Spending their time — and money. Celebrities have stepped up amid the global protests of people around the world demanding justice following the death of George Floyd.
Floyd died after police officer George Chauvin pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for nearly nine minutes in Minneapolis on Monday, May 25. The stars quickly began joining in on the protests against police brutality and racial inequality, and sharing their reactions — and ways to help — on social media.
Multiple celebrities began posting their donations to the Minnesota Freedom Fund, a nonprofit organization that can help bail out individuals who can’t afford to do so. When some posted screenshots of their direct donations, they asked for others to “match” their donation — and the tweets began going viral as others matched.
Other celebs revealed other organizations that were available for donations to help. Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds donated $200,000 to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, an organization that is focused on finding racial justice by making changes and eliminating disparities.
“We’ve never had to worry about preparing our kids for different rules of law or what might happen if we’re pulled over in the car,” the couple said in a statement via Instagram. “We don’t know what it’s like to experience that life day in and day out. We can’t imagine feeling that kind of fear and anger. We’re ashamed that in the past we’ve allowed ourselves to be uninformed about how deeply rooted systemic racism is.”
Reynolds, 43, and Lively, 32, who share three daughters, also opened up about the way the tragedy has impacted them as parents.
“We’ve been teaching our children differently than the way our parents taught us,” the statement continued. “We want to educate ourselves about other people’s experiences and talk to our kids about everything, all of it … especially our own complicity. We talk about our bias, blindness and our own mistakes. We look back and see so many mistakes which have led us to deeply examine who we are and who we want to become. They’ve led us to huge avenues of education.”
Scroll through the gallery below to see more celebrities who have made donations: