Angelina Jolie celebrated her 45th birthday on June 4 and marked the occasion by making a huge cash donation.
Jolie gave $200,000 to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s Legal Defense Fund, continuing her efforts to give back to the community.
The veteran actress released a statement in conjunction with the donation, applauding what the organization does in the realm of justice reform work.
Angelina Jolie speaks about the importance of fighting racism
A report by ET relays what Jolie had to say in her extensive statement about the donation.
Jolie started her statement by writing, “Rights don’t belong to any one group to give to another. Discrimination and impunity cannot be tolerated, explained away, or justified. I hope we can come together as Americans to address the deep structural wrongs in our society.”
Her statement also states that Jolie “stand(s) with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in their fight for racial equality, social justice, and their call for urgent legislative reform.”
As the website also points out, Jolie is still the Special Envoy for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. She has been working for a long time to defend the rights of refugees and other people who have been displaced by conflict and persecution around the world.
Using the occasion of her birthday to issue such a statement and make the considerable cash donation is undoubtedly something that follows in a long line of things that Angelina Jolie has done to give back.
Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds also donated money
Earlier in the week, it was reported that husband and wife Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds also donated $200,000 to the same cause.
In part, their statement read, “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.
They later said in the statement that, “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.”
Having Blake Lively, Ryan Reynolds, and Angelina Jolie shine additional light on this cause will certainly help keep it in the news as people fight for rights all over the country.
Lively and Reynolds said it well when they ended their statement by saying, “We stand in awe of this organization (NAACP), their empathy and leadership in, Sherrilyn Ifill. Their work is essential to the integrity of democracy.”