For more than two weeks, worldwide demonstrations have taken place protesting police brutality toward African Americans, following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
The Milwaukee Bucks organized and hosted a peaceful march on Sunday, with players and team executives leading the public from the Fiserv Forum plaza to Veteran’s Park.
Bucks Senior Vice President Alex Lasry tells WTMJ’s Steve Scaffidi on Wednesday that such demonstrations need to be just a small part of the franchise’s greater effort toward social change.
“We’ve got to play the long game,” Lasry said. “Hopefully, we can help sustain this movement not just for the next couple weeks, but the next couple years.”
Lasry added that he believes that sports can be a pathway to bringing people together, calling Bucks games a melting pot of different races and cultures gathering to do more than just watch basketball.
“What you saw this weekend was the Bucks trying to bring people together and move forward that conversation,” Lasry explained. “The Bucks, we’ve dealt with this a little more personally…with the incident that happened with Sterling Brown. For us, our players, our fans, our city, we want to try to help and bring it together, move this conversation, move reform, and move justice forward.”
The Bucks have made inner city improvements a franchise priority since Marc Lasry and Wes Edens first purchased the team from former Sen. Herb Kohl in 2014.
The team has also agreed to pay workers a minimum living wage of $15 starting on July 1, per WTMJ news partner Milwaukee Business Journal.