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Angelina Jolie Spends Birthday with Her Kids, Donates to NAACP: ‘Impunity Cannot Be Tolerated’
The activist and Oscar winner donated $200,000 to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund ahead of her birthday on Thursday, which she celebrated with her six kids: Maddox, 18, Pax, 16, Zahara, 15, Shiloh, 14, and 11-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne.
“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,” Jolie said in a statement. “I stand with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in their fight for racial equality, social justice, and their call for urgent legislative reform.”
Since the killing of George Floyd, which spurred worldwide protests against police brutality, Jolie and her kids have been having difficult and necessary conversations about race while isolating together in Los Angeles.
The actress and director has been active since the COVID-19 pandemic spread around the world and has donated to different organizations. Amid the continuing spread, Jolie shared a birthday toast Zoom call with friends and colleagues and spent the day with her kids at home.
One of the causes Jolie has been vocal about is the lack of food security thousands of children face around the country, made worse by schools shutting down in order to curb the spread of the virus.
Last month, Jolie joined a Zoom call led by No Kid Hungry, the organization working to feed kids across the country during the COVID-19 pandemic. Jolie previously donated $1 million to the organization and has continued to stay involved with the cause.
Jolie, who has been advocating for refugees around the world for years as a special envoy to the UNHCR, shared that she got involved with No Kid Hungry after realizing the scope of the situation in America.
“I knew that there were problems in America, that there was poverty, but I could not believe when I realized how many school children in America were dependent on a meal to not go hungry,” she said on the call. “I was so disgusted that we have gotten to this point as a country and that we would let the most vulnerable be in such a state. I can’t imagine what it feels like for those parents.”
Jolie also urged Congress in a letter last month to increase its food assistance to affected families through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
“Many of the most vulnerable children in America have missed nearly 740 million meals at school, due to closure resulting from the rapid spread of coronavirus. With parents facing lost jobs and wages, many of these children are going hungry,” she wrote in the letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Minority Leader Chuck
Schumer, according to USA Today.
“While strengthening SNAP will not alleviate all of the challenges low-income families are facing during the public health emergency, it will help ensure that fewer children go to bed hungry in our country,” she said.
