenced to two-to-four years in prison in 2017 over a technical probation violation. (His case has since been dismissed.)
On Saturday, the Reform Alliance treated 50 children from families impacted by similarly non-criminal probation violations to a NBA Store shopping spree in Manhattan and a subsequent trip to a New England Patriots football game on the team's charter plane. Each kid who attended has a parent who is either in prison or has experienced incarceration or a probation extension solely due to technical probation violations.
"Seeing the stupidity of the system, seeing the many people that need help, this is a great cause and truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience for most of the people on this plane," Rubin told Business Insider. "But at the same, we're going to use this to help change the law."
Rubin said that Reform is currently focusing its energy in Pennsylvania, where the group has introduced plans for a bipartisan bill that will put limitations on how long Pennsylvanians can be on probation, prevent non-criminal (and non-repeat-offending) probation violations from sending people to jail, and allow for those with good standing to get time off of their probation.
The Pennsylvania State Legislature will soon vote on Reform's bill, which Rubin said he hopes to have passed by the end of January.
"In Pennsylvania alone, [the bill] will help tens of thousands of people directly, hundreds of thousands or millions of people indirectly," Rubin said. "So we've just got to keep getting the word out there and keep changing laws."
"In America, there's probably a quarter of people that are stuck, that come from upbringings where they're familiar with the system," he continued. "But I think three quarters of the country doesn't understand this, and we need to educate that three quarters about how unfair it is, so we can get their support to change laws and do all this while keeping communities safe."
Minutes after Rubin and I spoke, the flight crew prepared for landing. The plane touched down in Warwick, Rhode Island, where two charter buses drove the day's attending children and families behind a police escort to Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts.
Notable guests at a holiday shopping spree
The day started off, though, with a shopping spree at the NBA Store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.
According to the event's organizers, single children of invited families received $500 gift cards to the store, most families received a gift card of $1000, and larger families received more in store credit.
Prior to shopping, the kids and their families gathered on the store's second floor for an introduction from Rubin, Meek, Wu Tsai, and two special guests, DJ Khaled and Brooklyn Nets guard Caris LeVert.
"Some of y'all come from my neighborhood, some from New York I know," Meek told the crowd. "I'm just like y'all. In the times of my coming up, I didn't have outlets like this or people who really cared about the issues I went through as a child growing up in a single parent home."
Later, as the families started to shop, the Reform co-founders and their guests took turns speaking to the press before joining the families in their shopping.
"I watched Meek go through the holiday season without his family when he was locked up," Rubin said. "For Meek it was awful to live through, and for me, it was awful to watch. All these kids here have parents that are incarcerated or previously incarcerated for technical violations - again, they didn't commit a crime - and we want to make sure we give them one of the best days of their lives."
"There's four and a half million people on probation and parole in the United States," Rubin continued. "We have five times the rate of incarceration of the rest of the world. When we realized how big the problem was, Meek came out of prison saying to me, 'Michael, things happen for a reason. We've got to turn this into something bigger.'"
Wu Tsai discussed how her philanthropic work in attempting to increase economic mobility in Brooklyn ties into the larger issues of criminal-justice reform that the Reform Alliance seeks to address and change.
"Many people in Brooklyn and urban environments are in this endless cycle of incarceration, probation and parole, and often going back to prison for technical, non-criminal reasons," Wu Tsai said. "Criminal justice-reform, there are so many ways to contribute in this area. Reform Alliance is one. That is a long-term game because it's trying to change laws and policy, and we know that that's not easy. So at the same time, we're also trying to change the narrative, trying to change hearts and minds, so that people are aware of these issues. And that's partly why we're doing this today."
DJ Khaled - who would soon, at the event's conclusion, walk into and purposely stop slow-moving traffic in the middle of Fifth Avenue as he got in a car, to the amusement of a crowd in front of the store - spoke to Business Insider about what it meant to him to stand with Reform.
"This is powerful. This is what it's about," Khaled said. "If you think about it, man, if they weren't putting light to this, it'd be a secret. There's no way to help somebody if you don't know about it. And freedom is a blessing that God has given us. That word freedom, we can't take that word lightly. And to see them help people get freedom - but right now, today - look at the kids' smiles on their faces, and their mothers and fathers who've been through it. Just to uplift them, that's what it's about. I'm getting goosebumps talking about it."
Charter buses to a singular charter plane
On the charter bus that took us from Manhattan to the Patriots' team plane at Newark Airport, I sat next to and spoke to a man who identified himself as Shahein Allen, one of the parent chaperones for a kid in attendance.
Allen, a New Jersey resident by way of Scranton, Pennsylvania, said he brought his step-daughter Sahadii to the event in the place of a parent who's in prison.
Currently working in juvenile corrections in Pennsylvania, Allen told me he had seen both sides of the system, as he'd spent 20 years himself in the Pennsylvania state court system on probation and parole due largely to technical probation violations.
"I was in Pennsylvania, went on vacation on probation. Once I got there, got violated on multiple dumb things," Allen said. "Having a cell phone. Having three hundred dollars in cash. Being in a place more than six hours. Like stuff they were just making up just to violate me. I did over 20 years in the system, back and forth, and most of it came from technical violations."
Allen said he was surprised to see Meek, DJ Khaled, and the Reform co-founders at the NBA Store, and he spoke to the impact of Meek's activism in the face of an unjust probation system.
"To have Meek step up and be the face of this movement and actually saying something, we finally have a voice," he said. "Before it was just like, you can't beat the system. So we're shining light on it, and it's going to take a little bit, but the [Pennsylvania] system is so corrupt. It's going to take changing the commonwealth. Structural change."
We eventually pulled into Newark Airport, where a turn through an airplane hangar offsite of the terminal gave way to what was for the kids and their families a surprise reveal of the Patriots' private jet.
"I can't lie. I'm looking to catch a football from Brady, at top speed," Allen joked, before we left the bus for a security line directly in front of the plane's boarding staircase - a one plastic table, one metal detector situation that someone behind me in line referred to as "TSA-Light."
The plane contained hundreds of Patriots hoodies and beanies in its overhead bins, which the kids and their families sorted through before and over the course of the 45-minute flight to Warwick, Rhode Island.
The players' experience at Gillette Stadium
Once off of the buses that took us from Warwick to Gillette Stadium, members of the Patriots staff directed the group through the stadium's inner hallways and into the Patriots' team film room.
In the room, Rubin introduced Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots and a co-founder of the Reform Alliance. Kraft addressed the crowd to say that he had learned of the unjust nature of the probation system through Meek Mill's imprisonment, and that the two had been close beforehand.
"It's an honor for me to have you," Kraft told the group. "Because I've learned how unfair this system is, and for you to suffer at the holiday time and not be with loved ones. ... We wanted you to come here and have an experience just like our players. We just want you to have a great day, and I wanted to say I'm sorry for the unfair treatment, and we're really committed to trying to change the system."
Kraft introduced two guests of his own, Hall of Fame Patriots linebacker Andre Tippett and Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins. Rollins related how she, the "highest-ranking member of the criminal law enforcement community in Boston," had two siblings who had been to prison for parole violations and other circumstances, but that the experience had inspired her run for office and a personal desire to bring representation for black and brown people into the top ranks of Boston law enforcement.
We were then led onto the field through the Patriots players' stadium entrance about an hour before kick-off in a game between the Patriots and Buffalo Bills that held playoff implications. The children and their families stood on the sideline and watched the teams warm-up, met Tom Brady, and took a group picture with Kraft and Rubin on the field.
The group watched the game on large television screens from inside the Optum Field Lounge, located behind an endzone, over a meal of chicken fingers, fries, macaroni and cheese, and salad that the Patriots staff had laid out buffett-style.
At halftime, we left the stadium to board charter buses for the team plane on our way back to Newark and Manhattan.
Spirited discussions abounded on the return trip about the impending probation bill in Pennsylvania that Reform had introduced earlier this year, and about the events of the day - a significant day for 50 children and their families that held a greater symbolic significance in the fight for criminal-justice reform.