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Carmelo Anthony held a social issues town hall event Monday in Los Angeles

Melo is bringing people together for the greater good.

By Joe Flynn
Gary A. Vasquez-USA TODAY Sports

Carmelo Anthony has been incredibly outspoken of late regarding the racial tensions plaguing America, culminating with his speech at the ESPYs alongside LeBron James, Chris Paul and Dwyane Wade. But Melo isn't content merely to make more speeches; he'd like to bring people together.

In that spirit, Melo is using his time with Team USA to open a dialogue, according to The Undefeated's Marc J. Spears:

Carmelo Anthony, Tamika Catchings and spokesman from the LAPD, Brotherhood Crusade and Boys & Girls Clubs of LA taking part in press conference at "Leadership Together: A Conversation with our Sons & Daughters." Members of the USA Basketball men and women, police officers and about 80 kids took part in the event.

Melo had mentioned setting up this meeting meeting in a profile with The Undefeated:

"Get guys in the community in L.A., the important people. They need to hear the community voices and vice versa whether it's police, whether it's politicians, whether it's mayors, whether it's governors, white people, black people, Mexicans, whoever. I want everybody there having voices.

"It's about creating a plan and executing a plan and not just speaking out on this and speaking out on that. At the end of the day, talking is not going to do that anymore. We got to have action, no matter what that action is, we got to have action."

Melo claimed some "very important people" had reached out to him since the speech. What did they talk about?

Hopefully we'll learn more about the meeting in the coming days. Regardless, this was an important step for Melo, who has clearly invested a great deal of effort into turning words into action.

Update

Chris Herring published a thorough account of what went on in the meeting here.

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