MILWAUKEE — Five of the Milwaukee area's top high school basketball players are stepping off the court and into the community with a new violence prevention campaign called "Playmakers for Peace," built around a simple message: pause before you react, because one decision can change a life.
Jalen Brown, Deuce McDuffie, Londyn Hollins, Michael Rogers Jr. and Rashaad Davis — all Division I prospects — launched the campaign together, hoping to reach young people across Milwaukee with a message they say is both powerful and personal.
"If this can change 10 people's life, I feel like we hit our goal," Brown said.
"You are bigger than basketball. And we can make an impact beyond the game," Hollins said.
The campaign's core message centers on the idea that a single moment of pause can change an outcome — a concept the players say mirrors what they experience on the court.
Watch: Milwaukee high school basketball players launch 'Playmakers for Peace' campaign against gun violence
"It's really powerful, but yet really subtle," Brown said.
"If you pause on the court, you can make the right play or make the right read or make the right shot. If you calm down, you can make the right decision on the court," McDuffie said.
"If you just pause before you do something and think, how could this affect your life? It could change the outcome of what you do," McDuffie said.
The campaign is also deeply personal. The group lost a close friend to gun violence earlier this year, and that loss became a driving force behind their decision to speak out.
"He was someone I got really close with, and just losing him to gun violence, which can always be stopped, it really impacted me a lot," Rogers said.
"Knowing what he was going through off the court was even sadder. So that is why I want to have a voice in this. If he would have taken a pause and thought about his actions before being where he was that night, it would be a different outcome," Brown said.
For Davis, speaking publicly about gun violence means breaking through a silence that too many in the community feel forced to keep.
"Being from where we are, it happens a lot and it shouldn't but people don't really get to speak on it because they don't feel like they will be heard," Davis said.
The players say that discomfort is exactly why the conversation needs to happen.
"We have to talk about things that are hard so people can get comfortable making a change," Hollins said.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
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