To the untrained eye, it seems like just any other weekend inside Atlantic City’s Ocean Casino Resort. The last trickle of summer tourists meander the casino halls, lounge by the pool, and hit the beach’s boardwalk in a desperate attempt to soak up one of the last steamy weekends of the year. But on Saturday (Sept. 13), half of Hollywood quietly descended on the resort for the REFORM Alliance Casino Night and Gala, one of the year’s most sumptuous fundraisers and parties in support of REFORM’s efforts to transform probation and parole in America.
As the plethora of stars — including Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Kevin Hart, Travis Scott, Ice Spice, Machine Gun Kelly, Quavo, DJ Khaled, Latto, Emma Roberts, Jamie Foxx, French Montana and Ne-Yo — all made their way into the resort’s Ovation Hall, they were handed fizzling glasses of Armand de Brignac, while other attendees sipped on spicy D’USSÉ Sidecars or warm, comforting Espresso Martini’s.
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Foxx reunited with his Back in Action co-star Cameron Diaz, laughing and gabbing the night away while Foxx’s towering Buffalo Hat shielded his face from nosy onlookers (like Billboard). Robert Kraft — sandwiched in between Travis Scott and his fellow REFORM Alliance Board Member Michael Rubin — shared hushed conversations with both. Kraft would later bid almost a million dollars for a round of golf with his old friend Tom Brady, who during the night’s scheduled auction appeared illuminated on the stage via Zoom to oversee the bidding war.
That round of golf, which would be played at Michael Jordan’s private Grove XXIII golf club, would actually go for $1.8 million. Elsewhere, an exclusive concert from Megan Thee Stallion and a one-of-one linen George Condo painting would soon after sell for $600,000 and a whopping $3.4 million, much at the teasing and baiting of the evening’s host Kevin Hart.
“It’s a round of golf, Tiffany,” Hart called out at one point to Tiffany Haddish, who put up a good fight to try and secure herself a 9-hole game with the seven-time Super Bowl champ. “It’s not a date with Tom Brady!”
Elsewhere in the auction, a painting by Rashid Johnson, titled “Soul Painting for Freedom,” sold for over a million, while another bidding war ensued for an Audemars Piguet timepiece made exclusively for Jay-Z, who sat alongside his wife Beyoncé in the middle of the banquet hall.
Money was spent, drinks were poured, belly laughs echoed through the halls. Yet while the evening felt like an aristocratic dinner with some of today’s biggest stars, there were solemn reminders along the way about the true impact at play with REFORM’s work.
“The mission hasn’t changed,” Meek Mill told Billboard, drink in hand outside the gala in a neatly tailored black tie ensemble. “We’ve changed about 22 laws and statutes in a bunch of states. I think the goal is just to keep going. We’re gonna one day talk about the people in the system that need jobs, so eventually we’ll venture over to that. But right now we’re focusing on parol and probation by going state to state, we’ve done eight or nine states so far.”
Since REFORM’s inception in 2019 — which started after Meek Mill’s controversial parole violation in 2017 when he popped a wheelie on his dirt bike and received a two-to-four year prison sentence — the non-profit has passed 22 bills in 12 states aimed at curtailing the supervision-to-prison pipeline and the supervision-to-poverty trap that effects millions of ex-convicts.
One of those impacted individuals, James Severe, spoke onstage prior to the auction, and grew emotional as he shared his own struggles within the prison system and how REFORM’s efforts changed his life. Regardless of these heartwarming stories, it’s hard to ignore whether the second Trump Administration will value criminal justice reform in the same way as REFORM itself.
“I think overall, no,” Rubin said when Billboard asked if criminal justice reform was as unifying a topic as it used to be. “But for what we do at REFORM, absolutely. This is the one place people aren’t debating. People know we need to fix this. There are a lot of parts of criminal justice reform people don’t agree with, but I think the mission here has been clear since we started.”
However, REFORM’s CEO Jessica Jackson added that since the nonprofit’s last gala in 2023 they’d passed five new bills, including the groundbreaking Act 44 in Meek’s home state of Pennsylvania, which eases the more draconian aspects of Pennsylvania’s restrictive probation system. This movement alone shows there is some bipartisan flexibility on this issue.
“I think because of the way REFORM Alliance does our work, where we actually sit down with key stakeholders from all across the aisle — business leaders, faith leaders, law enforcement — we have been able to find that people on all sides of the aisle really think there needs to be reform, that there needs to be common sense injected into [the system],” Jackson added. “Our biggest obstacle has just been the ability to really get out there. But the incredible news is that as we’ve been passing these bills, we’ve been working on implementing them, and part of that involves collecting data. What we’ve found is our bills work. They make communities safer. They save states money. They promote human dignity.”
“I’m not really deep in the political world but we have always had Republicans and Democrats working with REFORM,” Meek noted. “I don’t know what the level of political change will be.”
After the auction, The Weeknd floated on stage to perform some of his biggest hits, including “Starboy,” “The Hills” “Timeless” and more. Along the way, Abel took shots of whiskey, shouted out Quavo and kept the vibes light and celebratory for his 40-minute set. The night was then capped off by a high-stakes, closed-door Blackjack tournament at Ocean’s Gallery Bark Book & Games area. Hov, French Montana, Taylor Rooks, Tyrese Haliburton and guest Andrew Ramus all emerged as semi-finalists, with the latter winning the coveted $1 million prize. Along the way, Travis Scott, Ice Spice, Quavo, DJ Khaled and Chase B performed, before all the guests choppered off to the night’s afterparty.
Overall, the high-energy event was a blockbuster success, raising over $20 million for criminal justice reform for the second time.
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