Artist John Legend and Color Of Change PAC Endorse Cook County SA Kim Foxx
National racial justice group supports Foxx’s reelection campaign and reform efforts
Award-winning artist, activist, and philanthropist John Legend and Color Of Change PAC, the political action committee of the nation’s largest online racial justice group, announced today their support for Kim Foxx’s re-election campaign to the office of Cook County State’s Attorney in March’s Democratic primary.
“The stakes are high in this election for the people of Chicago and all of Cook County,” PAC spokesman Rashad Robinson said in a joint statement. “Since her election in 2016, Kim Foxx has become a national leader in the movement to end mass incarceration. She accomplished a historic repair of injustice by moving to expunge over 1,000 marijuana convictions from the criminal record in a single hearing. Her office has led the nation in clearing the names of the wrongfully convicted and freeing those still imprisoned. But the police union, the former mayor, and other supporters of the old status quo are threatened by Foxx’s power. They’ll do anything to defend the system of mass incarceration that is destroying Black communities in Cook County. The state’s attorney’s office has more power than anyone to either end or continue this destructive cycle. We are joining our voices with the hundreds of thousands of people in Cook County who are standing with this strong, principled Black woman. They trust State’s Attorney Foxx, as we do, to continue her work bringing real change to Chicago’s corrupt and destructive law enforcement system.”
John Legend added, “Kim Foxx heads our country’s second-largest prosecutor’s office with ambition, compassion, and grace. I was thrilled to endorse Kim as State Attorney in 2016, and am thrilled once again to endorse her. Then and now, Kim’s background makes her the kind of prosecutor that America needs to help radically transform the justice system.”
Kim Foxx was first elected to State’s Attorney in 2016, with the support of Color Of Change PAC, on a platform that promised deep reforms to the criminal justice system. Along with the accomplishments listed above, Foxx has also dismissed 5,000 cases by declining to prosecute low-level shoplifting and drug offenses that would have been pursued under the policies followed by her predecessors. In total, 47 percent of the cases brought to Kim Foxx for felony review have been prosecuted compared to the 88 percent under previous state’s attorney Anita Alvarez. She has increased transparency by making case-level data publicly available online for the first time. It has added up to what Cook County public defenders have called a cultural shift inside the State’s Attorney’s office.
Color Of Change PAC is a Political Action Committee focused on building independent Black political power, amplifying Black voices, electing candidates who share our values, and holding them accountable to our communities.