- Dania Diaz, the head of Team Roc, Roc Nation's philanthropic arm, spoke to Insider about the formation of the United Justice Coalition and its coming inaugural summit.
- The summit, free and open to the public, will take place at Center415 in New York City on July 23.
- It'll convene leading social justice activists and experts, entertainers, entrepreneurs, and organizations to discuss combating social and racial injustice.
In July, the social justice organization known as the United Justice Coalition will host an inaugural summit that will convene leading social justice activists and experts, entertainers, entrepreneurs, and organizations to discuss combating social and racial injustice.
The convention, free and open to the public, will take place at Center415 in New York City on July 23. Prospective attendees can register for the event through the coalition's website.
Ahead of the summit, Insider spoke to Dania Diaz, a UJC founding member and the head of Team Roc, Roc Nation's philanthropic arm, about the coalition's work preceding the summit and its evolution from an informal "meeting of the minds" into a nonprofit organization in 2020.
In a phone interview, Diaz discussed assembling the coalition's advisory board, which includes Team Roc, media names like Charlamagne tha God and Gayle King, attorney Ben Crump, Dream Corps founder Van Jones, activist Tamika Mallory, Michael Eric Dyson, attorney Angela Rye, and a long list of others.
The coalition also includes a group of families who lost loved ones to police violence, which Diaz addressed at length.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
I wanted to start out with some background if we could. How did this informal association evolve into a 501(C) organization?
Well, the United Justice Coalition, to give you the background, was originally a convening of what we called back then a "meeting of the minds." Back in 2019, Roc Nation started to look at, how do we tackle a lot of the issues that are really impacting Black and brown communities? How do we address the corruption that we're seeing in police departments across America? How do we help to be part of the solution in rebuilding trust in communities with the law enforcement? And realized that we needed to get really passionate people at the table who were doing the work on the ground across the US, and getting a cross section of thought leaders to engage in discussion and also to take action.
So, we started meeting monthly, and I would say that, I guess, the formal naming of the organization, United Justice Coalition happened back in early 2020, I believe. That's when we agreed upon an official name and an entity to be formed, because we were doing a lot of work that really addressed a lot of the issues that we wanted to tackle. Parchman prison for one: that is sort of like a Team Roc-led initiative, but fully supported by all members of the United Justice Coalition. It's something that, as you know, just recently the Department of Justice had declared that the conditions at Parchman violated the eighth amendment and the 14th amendment. So that was a big win. I'd say that the engine behind that was really the support of the United Justice Coalition.
What are some other examples of behind the scenes work that the coalition has done subsequently?
Well, one thing that I wanna highlight, if you haven't looked at the website yet, is just to get a sense of the membership, right? We have a cross section of thought leaders from media and philanthropy and activists and lawyers and educators. But most importantly, we have families. Families that were impacted by police violence. And one of the things that we worked on was really kind of humanizing the stories of the loved ones that were lost, and hearing it from the family's perspective, and ultimately that developed into a series of PSAs that we were able to also work with the NFL to give it broader exposure. So that's another example.
We've also worked on how to amplify Black voices in the civic engagement process. We did a whole sort of voter registration initiative with Block Power that was really focused on helping to increase civic engagement in areas where voter turnout was low back in 2020. So, supported efforts in North Carolina and Georgia and Florida, Texas, Arizona, to increase voter registration with Block Power. We also support ... we called it a police accountability database, but the formal name is the Full Disclosure Project, which is housed at the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, NACDL, and basically what it does is provide criminal defense attorneys real time information about police officers, tracking their misconduct so that there are immediate decisions that could be made rather than having somebody sit in in jail or have an extended pretrial detention experience because the data isn't immediately available. So that's another example of the work that we've supported through the UJC.
What does the codification of a summit allow for? What opportunities does that present?
You know, we wanted to launch the summit years ago, and unfortunately obviously because of the pandemic we couldn't. But we're really excited to host it this year. And the goal is really collaboration and education and learning. Really a moment to have productive discussions around the issues that we see on the news all the time, the issues that impact underserved communities, Black and brown communities. Looking at our criminal justice system and really looking at, how do we bring the energy and the expertise to life in a contained space, right? I think that a lot of folks have been wanting to get together and talk about these issues, but more importantly, find real solutions and models and take action. And so that's really kind of the goal and the spirit of the conference, of the summit.
And so, that's really what we wanna do on July 23rd. We wanna bring together this vibrant community of people who are concerned, who wanna learn more, who wanna take action, and bring kind of the best of the minds to the conference, whether as panelists, whether as keynote speakers, whether as attendees. We will have an entire area devoted to organizations that are doing the work on a daily basis, giving them greater visibility in this space and bringing everyone from like a kid in Memphis, for instance, who is curious about the legal system or who may have been racially profiled, to a top CEO who's made real commitments on racial justice and criminal justice reform. So we want a diversity of perspectives, but the common goal is really coming up with solutions.
Could you speak to specifically the diversity and variety of the advisory board, what went into assembling the group of people who are included?
I mean, a number of things. I think we were looking at some colleagues and some connections in our world who are really leaders in their own rights. So people who have real voices when it comes to racial justice, social justice, the impact of laws and policies on certain communities that are underserved. So everything from people in media, we have Charlamagne and Gayle King, for instance. And then we have like a Barry Sheck, one of the co-founders of the Innocence Project, an incredible human being and intellect. We have Tamika Mallory, widely known for a lot of her organizing work, and Carmen Perez-Jordan as well, who is the CEO of the Gathering for Justice, which was founded by Harry Belafonte.
So, these are folks that we've either worked with in the past, but engaging others that we probably haven't worked with directly, in this capacity, engaging them because they have a real voice, like a Angela Rye, for instance. So it really came down to looking at who can really help have impact as we get them together, and really digging in deep on some of the issues, and how do we use our individual platforms to have even greater impact as a collective.
You briefly touched on it, but I wanted to just ask further. I think it's impactful to have, as a part of this coalition, family members of those who were shot and killed by police officers.
Absolutely.
Could you speak to where they factor into the coalition's plans moving forward?
They're an essential and very prominent part of how we operate. And, I mean, every meeting that we have really focuses on the families first. They center us in ways that I think no other organization can, because they've experienced the pain firsthand and many of them have actually become leaders in their own right, unfortunately, due to the trauma. But, I mean, if you look at the families that are represented at the UJC, it's phenomenal human beings. You can talk about Dr. Tiffany Crutcher, twin sister of Terrence Crutcher, who has killed by police in Oklahoma. We have Michelle Kenney, mother of Antwon Rose in Pittsburgh. Angella and Dan Henry, parents of DJ Henry, who started their DJ Henry Dream Fund. And we also have Allisa Findley, sister of Botham Jean, who was killed in his own home in Dallas, Texas.
So, you know, they're incredible human beings, really leaders. They all started organizations in honor of their loved ones. And as I mentioned, they really helped to center the conversations and at the UJC in ways that are very powerful and in ways that are very honest and that keep us all grounded.
What do you see moving forward from the coalition? What are the plans, essentially, of how to progress following the summit?
Well, I mean, one thing is that this is the first summit. So I think there's definitely an opportunity to listen and learn and really understand all the different ways we can have impact. I think that one of the best features of the summit will be the presence of organizations that are on the ground, and each and every one of them has, obviously, the expertise in their own right. So learning from them, being able to also participate in town halls, because there will be a mix of panel discussions, of keynotes, of town halls. There will be an area dedicated to networking. So maybe there's something that sparked your interest in a conversation, in a panel, and you wanna talk further about it, there's going to be an entire area where you can just network with folks and learn more.
So I think, you know, at the end of the day, again, I'm just gonna highlight the education piece, and I'm gonna highlight the opportunity to get more involved with organizations and take action. But one of the things that we will get out of it is really understanding the issues a lot better, who the players are and how we can work better together to make some real meaningful change. 'Cause we know that there's a lot that we need to work on to improve our criminal justice system and to really tackle systemic racism.