3 Celtics meet with Biden officials to press justice issues
Used Wizards game as chance for discussion
WASHINGTON — Three Boston Celtics — Jaylen Brown, Malcolm Brogdon, and Grant Williams — used the team’s trip here for a game against the Washington Wizards to meet with Biden administration officials Monday to discuss social justice issues.
As the nation reeled from another school shooting, the players met for about an hour at the White House and discussed the continued gun violence, stalled federal police reform legislation, and efforts in Massachusetts as well as other states to raise the age limit for criminal offenders to be considered juveniles.
The discussion was “an opportunity to use our platform for great purposes and for the right reasons,” Williams told the Globe.
The players met with unnamed White House and Justice Department officials “to discuss the administration’s work on social justice priorities and criminal justice reform, and the ways that they can partner and amplify that work in Boston and their hometowns,” said White House spokesperson Seth Schuster.
The players also got an afterhours tour that included visiting the Oval Office, the Rose Garden, and the White House briefing room, where they took turns posing for pictures behind the press secretary’s lectern.
All three players have been active on social justice issues, particularly in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in 2020. They support the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, federal legislation that would among other changes prohibit racial profiling by police, ban chokeholds, and restrict the use of qualified immunity, which protects police officers from individual legal liability.
President Biden, who has enacted some reforms using executive action, continues to push for passage of the legislation. The House has approved the bill twice, but it has stalled in the Senate. Williams said he and his teammates want to see it enacted as the third anniversary of Floyd’s murder approaches.
“It’s frustrating because especially with someone in office like Biden, who’s willing to sign the bill into law immediately, it’s just a matter of getting elected officials to bring it up and have a conversation,” Williams said.
A priority of the Celtics players is passage of so-called raise the age legislation, designed to give young offenders a second chance by keeping them in the juvenile justice system until they are 18 or 20 years old.
“Our youth is our youth and one mistake shouldn’t change the course of their lives,” Williams said.
The meeting ahead of the Celtics’ Tuesday game was facilitated by Allison Feaster, the team’s vice president of team operations and organizational growth, and Scott Budnick, founder of the Anti-Recidivism Coalition, a nonprofit supporting formerly incarcerated people.
News of the deadly school shooting in Nashville was fresh as the meeting took place, and Williams said gun violence is “crippling our society.”
“We have to understand not only do we want to protect, quote, the Second Amendment right, but at the same time protect ... the children that are actually experiencing these issues,” he said. “It’s injustice to them if we don’t do anything about it.”