Meek Mill and Michael Rubin: Two Worlds Collide to REFORM Probation

Kelly: Michael Rubin has been with Meek through the thick of it all. And together Meek and Rubin have started Reform Alliance, an organization committed to reshaping probation and parole policies.

Aurora: And I think the best way to understand what Reform Alliance is all about is to hear from one of the people they support:

[Clip from Reform Alliance video]

Aurora: There are countless stories like this. So it’s time to start this conversation.

Kelly: Before we start, as usual, we have some cuss words in the episode.

Aurora: Cue that tape.

INTERVIEW:

Kelly: Michael Rubin, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Michael: I have fun most days and having fun is important.
Aurora: It’s awesome.
Michael: I learn every day. I grow every day. It’s always interesting. I also screw things up every day, but I learn from that as well.
Kelly: Well, yeah. I think I learn more, right.
Michael:Definitely.
Kelly: Tell us about your relationship to Mr. Meek Mill.
Michael: Meek’s been my boy for a long time. We probably met – I don’t know, six years ago now. And you know his stories pretty well known now, but Meek used to always argue about stuff. And he basically be telling me, like, “You don’t get it.” Like, “Man you’re killing it. You’re lucky. You should be you should be so happy,” you know. But I saw so many bad things happen with him over the years. I just had this conversation with him. I’ve probably been with him when I’d say he’s got phone calls, about six to eight people dying, being killed over the years.
Aurora: Yeah.
Michael: I remember we were in Vegas once and we were playing blackjack and he took a call and he came back a few minutes later and, you know, I’m like, “Dude, why’d you leave? We were heist.” I was like, making a joke. He’s like, “My friend just got killed.” I was like, “Huh?” And I’m like, “Are you OK?” It’s just like for him that’s the world he grew up in. It was normal. For me, I was like, I couldn’t even – I couldn’t I honestly couldn’t understand it. So, you know, look, Meek and I have each learned a ton from each other. He’s a, you know, extraordinary individual. I think people didn’t understand that when he first went to prison for the fourth time.
Aurora: Yes.
Michael: You know about a year and a half ago and I was disturbed in every way possible from what I had seen and knowing he is a great human being who’s doing a lot for his community, who is one of my really good friends who represented zero point zero risk to anybody and now he’s being taken away from his son and his sister, and his mother is going to prison for not committing a crime. I don’t that there had been anything that’s bothered me more in my life than watching that happen firsthand. And sometimes you gotta – you just got to say like you’re not going to let shit stand and you know, fortunately for Meek, he had Jay-Z, he had me. And, you know we were unrelenting to get him out of prison. And I think what changed for me is I thought this was only about him.
Aurora: But let’s talk about that, right, because I think that’s the moment, Michael, that we’re trying to help our listeners kind of understand this is not a one in done. This is not an isolated incident. This is not something that just happens to one Black person.
Michael: Yeah. And so in the beginning, I thought it was. I was completely wrong. And so once we proved that he didn’t do what he was originally charged for – people laugh all the time when you say he was charged for pointing a gun at multiple police officers, you don’t get to point a gun at multiple police officers, though. They’re trained. It’s their job. They won’t be doing the job if they shoot you. It doesn’t mean you die. But they’re gonna shoot you. You pull a gun and they say, “Excuse me, sir, could you please put your weapon down?” They have to protect themselves. And so he was charged with pointing a gun at multiple police officers. Turned out those police officers were all dirty, all came forward and said that, you know, he didn’t do what he was charged of, you know, 11 years later. But once we knew he was innocent, we still couldn’t get him out of prison. That’s when I realized the whole system was fundamentally broken and it wasn’t just about him. And that’s when the conversations that Meek and I had turned from how do we get you out of prison to how do we fix this this, you know, underlying problem? The criminal justice system is as screwed up as anything that I’ve ever seen. I’m not somebody who has any interest in politics or government. I mean, I’ve been a hundred percent laser focused on my business, my friends, my family. And I would never want to get into this. But when you see one of you’re really close friends go to prison for not committing a crime. And then when you get in the situation you realize, “My God, this isn’t just about him. It’s really this broad based issue that our country has.” Then, you know, that’s kind of what led us just to start the Reform Alliance.
Kelly: I grew up my whole life saying, “I’m so fortunate. I’m so lucky. You know, the stars were aligned for me that my dad had this, quote unquote rags to riches story.” And what I realized was that he never would have been where he got to if he wasn’t white. And I’m just curious at what point – because it sounds like you hit that point or it sounds like you had that realization – but at what point did you have more awareness about your own whiteness?
Michael: Yeah.
Michael: I didn’t fully answer your question. Like look I think racism is a huge issue. And we just got to figure out you’re never gonna eliminate it. What we need to do is make it better every day. And to me, we need to keep giving opportunities to, you know, people of all types, shapes, sizes, colors, whatever it is. And that’s kind of you know, I think that’s the responsibility of everybody. And so I take that responsibility seriously. I’ve always done it within my companies. And now, you know, I’m just doing it by my company because it’s that they actually care about beyond work.
I know a lot of rags to riches stories.
You know, I came from a very middle class family, but I have lots of friends who’ve come from nowhere and of all races and have done really well. And I think that’s what makes America great. What makes America really fucked up is that we have the worst criminal justice system of any real country in the world. And so that’s something that needs to get corrected.
A quarter of the people that go to prison each year, nearly 200,000 people go for technical probation violations. They don’t commit any crime. You know, the three biggest things they’ve done? They didn’t pay their probation fees.
Kelly: Duh.
Michael: Well, guess what? A lot of people can’t afford it.
Aurora: Absolutely.
Michael: They smoked marijuana and had a negative urine test for marijuana. By the way it’s becoming legal in most states. Or they missed a probation meetings in many cases because they have a job. Right. And that’s why that’s the majority of why people get technical violations and go to prison each year. In my view, zero percent of those people should go to prison.
I think racism is a huge issue and to me we need to keep giving opportunities to people of all types, shapes, sizes, colors whatever it. And I think that’s the responsibility of everybody. So I take that responsibility seriously, I’ve always done it within my companies and now I am doing something beyond my companies because there’s something that I actually care about beyond work.
Aurora: Absolutely. And I’m just going to go through the stats so that folks kind of get grounded. Currently, there’s over six point six million people incarcerated and trapped in the criminal justice system here in the U.S. We have, as you mentioned, Michael, 4.5 million that are currently trapped in the loop of probation and parole. Many of them with terms that are completely unreasonable. And we spent over 80 fucking billion dollars in our correctional institutions.
Michael: And we have five x the rate of incarceration occurring as the rest of the world. So I mean, that just tells you if you just look and say the rest of the world versus America, we five times the rate of incarceration. That thing was fascinating to me – and this is why, you know, things happen for a reason – So Meek’s entire adult life has been stalked by probation issues. That’s two thirds of the system. So as you mentioned, six point seven million people, two thirds of them are on probation, parole. And that’s what’s tortured Meek’s entire adult life. So fortunately, you know, for America, Meek being stuck in that – kind of me seeing it firsthand allowed us to say, “Hey, we’re going to focus on one thing, one thing only, which is how do we fix that probation and parole system?” So that’s two thirds of the system. I think there’s so many great people dedicated to criminal justice reform, but no one is really focused on probation or parole reform. And that’s 100 percent of what our energy is. So we’ve come up with kind of what we think is a really logical set of, you know common sense, simple, you know, parameters. How it should work. It’s really simple. First thing is probation should have caps. The majority of states have caps on how long he’ll be on probation. You know, we think that for a felony, you should have no more than five years probation. For a misdemeanor, no more than two years. OK. Many states have that today. Let’s a we’re in today Pennsylvania, where I’m from, where Meek is from, where you where you’re from. I don’t know where you’re from. Texas. Texas is a pretty screwed up state too.
Aurora:Yeah, Texas.
Michael: But let’s talk about Pennsylvania. They have no caps on probation, so you can literally.
Kelly: That’s insane.
Michael: Meek’s been on probation for his entire adult life – you need caps on probation, because if not, it just becomes you just recycle people’s.
Kelly: It’s just a hamster wheel.
Michael: But let me just say this, if you put me on probation, forget about how long Meeks been on, if you put me on probation for a year, I’ll find a way to violate it. You supposed to be rehabilitating people, not trying to figure a way to put them back in the system.
Aurora: Well, but that’s the point, right? So I don’t know if it’s set up to fail. I think it’s set up to keep people trapped in the system that keeps them from actually moving forward.
Michael: Yeah. What I would say as I consider myself to be a pretty like, I’m pretty practical, reasonable. I’m less emotional than most. What I just tell you is you have a really fucked up system that people created decades ago and it’s just broken, doesn’t make sense. It’s actually the system is more broken than the people. Because if you give someone a bad set of rules, then they’re going to do bad things. And you know what? We allowed Janice Brinkley, the judge, to give make indefinite probation. And have we been in a state like New York or a state that had more logical probation laws? That would’ve been a cap on probation. And she couldn’t have done that.
The second thing we believe is that you need to have you really caps on technical violations, technical violation, which I said is a quarter of why people go to prison each year for not committing crimes. Again, three biggest things, positive tests for marijuana. Did I pay my fines? Missed a probation appointment. You should not be able to put people in prison for that. OK. And that’s what we want to change that. Secondly, we want change. The third thing we want pretty simple concept: Good time behavior. If you’re behaving well, let’s take time off probation. And the fourth thing is this stuff’s all going to be retroactive. Like there’s four and a half million people in the system we know we came out with the goal: How do we get a million people to the system? I want that to be conservative. I think today you said, “How many people really should be on probation pro in America?” I think it’s more like a million or a million and a half versus the four and a half million. You say how many people should be in prison? Two point two million. It’s five more like, you know, half a million to a million. So there are lots of people who belong in prison and there are lots of people who belong on probation. And by the way, I’m incredibly grateful to law enforcement. I’m incredibly grateful to all the people that work to keep us safe, to keep our community safe. But they’ve got a broken system. We need fix the system. One of things I love is how many people from law enforcement. How many people, you know, that are part of the part of the broken system are saying, “Hey, we want to help fix this.” And that’s a really great thing.
Aurora: It is. And I think this is one of things Kelly and I talk about, like it’s going to take all of us doing it together.
Michael: It’s going to take all of us being unrelenting. The same way, your father just, you know, his success, the six Sixers came from just like a he eat just that mentality of I’m going to figure out how to win, period end of story, that’s we have to do with this, because if we take a more traditional route, just like, “Hey, you know, let’s try to fix this.” Nothing’s gonna happen. You just need to like will this to happen.
Kelly: Yeah.
Michael: And that’s what we’re doing. And so we’ll go on stage by stage, but we’re going to step by step change laws now. That’s we’re focused on doing.
Kelly: It’s incredible. And overdue. I just think back to Pat my dad, as a 20 year old, 19 year old getting kicked out of West Chester for fighting or a myriad of other fights and whatnot, and I just if he were black, I can’t imagine he would still be on parole right now.
Michael:That I agree with 100 percent.
There are times I’ve been with Meek like I remembered you know, I think a lot of people now just like three or four months ago, Meek was in Vegas and he went to go to a Cosmopolitan hotel. They said, “You can’t come in.” And the reason could come in was because he was a black rapper and they won’t let him in. That exact same thing happened when I was going to – when I was in Vegas two years ago with Meek. I went to bed. He called me 10 minutes later, “They won’t let me in.”.
And for him, that was normal to him.
Aurora: Yeah.
Michael: And we would fight about this stuff and be like, “Bro, that is not normal.”
Kelly: Yeah.
Michael: “Do not accept that.” you know.
We joke about this all the time. My relation with him until until you went to prison in 2017, it was all fun. All we do was have fun. We never. There was never any work stuff. There is never any deals. We just have fun. It was like a normal like relation with a boy. Now it’s like all like, how do we make it – It’s all work and very little fun.
Kelly: Do you remember when that moment was where it was like – things are one way and and you were like, you know, your “aha moment” came that there’s two different Americas. You know, you weren’t in the same America. But then what was your like, “Oh, shit moment.” Like, I need do something like, do you remember that day?
Michael: As clear as can be. It was it was November 6th, 2017, he said. He said he called me that morning, said, “Can you come to this hearing with me? I want you to see it firsthand.” And he always told me about this batshit crazy judge. And, you know, s o I’m in this court with him and I literally and I’ll remember this for the rest of my life – I mean, it’s one of the few like just crazy moments you never be able get out of your head. And I thought, I can’t remember what happened yesterday in most parts of my life. So I’m sitting in the courtroom and the probation officer gets up. The probation officer, this woman, Kathy Sue, a terrific woman. She’s like, you know, “Robert Williams, that speaks our names. You know, been a model probationer. He’s done everything we’ve asked him, do we think the world of him, we recommend no sentence.” And by the way, I’m paraphrasing this because she just like raved about him for five minutes. The judge starts screaming at the probation officer. Now it’s like this woman might be as crazy as Meek said she was. Then the district attorney gets up and says, you know, just gets up, stands up and says, “We recommend no sentence.” So I looked at her lawyers and like, “Why? I don’t get why we here. Your probation officer – They both recommended no sentence.” He’s like, “No one ever gets charged for this.” And then she sat him in a prison in front of me for two to four years for not, you know, for not committing a crime or breaking a law. And that’s when I realized everything that he’d always told me about two Americans was right. And then everything I ever told him that like, “Don’t be soft.” Kind of like you’re being a bitch was wrong. And so you know that. That was the moment for me. And he caught, by the way, his stories, while no, nobody called me like an hour later from prison. And like, I was like, I never pick up a call. One of our guys. No, but it was like it was like I was frantically calling for help. Different people. So that’s how I pick the phone up. He’s like, “I told you something.” “Huh? What are you talking about?” So I told you there were two Americas. I told you there are two Americas.” And here’s the thing, he wasn’t even fazed by it. Like I was sitting there like, you know, like.
Kelly: All your hackles are up all your yeah.
Michael: I’ve never seen anything like this. I can’t believe this could possibly happen. He’s like this a normal day for heaven and in bBack America.
Aurora: Millions.
Michael: My view is you got to get really great people working together and you’ve got to make it better every day. You’re never gonna make it perfect. Anyone who says like, hey, I want to eliminate racism. That’s a great desire. It’s never gonna happen. What we do is we can make better every year. We can bring people together.
Aurora: Well, and that’s a huge part of what we’re trying to do here is like we’ve got to opt in to be together to have those conversations. You have that a ha moment. And now you’re trying to create more harmony. Talk to us a little bit about. You talked about the three priorities with Reform. What’s your timeframe?
Michael: Yes, we. Yeah. So we’re starting right here in Pennsylvania. That’s that’s where I’m from. That’s where Meeks from. That’s it’s that third where state in the country from from the percentage of people on probation. And the most backwards laws. Fortunately, we’ve got great people, both Democrats and Republicans, working closely together to fix this. We’ve got our whole team 100 percent focused and we plan to get this done enough in the fall. You know, for us we want to do is go state by state and change the laws. And we want to come out with laws that make sense that, you know, that we’re we’re proud of.
If we don’t screw it up, this would be the most important movement within criminal justice reform, because we’re going after two thirds of the system, which is the 44 million people on probation, parole.
Aurora: What makes this job challenging for you?
Michael: Everything.It’s hard as could be, but that’s you. We kind of go over the list of who we thought could add the most value to this. We’ve got everybody. We want to get to do this. And we have the most incredible group of founding partners. And, you know, we’re building an incredible team from band, the team that he’s putting together. And so, you know, I think it’s it’s a really hard task, but it’s one that we’re really motivated to get done.
Kelly: What can I do where I’m at?
Michael: The biggest thing we need from individuals – we don’t want money from individuals. What we want. We want people to find stories that really bother them. And then we want them to to tell those stories. Because to me, there are there are millions of Meek Mill stories. And we need to get those stories and we need to get those stories out there. So what we’re gonna be doing over the next several months is we’re gonna kind of create kind of what we call “reformers.” You’re gonna be able to go to your state. You’re going to be able go and you gonna find stories of every type. You, by the way, you want to find someone, you want an African-American person, Latino, you want a white person, you want a mail, you want a female will say you’re going to be let’s go see your person and hear the story. And there can be so many crazy stories. And we want people to tell that story on social media. So we’re a couple months away from able to do that, but we’re gonna be able to do that. And that’s gonna be, I think, transformative. Cause to me, what we need is the country in the world working for us.
And they’ve got to find source that their own passion about for me. You know, I found mine when I found this happen to really good good friend of mine. And I think there are so many stories that are just atrocious and awful. I just I just heard that story last week about a guy who got married and he didn’t get permission from his probation officer, gets into prison for getting married quickly. But we’ve had another guy. We been part of our announcement. The guy literally, he was like low level, you know, so very minimal amounts of drugs. You know, a thousand dollars, two thousand dollars ten years earlier went to prison for selling, I think, cocaine in really small claims a few times. Ten years later, he made it illegal U-turn. He got sent to prison for 90 days for an illegal U-turn. I mean, say, I hear stories like I’m just like this. This can’t be possible. This is how this happened. So to me, the biggest thing we need to do, we have to do two things that we formalize. One need to change laws state by state. We start in Pennsylvania. Two, we need to educate people because more so many people are like me, they didn’t understand the issue. When I hear your story. You grew up with issues, so you get it. But I got to say, I say more people don’t get it than do get it.
Kelly:More white people. Just say white. That’s why people I’m telling you, just say. Hashtag just say white.
Michael: But by the way, there are a lot of white people that don’t get it. There’s also people of other races that don’t get it. Look, this is primarily an issue that affects minorities and people that are poor.
One of the things that’s amazing is you know Amazon dropped this Free Meek documentary about my by.
Kelly: Fantastic.
Aurora: Powerful, beautiful. I mean, talk about story. So there you go.
Michael: Yeah. And that’s why I people walking up to me every day saying, “Man, I can’t believe what he’s been through.” This is amazing. It’s like that education. Like what? That’s educated millions of people.
And the thing is, by the way, it’s a really interesting thing before any of this stuff started. You know, a year and a half ago or, you know, almost two years ago now, if you’d have asked me what percentage of times the criminal justice system gets it right, I would tell you, like ninety nine point nine. You asked me today, I tell you like less than half. And the reason is the whole way the criminal justice system works in America is you overcharge everyone. And then because they don’t have the resources to fight, you force them to plea down. They have no choice. And that’s why everyone is stuck in the system, because, you know what? Your dad went out and got a fight. OK, yeah. We’re going to charge you with 17 things and we’ll see. You have to plead to this to be don’t plea to this. Then you go to prison. And so that’s why everyone. That’s why everyone, please. And that’s why no one can fight. You have to have money and power to be able to fight. And that’s not fair. And that’s what we need to change. We need to make the system fair for everybody.
Aurora: Amen.
I want to ask you one question, because I think that there is absolutely this power in stories and people hearing stories that they can connect with that stir their hearts, that stir their minds, but we also talked about the fact that it’s also important to have an intimate relationship with someone who is a marginalized person of color.
Michael: People used to always say to me when this started, “Gosh Meek is so lucky to have you as his friend.” And what I would say to people, “I’m so lucky to have him as my friend because I’m learning as much from him as he’s learning from me.” We’re just learning different things. And, again, that’s how we bring people together. I mean, it’s one of the things that I don’t like about this country right now it’s so divided, so divisive. And from my perspective, you know, it’s hard to say. And I’m I’m not getting sucked into anything other than this. But I did say that there’s something I’d love to see up in this country. I’d love to bring people together more.
Kelly: Yeah, I don’t know that this is probably the theme that people would say about you all the time, but I hear your themes today being friendship, storytelling and love. And I think with those three things, we get a lot done.
Michael: Well, you’re not in business. I seem to fight a lot. So I’m all I’m all love outside of business. I try to be all love in business too.
Kelly: That’s what I’m saying. You might not describe yourself through themes, but I’m saying that I think that’s at the fundamental level what we’re talking about.
Michael: I will look for by the way, listen, I look I’m a guy who barely made it out high school. I didn’t go to college. And so for me, the way I’ve learned is by being a sponge to to great people around me. I think I’m fortunate so many great people around me that I learn from every day, day in and day out. And I still do dumb shit every day. I mean, up, you know? You know, even I’m getting old.
Kelly: It’s not college would have taught you any differently than even Dumber.
Michael: Yeah, I agree. But, you know, because I didn’t have that background, you know, my personality is like learn from my environment. And I like that. That works well for me.
Kelly: Thank you.
Michael: It’s my pleasure.
Aurora: Thank you so much.
Michael: If we can all help in just the smallest of ways to make an impact, that’s a really good thing.

OUTRO:

Kelly: Ok so now I just want to listen to Meek Mill’s entire discography…over and over again.

Aurora: You should, girl!

Kelly: But seriously, this was a really stimulating conversation. I mean I knew the criminal justice system was bad…but to hear it laid out through Meek’s story…Geez.

Aurora: Look this is reality. Meek knows that. Michael knows that. That is why they’re using their position of power, of privilege to make change.

Kelly: I got to say, though, I was surprised that Michael seemed so supportive of law enforcement given what happened to Meek.

Aurora: Well I think Michael’s in a pretty unique position. He’s balancing between different worlds trying to get them to agree on probation reform…You got to take in a lot of perspectives …Plus we’re all at different places on this learning journey.

Kelly: To learn more about Meek and Michael’s organization Reform Alliance check out our show notes.

Aurora: Now it’s your turn. We want to hear from you. What are some of the stories you have around the criminal justice system? What does Meek’s story bring up for you? Find us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @the opt in.

Kelly: Music for this episode is by Jordan McCree. And the Opt-In is produced by Rachel Ishikawa.

Aurora: Talk soon.

Kelly: Bye.