Boston Celtics guard Jaylen Brown might live in Boston, but he’s from Marietta, Georgia, one of Atlanta’s largest suburbs. It’s not surprising then that the 23-year-old felt moved to drive 15 hours from the Northeast to Atlanta in order to lead a peaceful protest on Saturday in response to the death of George Floyd.
According to ESPN, Brown, who is a vice president of the National Basketball Players Association, was joined by his fellow union VP, Indiana Pacers guard Malcolm Brogdon, as well as Justin Anderson and rapper Lil Yachty. Brown streamed parts of the protest on Instagram live, and posted videos of it on his page, including one of Brogdon speaking to the crowd, in which he tells them that he’s proud of Brown for organizing the protest and that “we got to keep pushing forward”:
Brown, who carried an “I Can’t Breath” sign during the protest, said that he drove down to his home state to help raise awareness for the issues of police brutality and racism:
Being a celebrity, being an NBA player, don’t exclude me from no conversations at all. First and foremost, I’m a black man and I’m a member of this community. … We’re raising awareness for some of the injustices that we’ve been seeing. It’s not OK.
Later on Saturday, Brown tweeted that three people associated with the protest were arrested. He asked for their names, presumably to provide legal aid:
Send me their information or names if you know the people who were arrested
— Jaylen Brown (@FCHWPO) May 31, 2020
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