John Legend is going on a nationwide tour to end mass incarceration

John Legend, two months after delivering a passionate Oscar acceptance speech highlighting criminal justice reform, has launched an organization to promote the issue: “FREE AMERICA.” He’s kicking things off with a visit to a prison in Austin, Texas, followed by a “a nationwide listening and learning tour” to talk about reform with incarcerated people,  law enforcement and elected officials. He’s also co-hosting an event in DC with Politico later this month, and the ACLU will be cooperating and helping with his mission.

“We have a serious problem with incarceration in this country,” Legend told the Associated Press. “It’s destroying families, it’s destroying communities and we’re the most incarcerated country in the world, and when you look deeper and look at the reasons we got to this place, we as a society made some choices politically and legislatively, culturally to deal with poverty, deal with mental illness in a certain way and that way usually involves using incarceration.”

“I’m just trying to create some more awareness to this issue and trying to make some real change legislatively,” he said.

Legend praised the work of congressmen like Rand Paul, saying, “There are senators that are looking at this, like Rand Paul and Cory Booker, there are other nonprofits that are looking at this, and I just wanted to add my voice to that.”

He pointed to California’s success in passing Proposition 47, which changed several low-level offenses like shoplifting and petty theft from felonies to misdemeanors.

“Once you have that tag of a felony on your name, it’s hard for you to do anything,” he said. “Getting those reduced to misdemeanors really impacted a lot of lives and we hope to launch more initiatives like that around the country.”

“We live in the most incarcerated country in the world,” Legend said during his Oscar speech with Common. “There are more black men under correctional control today than were under slavery in 1850.”