Tatiana Pinheiro
This past weekend, civil rights attorney Ben Crump gave SOHH an exclusive interview at the Roc Nation Social Justice Summit in NYC.
Ben Crump has represented some of the nation’s most pertinent civil rights cases such as George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
The Civil Rights Attorney gave us an exclusive interview, discussing the impact and cultural significance of the event, as well as the need for advocacy in hip-hop.
“When an organization as prominent as Roc Nation says, we’re going to focus our issue on social justice, it takes all the followers they have in their music space and brings it to this space to influence the culture.”
Discussing Eric Garner, he said:
“This space is important because to so may people Eric Garner was a hashtag, he was a case but to his family he was their loved one, that was Gwen Carr’s son and we have to remind people that it’s real”.
He also tells us how advocacy in music can push our culture forward:
“I pray advocacy will be the new face of hip-hop. I hope hip-hop continues to evolve to go back to the roots of hip-hop, to the roots of black music that talks about what inspires us to be a better people to one another.”
He then quoted the late singer and songwriter, Nina Simone:
“Nina Simone said: the artist reflects the times they live in, we get that but also the artist inspires the times we live in.”
Justice Is Our Future
Roc Nation’s first ever annual social justice summit was announced in spring.
The organization assembled a coalition consisting of social justice leaders from various industries.
The summit took place amid the midterm elections in the US.
It is the latest initiative to leverage the power of hip-hop culture to address police brutality and criminal justice reform.
