Sublime

http://www.ted.com/speakers/bryan_stevenson.

Stevenson, who is known for going into jails and prisons and spending hours upon hours sitting with defendants, hearing their stories, affirming their humanity, and offering them dignity.

Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow and Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy. Those two books archive the big idea of U.S. history: the subjugation of people of color by a succession of social systems, from the genocide of Indigenous people to slavery to mass incarceration.

“The ultimate logic of racism is genocide,”

When you experience mercy, you learn things that are hard to learn otherwise. You see things you can’t otherwise see; you hear things you can’t otherwise hear. You begin to recognize the humanity that resides in each of us.

If there is a fundamental challenge within these stories, it is simply to change our lurking suspicion that some lives matter less than other lives. William Blake wrote, “We are put on earth for a little space that we might learn to bear the beams of love.” Turns out this is what we all have in common, gang member and nongang member alike: we’re ju