LeBron James And Other Athletes Write Open Letter To Encourage People To Vote

LeBron James penned an open letter alongside other athletes that are part of the voting rights group More Than A Vote to encourage people to make their voices heard in the November election.

The letter, which was shared in The Undefeated, says after George Floyd's and Breonna Taylor's deaths, a group of Black athletes and artists founded the coalition to "educate, energize and protect Black voters."

"Black voter suppression has many forms," the letter reads. "We are focusing on the threat of COVID-19 as a tool of suppression, the abuse of political power to make voting more difficult and the misinformation intended to intimidate and deceive our community.

"We saw you in the streets. We saw your social media posts. Your voices are breaking through, but it’s now time to do more. We know you have the ability to organize. So join us and take your protest to the election and fight to keep our community from being silenced."

James helped found More Than A Vote in June after Taylor was shot by police officers in Louisville in March and Floyd was murdered by a police officer who knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes in Minneapolis in May.

The voting rights group announced last week that it had partnered with the Dodgers to make Dodger Stadium a voting center for the November election, marking the first time that a Major League Baseball team is using its stadium as a polling site.

And last month, it announced that it was going to donate $100,000 to the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, which aims to pay ex-felons' debts so they can be eligible to vote,

The letter strongly encouraged everyone to vote -- and to make sure that their friends and families do so as well.

"When someone you know starts with the old tropes of 'my vote doesn’t matter' or 'the whole thing is B.S.,' shut it down," the letter reads. "We all know that if our vote didn’t matter, they wouldn’t be spending so much time and money trying to keep us from voting. Voting is the most important thing you can do."

Over the last couple of months, James has used his massive platform of a combined 117 million followers on Instagram and Twitter to encourage people to get out to the polls, in addition to speaking in front of national television audiences during the resumed NBA season at Walt Disney World about the importance of voting.

In addition to James, 37 other athletes signed the letter, including Emmanuel Acho, Ray Allen, Jozy Altidore, Tim Anderson, Mo Bamba, Odell Beckham Jr., Eric Bledsoe, Toni Braxton, Bun B, Caron Butler, Carlton Davis, Skylar Diggins, Jeremy Ebobisse, Mike Evans, Draymond Green, Brittney Griner, Kevin Hart, Udonis Haslem, Andrew Hawkins, Jason Heyward, DeAndre Hopkins, Alvin Kamara, Damian Lillard, Kyle Lowry, CJ McCollum, Renee Montgomery, Justin Morrow, Arike Ogunbowale, Dare Ogunbowale, Chiney Ogwumike, Jeff Okudah, Kendrick Perkins, David Price, Jalen Rose, CC Sabathia, Ben Simmons, Sloane Stephens, Marcus Stroman, Maria Taylor, Kristi Toliver, Michael Vick, Bobby Wagner, A’ja Wilson and Trae Young.