T-Pain, whose real name is Faheed Rasheem Najm and whose stage name is short for “Tallahassee Pain,” was part of Wednesday’s “Survivors Speak” forum, attended by hundreds of crime survivors and their families, most of them African Americans, like him.
T-Pain’s niece, Javona Glover, was murdered in 2016 in Tallahassee.
The group “Crime Survivors for Safety and Justice” is pushing “policy reforms that prioritize rehabilitation and reducing recidivism as effective solutions to replace wasteful spending on incarceration,” according to a news release.
Following up on legislation passed last year, the crime survivors are seeking changes to improve probation, increase incentives for incarcerated people to participate in rehabilitative programs and boost employment and housing protections for crime victims.
T-Pain, who now lives in Atlanta, said in an interview he realizes that it will take time to change lawmakers’ attitudes toward the justice system.
“I feel like this is to get the conversation started and the louder the voices are, the more members we have, the more people that are speaking up the, the more people that get involved, I feel like that's gonna really start to change things over,” he said.
Crime Survivors for Safety and Justice is comprised of a diverse group of survivors of crimes such as gun violence, domestic violence and human trafficking, director Aswad Thomas told The News Service of Florida.
The group also recruited former NFL wide receiver Stedman Bailey, who was born and raised in Broward County and retired from football after he was shot in the head in 2015, to appear at a news conference Wednesday at the Capitol.
Before the organization was formed several years ago, crime survivors’ efforts were “basically falling on deaf ears,” T-Pain said.
“I feel like this is installing the hearing aid right here,” he added. “This is getting them used to knowing that there is a voice and it's going to get louder and louder and you're not going to be able to ignore it for much longer.”
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This article appears in Feb 20-27, 2020.