Attorney Bryan Stevenson’s Spring 2012 TED talk called “We Need to Talk About Injustice” reportedly got one of the longest and most intense standing ovations in TED’s history, and the thing went viral as soon as it was posted.
Stevenson founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a non-profit legal practice dedicated to defending the poor, the wrongly condemned, children who have been tried as adults and given outsized sentences, and others who have been most abandoned by the nation’s legal system.
He is also a law professor at NYU, the winner of a McArthur genius grant, and has argued six cases before the Supreme Court—two of which are of exceptional significance.
We first introduced you to Stevenson a few months ago when his book about his experiences with the justice system—Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption—was first released.
As we celebrate Dr. King’s day and contemplate all that he accomplished and all that remains to be done, we at WLA could think of no one whose work better embodies both of those perspectives than Stevenson.
Below you can listen to Stevenson’s 2013 talk with Bill Moyers about how wealth, class and race are too often still the primary determining factor when it comes to justice.
Back to our regularly scheduled programing tomorrow.