#kkwthejusticeproject

[xoner8ed]

#Repost @marcmhoward @download.ins --- Freedom is a beautiful thing, especially when you had lost it for 25 years. It brings me tremendous joy to watch my friend Raymond Dodd reenter a world he left at age 17, hug his mom, dance with his nieces, and show off his freedom moves. Some of you will remember getting goosebumps when he stood up and spoke on “Kim Kardashian West: The Justice Project." Ray is a great representative of the Georgetown Prison Scholars Program, and he is one of the most loyal Hoyas I know. He was a joy to have in my classes, and it was an honor for me to testify on his behalf at his sentence modification hearing. Welcome home, Big Play Ray! @kimkardashian @oxygen #kkwthejusticeproject @georgetownuniversity @guprisonjustice @thedouglassproject https://www.instagram.com/p/CDP-VetHK2w/?igshid=aiaqu5o021rf

[furiousbiscuitartisanhumanoid]

Like Kim 💜🔁♥️ #LikeKim #kimkardashianmemes #kimkardashianbutt #kimkardashianhollywoodgame #kimk #kimkardashianstyle #kimkardashians #kimkardashian #kimkardashianfashion #kimkardashiangame #kimkardashianwest #kimkardashianskims #kimkardashianfan #kimkardashianass #looklikekimkardashian #kimkardashianedit #kimkardashiann #kimkardashianmeme #kimkardashianbeauty #kkwbeauty #kkw #skims #kkwfragrance #kkwbody #kkwcosmetics #kkwxmario #kkwdiamonds #kkwhearts #kkwthejusticeproject #kkwstyle https://www.instagram.com/p/CKBAwHxBA7l/?igshid=10a0v17lt58up

[newstechreviews]

“I really do believe that, if people do a crime, they need to do the time,” Kim Kardashian West tells TIME in a recent phone interview (from one self-quarantine zone to another). “But it’s a matter of, what is that fair [amount of] time?”

That’s a question she leaves open-ended — seemingly deliberately. But as her efforts to raise the profile of criminal justice reform movements continue, as showcased in Kim Kardashian West: The Justice Project, a documentary special set to air on Oxygen on April 5, it’s increasingly clear that her answer is along the lines of, well, less.

As The Justice Project documents, there are some important caveats: Kardashian West’s activism has primarily focused on change at a granular level, championing the causes of individual inmates versus larger swathes of the U.S. prison population. (Still, Kardashian West notes, that’s not to say it’s a strategy that can’t be scaled.) The Justice Project highlights five currently or recently incarcerated people, juxtaposing a focus on their crimes with efforts they have since made behind bars toward personal growth and rehabilitation. It’s at times a jarring narrative — the disconcertingly cheesy soft-focus crime re-enactment scenes in particular — but perhaps that’s deliberate too? (If not, that’s cable TV for you.) The repeated ‘flip’ in each inmate’s story, from crime and consequence to rehabilitation (and beyond), seems to mirror the journey Kardashian West has taken herself to learn about the prison system and what she now understands to be its many flaws.

Take the now well-known case of Alice Marie Johnson, who in 1996 received a life sentence, without parole, for working as a “phone mule” for a ring of Memphis drug dealers. (At Johnson’s trial, prosecutors argued she had taken on a “leadership” role in the trafficking operation.) The case leads The Justice Project, just as it spurred Kardashian West into action for the first time.

Learning of Johnson’s story was a “huge eye opener,” Kardashian West explains; a campaign working for her release surfaced in her Twitter feed in October 2017 and caught her attention. The injustices she believed Johnson had suffered — “that someone who was a phone mule [received] a harsher sentence than Charles Manson made absolutely no sense to me,” she says — was a lightbulb moment. “It just really broke my heart, and I just wanted to help her,” Kardashian West says. “Because [I knew] I could.”

Cheriss May—NurPhoto/Getty ImagesAlice Marie Johnson speaks at the 2019 White House Prison Reform Summit and First Step Act celebration at the White House in Washington, D.C. on Monday, April 1, 2019.

Kardashian West began working with Johnson’s own lawyers, advocacy groups and, eventually, the White House. In May 2018, Kardashian West met with President Trump to petition for Johnson’s release; Trump commuted her sentence the following month. Johnson attended the 2019 State of the Union as a guest of the President, and has since returned to the White House to successfully lobby for the release of three other prisoners, Kardashian West notes.

In subsequent campaigning for prison reform, Kardashian West was among those lobbying Trump to pass the First Step Act, bipartisan legislation seeking to reduce recidivism in people released from prisons and improve related services both in and outside of prisons.

“I think when people saw Alice’s face and heard her speak, they felt safe, feeling [of her release] that, ‘Oh, this is going to be OK. Our society is going to be safe; she deserves a second chance,’ Kardashian West tells TIME. “I don’t look at prison reform as very political… The key is humanizing these [people] and taking on these individual stories, to let everyone know that people on the inside are just like us.”

View this post on Instagram

Alexis Martin was just a child when her sex trafficker was killed and she was charged with murder. Hear her powerful story when @KimKardashian West's documentary #KKWTheJusticeProject premieres, Sunday, April 5 at 7/6c on @Oxygen.

A post shared by Oxygen (@oxygen) on Mar 17, 2020 at 3:48pm PDT

While her platform and, in many respects, her resources stand alone, The Justice Project also works shrewdly to present (reframe, even) Kardashian West in a similar vein — that, in the context of her activism awakened, she’s a regular person “just like us.” Or, more importantly, that any of “us” could step up too if we chose to.

Kardashian West is very conscious to highlight the work of her collaborators, attorneys and long-standing activists — many of whom are people of color — whose work her celebrity status could be seen as overshadowing. In any context, but particularly so when considering community-building and social justice work, appropriation or a ‘white savior’ narrative is “problematic,” as Brittany Barnett, an attorney who worked on Alice Marie Johnson’s case said in a 2019 interview with Essence. “I’ve never done this work for credit,” she continued, noting that she was “grateful” for Kardashian West’s “complementary efforts” and support, “but I do feel it’s important for little Black girls to see that two Black woman lawyers are doing this work.”

Kardashian West says she has reckoned with this, and continues to do so. “We talk about it all the time,” she says on this subject. “I always say this is a team effort, I tell everyone I’m the last push at the end. I’m that vessel.” And there are occasions she says she now steps behind the curtain herself; “We are very strategic,” Kardashian West explains. “There’s cases that I’m working on that people know nothing about and maybe never will—cases where we know that a state governor, say, would probably not like to receive a call from me, and that [my involvement] could even be used against our client. I speak up when I’m needed, and when it’s not, I don’t.”

Read more: Amid Growing Support Campaign, Texas Death Row Inmate Rodney Reed’s Planned Execution Has Been Stayed. Here’s What You Need to Know

She’s likewise conscious to air her privilege — having grown up in a family that, save sister Khloé’s very brief jail stint for violating probation from a DUI arrest (and yes, that viral KUWTK moment), was never directly impacted by the prison system — and the lack of awareness that, in her case, came with. “I wish I had paid attention sooner,” Kardashian West tells TIME; an admission that could undercut some of the criticism a Kardashian near-inevitably faces for doing anything, let alone something serious.

A particularly poignant, if overtly-staged scene in The Justice Project features Kardashian West and a friend discussing some of the cases she’s taken on, and her successes. They’re sitting at a table covered in letters received from, presumably, prisoners whose cases she surely couldn’t have had time for. But, The Justice Project argues, she’s doing something.

In this vein, Kardashian West and her Justice Project becomes both aspirational and accessible for its viewers, her followers or anyone hearing of a case that didn’t sit right with them. It’s a subtle call-to-action, but impactful nonetheless.

[phooll123]

New top story from Time: ‘I Wish I Had Paid Attention Sooner.’ Kim Kardashian West on Her Justice Project and Quest For Apolitical Prison Reform

“I really do believe that, if people do a crime, they need to do the time,” Kim Kardashian West tells TIME in a recent phone interview (from one self-quarantine zone to another). “But it’s a matter of, what is that fair [amount of] time?”

That’s a question she leaves open-ended — seemingly deliberately. But as her efforts to raise the profile of criminal justice reform movements continue, as showcased in Kim Kardashian West: The Justice Project, a documentary special set to air on Oxygen on April 5, it’s increasingly clear that her answer is along the lines of, well, less.

As The Justice Project documents, there are some important caveats: Kardashian West’s activism has primarily focused on change at a granular level, championing the causes of individual inmates versus larger swathes of the U.S. prison population. (Still, Kardashian West notes, that’s not to say it’s a strategy that can’t be scaled.) The Justice Project highlights five currently or recently incarcerated people, juxtaposing a focus on their crimes with efforts they have since made behind bars toward personal growth and rehabilitation. It’s at times a jarring narrative — the disconcertingly cheesy soft-focus crime re-enactment scenes in particular — but perhaps that’s deliberate too? (If not, that’s cable TV for you.) The repeated ‘flip’ in each inmate’s story, from crime and consequence to rehabilitation (and beyond), seems to mirror the journey Kardashian West has taken herself to learn about the prison system and what she now understands to be its many flaws.

Take the now well-known case of Alice Marie Johnson, who in 1996 received a life sentence, without parole, for working as a “phone mule” for a ring of Memphis drug dealers. (At Johnson’s trial, prosecutors argued she had taken on a “leadership” role in the trafficking operation.) The case leads The Justice Project, just as it spurred Kardashian West into action for the first time.

Learning of Johnson’s story was a “huge eye opener,” Kardashian West explains; a campaign working for her release surfaced in her Twitter feed in October 2017 and caught her attention. The injustices she believed Johnson had suffered — “that someone who was a phone mule [received] a harsher sentence than Charles Manson made absolutely no sense to me,” she says — was a lightbulb moment. “It just really broke my heart, and I just wanted to help her,” Kardashian West says. “Because [I knew] I could.”

Cheriss May—NurPhoto/Getty ImagesAlice Marie Johnson speaks at the 2019 White House Prison Reform Summit and First Step Act celebration at the White House in Washington, D.C. on Monday, April 1, 2019.

Kardashian West began working with Johnson’s own lawyers, advocacy groups and, eventually, the White House. In May 2018, Kardashian West met with President Trump to petition for Johnson’s release; Trump commuted her sentence the following month. Johnson attended the 2019 State of the Union as a guest of the President, and has since returned to the White House to successfully lobby for the release of three other prisoners, Kardashian West notes.

In subsequent campaigning for prison reform, Kardashian West was among those lobbying Trump to pass the First Step Act, bipartisan legislation seeking to reduce recidivism in people released from prisons and improve related services both in and outside of prisons.

“I think when people saw Alice’s face and heard her speak, they felt safe, feeling [of her release] that, ‘Oh, this is going to be OK. Our society is going to be safe; she deserves a second chance,’ Kardashian West tells TIME. “I don’t look at prison reform as very political… The key is humanizing these [people] and taking on these individual stories, to let everyone know that people on the inside are just like us.”

View this post on Instagram

Alexis Martin was just a child when her sex trafficker was killed and she was charged with murder. Hear her powerful story when @KimKardashian West's documentary #KKWTheJusticeProject premieres, Sunday, April 5 at 7/6c on @Oxygen.

A post shared by Oxygen (@oxygen) on Mar 17, 2020 at 3:48pm PDT

While her platform and, in many respects, her resources stand alone, The Justice Project also works shrewdly to present (reframe, even) Kardashian West in a similar vein — that, in the context of her activism awakened, she’s a regular person “just like us.” Or, more importantly, that any of “us” could step up too if we chose to.

Kardashian West is very conscious to highlight the work of her collaborators, attorneys and long-standing activists — many of whom are people of color — whose work her celebrity status could be seen as overshadowing. In any context, but particularly so when considering community-building and social justice work, appropriation or a ‘white savior’ narrative is “problematic,” as Brittany Barnett, an attorney who worked on Alice Marie Johnson’s case said in a 2019 interview with Essence. “I’ve never done this work for credit,” she continued, noting that she was “grateful” for Kardashian West’s “complementary efforts” and support, “but I do feel it’s important for little Black girls to see that two Black woman lawyers are doing this work.”

Kardashian West says she has reckoned with this, and continues to do so. “We talk about it all the time,” she says on this subject. “I always say this is a team effort, I tell everyone I’m the last push at the end. I’m that vessel.” And there are occasions she says she now steps behind the curtain herself; “We are very strategic,” Kardashian West explains. “There’s cases that I’m working on that people know nothing about and maybe never will—cases where we know that a state governor, say, would probably not like to receive a call from me, and that [my involvement] could even be used against our client. I speak up when I’m needed, and when it’s not, I don’t.”

Read more: Amid Growing Support Campaign, Texas Death Row Inmate Rodney Reed’s Planned Execution Has Been Stayed. Here’s What You Need to Know

She’s likewise conscious to air her privilege — having grown up in a family that, save sister Khloé’s very brief jail stint for violating probation from a DUI arrest (and yes, that viral KUWTK moment), was never directly impacted by the prison system — and the lack of awareness that, in her case, came with. “I wish I had paid attention sooner,” Kardashian West tells TIME; an admission that could undercut some of the criticism a Kardashian near-inevitably faces for doing anything, let alone something serious.

A particularly poignant, if overtly-staged scene in The Justice Project features Kardashian West and a friend discussing some of the cases she’s taken on, and her successes. They’re sitting at a table covered in letters received from, presumably, prisoners whose cases she surely couldn’t have had time for. But, The Justice Project argues, she’s doing something.

In this vein, Kardashian West and her Justice Project becomes both aspirational and accessible for its viewers, her followers or anyone hearing of a case that didn’t sit right with them. It’s a subtle call-to-action, but impactful nonetheless.

via Blogger https://ift.tt/2UHWoWQ

[videogamejames]

Tristan Thompson Twitter

I’m soo proud of @KimKardashian and your show 💪🏾🙏🏾#KKWTheJusticeProject #FutureAttorney

— Tristan Thompson (@RealTristan13) April 5, 2020

via Blogger https://ift.tt/2UOxfdv https://ift.tt/32ls46Y

[itsfinancethings]

April 03, 2020 at 09:13PM

“I really do believe that, if people do a crime, they need to do the time,” Kim Kardashian West tells TIME in a recent phone interview (from one self-quarantine zone to another). “But it’s a matter of, what is that fair [amount of] time?”

That’s a question she leaves open-ended — seemingly deliberately. But as her efforts to raise the profile of criminal justice reform movements continue, as showcased in Kim Kardashian West: The Justice Project, a documentary special set to air on Oxygen on April 5, it’s increasingly clear that her answer is along the lines of, well, less.

As The Justice Project documents, there are some important caveats: Kardashian West’s activism has primarily focused on change at a granular level, championing the causes of individual inmates versus larger swathes of the U.S. prison population. (Still, Kardashian West notes, that’s not to say it’s a strategy that can’t be scaled.) The Justice Project highlights five currently or recently incarcerated people, juxtaposing a focus on their crimes with efforts they have since made behind bars toward personal growth and rehabilitation. It’s at times a jarring narrative — the disconcertingly cheesy soft-focus crime re-enactment scenes in particular — but perhaps that’s deliberate too? (If not, that’s cable TV for you.) The repeated ‘flip’ in each inmate’s story, from crime and consequence to rehabilitation (and beyond), seems to mirror the journey Kardashian West has taken herself to learn about the prison system and what she now understands to be its many flaws.

Take the now well-known case of Alice Marie Johnson, who in 1996 received a life sentence, without parole, for working as a “phone mule” for a ring of Memphis drug dealers. (At Johnson’s trial, prosecutors argued she had taken on a “leadership” role in the trafficking operation.) The case leads The Justice Project, just as it spurred Kardashian West into action for the first time.

Learning of Johnson’s story was a “huge eye opener,” Kardashian West explains; a campaign working for her release surfaced in her Twitter feed in October 2017 and caught her attention. The injustices she believed Johnson had suffered — “that someone who was a phone mule [received] a harsher sentence than Charles Manson made absolutely no sense to me,” she says — was a lightbulb moment. “It just really broke my heart, and I just wanted to help her,” Kardashian West says. “Because [I knew] I could.”

Cheriss May—NurPhoto/Getty ImagesAlice Marie Johnson speaks at the 2019 White House Prison Reform Summit and First Step Act celebration at the White House in Washington, D.C. on Monday, April 1, 2019.

Kardashian West began working with Johnson’s own lawyers, advocacy groups and, eventually, the White House. In May 2018, Kardashian West met with President Trump to petition for Johnson’s release; Trump commuted her sentence the following month. Johnson attended the 2019 State of the Union as a guest of the President, and has since returned to the White House to successfully lobby for the release of three other prisoners, Kardashian West notes.

In subsequent campaigning for prison reform, Kardashian West was among those lobbying Trump to pass the First Step Act, bipartisan legislation seeking to reduce recidivism in people released from prisons and improve related services both in and outside of prisons.

“I think when people saw Alice’s face and heard her speak, they felt safe, feeling [of her release] that, ‘Oh, this is going to be OK. Our society is going to be safe; she deserves a second chance,’ Kardashian West tells TIME. “I don’t look at prison reform as very political… The key is humanizing these [people] and taking on these individual stories, to let everyone know that people on the inside are just like us.”

View this post on Instagram

Alexis Martin was just a child when her sex trafficker was killed and she was charged with murder. Hear her powerful story when @KimKardashian West's documentary #KKWTheJusticeProject premieres, Sunday, April 5 at 7/6c on @Oxygen.

A post shared by Oxygen (@oxygen) on Mar 17, 2020 at 3:48pm PDT

While her platform and, in many respects, her resources stand alone, The Justice Project also works shrewdly to present (reframe, even) Kardashian West in a similar vein — that, in the context of her activism awakened, she’s a regular person “just like us.” Or, more importantly, that any of “us” could step up too if we chose to.

Kardashian West is very conscious to highlight the work of her collaborators, attorneys and long-standing activists — many of whom are people of color — whose work her celebrity status could be seen as overshadowing. In any context, but particularly so when considering community-building and social justice work, appropriation or a ‘white savior’ narrative is “problematic,” as Brittany Barnett, an attorney who worked on Alice Marie Johnson’s case said in a 2019 interview with Essence. “I’ve never done this work for credit,” she continued, noting that she was “grateful” for Kardashian West’s “complementary efforts” and support, “but I do feel it’s important for little Black girls to see that two Black woman lawyers are doing this work.”

Kardashian West says she has reckoned with this, and continues to do so. “We talk about it all the time,” she says on this subject. “I always say this is a team effort, I tell everyone I’m the last push at the end. I’m that vessel.” And there are occasions she says she now steps behind the curtain herself; “We are very strategic,” Kardashian West explains. “There’s cases that I’m working on that people know nothing about and maybe never will—cases where we know that a state governor, say, would probably not like to receive a call from me, and that [my involvement] could even be used against our client. I speak up when I’m needed, and when it’s not, I don’t.”

Read more: Amid Growing Support Campaign, Texas Death Row Inmate Rodney Reed’s Planned Execution Has Been Stayed. Here’s What You Need to Know

She’s likewise conscious to air her privilege — having grown up in a family that, save sister Khloé’s very brief jail stint for violating probation from a DUI arrest (and yes, that viral KUWTK moment), was never directly impacted by the prison system — and the lack of awareness that, in her case, came with. “I wish I had paid attention sooner,” Kardashian West tells TIME; an admission that could undercut some of the criticism a Kardashian near-inevitably faces for doing anything, let alone something serious.

A particularly poignant, if overtly-staged scene in The Justice Project features Kardashian West and a friend discussing some of the cases she’s taken on, and her successes. They’re sitting at a table covered in letters received from, presumably, prisoners whose cases she surely couldn’t have had time for. But, The Justice Project argues, she’s doing something.

In this vein, Kardashian West and her Justice Project becomes both aspirational and accessible for its viewers, her followers or anyone hearing of a case that didn’t sit right with them. It’s a subtle call-to-action, but impactful nonetheless.

[jessicakehoe]

Kim Kardashian West Releases Trailer for The Justice Project Documentary

If you needed any further proof that Kim Kardashian West is taking her new law degree seriously, the trailer for her new documentary, The Justice Project, should just about do it.

Teased this weekend, the two-hour documentary follows the reality TV star-turned-entrepreneur-turned justice advocate as she works with lawyers on four wrongful incarceration cases. “There is a mass incarceration problem in the United States,” Kim begins the trailer by saying. “I went into this knowing nothing, and then my heart completely opened up. People deserve a second chance.”

Speaking at the Television Critics Association press tour this weekend after the trailer was released, the SKIMS founder was asked if she feels like she’s found her passion with the work in criminal justice reform. “I do, I really do. I don’t see how I could just say ‘no’ to someone that really needs help if I know that I can help them.” She also added that her children are a motivating factor for her work. “I’m raising four black children that could face a situation like any of the people that I help. Just to know I can make a difference in my children’s lives and [others] by helping fix a broken system, that’s so motivating for me.” When asked about facing criticism for this new path, she responded, “It can be exhausting, frustrating, but I know that we can make a difference, and so all the criticism in the world will not deter me from what I want to do. I’m very used to criticism so nothing really fazes me. I’m one of those not-human souls that can really deal with it. However I really genuinely just stay focused on cases and people and am extremely compassionate. No, I’m not doing it for publicity. I really do care and spend 20 hours a week away from my family and kids for this.”

The work, she says, helps her to feel close to her late father, Robert Kardashian, too. “There are times when I can be frustrated, up studying really late and wonder how he did it. Having four kids…[he] must have been going through some of the same things that I have gone through, so it would have been exciting to talk to him about that. I know that he would be so, so proud.”

The documentary comes after Kim successfully petitioned the White House last year to grant clemency to 63-year old Alice Johnson who was in prison on a life sentence for a non-violent, first-time drug offence.

Watch the trailer below:

The official trailer for my new documentary is here! Criminal justice reform is something that’s so important to me, and I can’t wait to share these stories with all of you. #KKWTheJusticeProject premieres Sunday, April 5 at 7/6c on @Oxygen pic.twitter.com/d5AvuvQE7a

— Kim Kardashian West (@KimKardashian) January 19, 2020

Kim Kardashian West: The Justice Project will air on April 5, 2020 on Oxygen.

The post Kim Kardashian West Releases Trailer for <em>The Justice Project</em> Documentary appeared first on FASHION Magazine.

Kim Kardashian West Releases Trailer for The Justice Project Documentary published first on https://borboletabags.tumblr.com/

[dingydiamond]

Kim Kardashian Helps Free 39-Year-Old Inmate Who Was Sentenced To Life In Prison

Kim Kardashian Helps Free 39-Year-Old Inmate Who Was Sentenced To Life In Prison

View this post on Instagram

Momolu Stewart who is currently serving a life sentence will soon walk free, as early as next week, a judge announced Friday afternoon. Momolu’s case will be featured in the upcoming @Oxygen special Kim Kardashian West: The Justice Project. Link in bio for more. #KKWTheJusticeProject @KimKardashian

A post shared by Oxygen(@oxygen)…

[videogamejames]

Tristan Thompson Twitter

I’m soo proud of @KimKardashian and your show 💪🏾🙏🏾#KKWTheJusticeProject #FutureAttorney

— Tristan Thompson (@RealTristan13) April 5, 2020

via Blogger https://ift.tt/2UOxfdv https://ift.tt/32ls46Y

[itsfinancethings]

“I really do believe that, if people do a crime, they need to do the time,” Kim Kardashian West tells TIME in a recent phone interview (from one self-quarantine zone to another). “But it’s a matter of, what is that fair [amount of] time?”

That’s a question she leaves open-ended — seemingly deliberately. But as her efforts to raise the profile of criminal justice reform movements continue, as showcased in Kim Kardashian West: The Justice Project, a documentary special set to air on Oxygen on April 5, it’s increasingly clear that her answer is along the lines of, well, less.

As The Justice Project documents, there are some important caveats: Kardashian West’s activism has primarily focused on change at a granular level, championing the causes of individual inmates versus larger swathes of the U.S. prison population. (Still, Kardashian West notes, that’s not to say it’s a strategy that can’t be scaled.) The Justice Project highlights five currently or recently incarcerated people, juxtaposing a focus on their crimes with efforts they have since made behind bars toward personal growth and rehabilitation. It’s at times a jarring narrative — the disconcertingly cheesy soft-focus crime re-enactment scenes in particular — but perhaps that’s deliberate too? (If not, that’s cable TV for you.) The repeated ‘flip’ in each inmate’s story, from crime and consequence to rehabilitation (and beyond), seems to mirror the journey Kardashian West has taken herself to learn about the prison system and what she now understands to be its many flaws.

Take the now well-known case of Alice Marie Johnson, who in 1996 received a life sentence, without parole, for working as a “phone mule” for a ring of Memphis drug dealers. (At Johnson’s trial, prosecutors argued she had taken on a “leadership” role in the trafficking operation.) The case leads The Justice Project, just as it spurred Kardashian West into action for the first time.

Learning of Johnson’s story was a “huge eye opener,” Kardashian West explains; a campaign working for her release surfaced in her Twitter feed in October 2017 and caught her attention. The injustices she believed Johnson had suffered — “that someone who was a phone mule [received] a harsher sentence than Charles Manson made absolutely no sense to me,” she says — was a lightbulb moment. “It just really broke my heart, and I just wanted to help her,” Kardashian West says. “Because [I knew] I could.”

Cheriss May—NurPhoto/Getty ImagesAlice Marie Johnson speaks at the 2019 White House Prison Reform Summit and First Step Act celebration at the White House in Washington, D.C. on Monday, April 1, 2019.

Kardashian West began working with Johnson’s own lawyers, advocacy groups and, eventually, the White House. In May 2018, Kardashian West met with President Trump to petition for Johnson’s release; Trump commuted her sentence the following month. Johnson attended the 2019 State of the Union as a guest of the President, and has since returned to the White House to successfully lobby for the release of three other prisoners, Kardashian West notes.

In subsequent campaigning for prison reform, Kardashian West was among those lobbying Trump to pass the First Step Act, bipartisan legislation seeking to reduce recidivism in people released from prisons and improve related services both in and outside of prisons.

“I think when people saw Alice’s face and heard her speak, they felt safe, feeling [of her release] that, ‘Oh, this is going to be OK. Our society is going to be safe; she deserves a second chance,’ Kardashian West tells TIME. “I don’t look at prison reform as very political… The key is humanizing these [people] and taking on these individual stories, to let everyone know that people on the inside are just like us.”

View this post on Instagram

Alexis Martin was just a child when her sex trafficker was killed and she was charged with murder. Hear her powerful story when @KimKardashian West's documentary #KKWTheJusticeProject premieres, Sunday, April 5 at 7/6c on @Oxygen.

A post shared by Oxygen (@oxygen) on Mar 17, 2020 at 3:48pm PDT

While her platform and, in many respects, her resources stand alone, The Justice Project also works shrewdly to present (reframe, even) Kardashian West in a similar vein — that, in the context of her activism awakened, she’s a regular person “just like us.” Or, more importantly, that any of “us” could step up too if we chose to.

Kardashian West is very conscious to highlight the work of her collaborators, attorneys and long-standing activists — many of whom are people of color — whose work her celebrity status could be seen as overshadowing. In any context, but particularly so when considering community-building and social justice work, appropriation or a ‘white savior’ narrative is “problematic,” as Brittany Barnett, an attorney who worked on Alice Marie Johnson’s case said in a 2019 interview with Essence. “I’ve never done this work for credit,” she continued, noting that she was “grateful” for Kardashian West’s “complementary efforts” and support, “but I do feel it’s important for little Black girls to see that two Black woman lawyers are doing this work.”

Kardashian West says she has reckoned with this, and continues to do so. “We talk about it all the time,” she says on this subject. “I always say this is a team effort, I tell everyone I’m the last push at the end. I’m that vessel.” And there are occasions she says she now steps behind the curtain herself; “We are very strategic,” Kardashian West explains. “There’s cases that I’m working on that people know nothing about and maybe never will—cases where we know that a state governor, say, would probably not like to receive a call from me, and that [my involvement] could even be used against our client. I speak up when I’m needed, and when it’s not, I don’t.”

Read more: Amid Growing Support Campaign, Texas Death Row Inmate Rodney Reed’s Planned Execution Has Been Stayed. Here’s What You Need to Know

She’s likewise conscious to air her privilege — having grown up in a family that, save sister Khloé’s very brief jail stint for violating probation from a DUI arrest (and yes, that viral KUWTK moment), was never directly impacted by the prison system — and the lack of awareness that, in her case, came with. “I wish I had paid attention sooner,” Kardashian West tells TIME; an admission that could undercut some of the criticism a Kardashian near-inevitably faces for doing anything, let alone something serious.

A particularly poignant, if overtly-staged scene in The Justice Project features Kardashian West and a friend discussing some of the cases she’s taken on, and her successes. They’re sitting at a table covered in letters received from, presumably, prisoners whose cases she surely couldn’t have had time for. But, The Justice Project argues, she’s doing something.

In this vein, Kardashian West and her Justice Project becomes both aspirational and accessible for its viewers, her followers or anyone hearing of a case that didn’t sit right with them. It’s a subtle call-to-action, but impactful nonetheless.