You Don’t Create Justice by Doing What is Comfortable | Bryan Stevenson | Google Zeitgeist

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thank you we do face some challenges in this country that I hope people in this room will begin to think about and engage in in a more direct and meaningful way as was indicated we're in a part of the world where things have changed really radically over the last 40 years in 1972 we had a prison population in America of 300,000 today our prison population is 2.3 million we have 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's incarcerated we have 6 million people on probation and parole and the United States today there are 70 million Americans with criminal arrests which means that when these people apply for loan to try to get a job they are disfavored by that arrest history the percentage of women going to prison has increased 640 percent in the last 20 years 70 percent of these women are single parents with minor children and when they go to prison their children get displace there are collateral consequences to mass incarceration that are also devastating and we had 80,000 people come to Selma this past March to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the March to Montgomery the president came members of Congress came in very few people who came to Selma had any idea that today in Alabama 31 percent of the black male population has permanently lost the right to vote as a result of a criminal conviction there are 10 states where the levels of disenfranchisement are actually higher than at any moment since the passage of the Voting Rights Act we're actually projecting there are counties in my state of Alabama where disenfranchisement will rival the levels of disenfranchisement at the time the Voting Rights Act was passed the percentage of poverty children in poverty has increased in the african-american community by 39 percent since the year 2000 and we have this new data that is the most troubling for me the Bureau of Justice now predicts that one in three black male babies born in this country is expected to go to jail or prison one in three that was not true in the 20th century that was not true in the nineteenth century it became true in the 21st century now I could actually give similar data to dramatize similar problems when it comes to homelessness when it comes to healthcare when it comes to hunger when it comes to education when it comes to adversity and all of these other phenomena and I don't really want to talk about these problems I want to talk about the solutions because I actually believe there are four things that we can do to not only change these trends to disrupt this phenomena over incarceration but I believe these four things will actually help us change the world and I'm really serious about it I think we can create more justice in the world I think we can create more compassion in the world I think we can create better relationships with one another in the poor in the world I think we can decrease poverty in the world but we got to talk about these four things the first is proximity I am persuaded that we cannot change the world that you can't even be a good citizen you can't be good stewards of the money and the resources that you have you can't be responsible influencers until you understand the importance of getting proximate to problems in our world I'm persuaded that proximity is necessary because proximity teaches you things that you can't learn from a distance we have too many problem solvers and too many politicians trying to solve problems in education and healthcare and over incarceration and their problems and their solutions aren't working because they're too distant when you get proximate to problems you see things and you hear nuances in details that you cannot see from a distance technologists innovators know that they actually solve a problem to create a breakthrough you've got to get close and inside of that problem and proximity is how many of you have succeeded the same recipe exists for social justice we've got to get close to the part of our community where they're suffering where there's inequality we've all been taught indirectly that if there's a problem neighborhood you want to stay away if there's a problem School District you don't want to go there if there are people where there's adversity and conflict and violence you have to stay far from that we've been taught to actually keep our distance from problems and I'm here to say if we want to really change the world we've got to get close proximity is important I'm a product of someone's choice to get proximate I grew up in the rural South for black children could not go to the public schools I lived in the community where there were no high schools for black kids my bad when he was a teenager couldn't go to high school because there were no high schools for black children lawyers came into our community when I was a little boy and they made them open up the public schools and but for their intervention I wouldn't be standing here but because they chose to get proximate I got to go to high school I graduated high school I went to college had great time in college I was active in music I was active in sports I was a philosophy major I really loved college to be honest when I was in my third or fourth year of college I realized that nothing was actually gonna get as good as this so I decided I wanted to stay in college forever and as a philosophy major I thought that maybe somehow I could work something out and I would sometimes say to my friend I tell you know I'm going out on the hillside to think some deep thoughts because I'm a philosophy major and I realized now that my friends probably thought I was saying was going out on the hillside to get high or to do something illegal but I wasn't I would actually go out there and think what I thought were these great deep thoughts and one day I was out there and and somebody came up to me and said you know you're a philosophy major and you're a senior what are you gonna do after you graduate and I heard this as a very hostile question because I realized for the first time nobody was gonna pay me to philosophize when I graduated from college and I panted cuz I didn't know what I'm sure all of you knew nobody in my family had graduated from cause I didn't know that in this country if you want to do graduate work you actually and if you want to do graduate work in history or English of political science you actually have to know something about history English a political science to get into graduate school that was very intimidating to me so I kept looking around and to be honest that's how I found Law School it was very clear to me that you don't need to know anything to go to law school and so I signed up for that and was very disillusioned because nobody was talking about racial inequality or poverty there was only when I got proximate that I began to see the potential for doing something I tried to reconcile myself to a career as a lawyer that I knew was not going to be affirming but when I got proximate to children being prosecuted as adults it changed things I worked on the case some years ago involving a fourteen-year-old boy who lived in a household his mom was repeatedly the target of a lot of domestic violence there was lots of adversity in this home and his boys mother had a boyfriend who when he would start drinking would get violent and one day the man had been drinking he came home he walked into the kitchen he called the boy's mother into the kitchen he didn't say anything he just walked up to and punched her in the face she fell she hit her head she was knocked unconscious she was on the floor bleeding little boy ran in to try to help his mother recovery tried to get her to wake up he tried to get her to respond but she wouldn't and after ten minutes this child thought his mom was dead she wasn't that but he thought she was so the little boy got up and he went into the bedroom where the man had gone inside and fallen asleep and this little boy walked over to a dresser drawer we he knew this man kept a handgun he opened the drawer he pulled the gun out he walked over to where the man was sleeping and he pointed the gun at the man's head the man was snoring and when the man stopped snoring this little boy pulled the trigger shot the man in the head the man died almost instantly noticeable Bohr was very small for his age he'd never been in trouble before he was about five feet tall he weighed less than a hundred pounds but he had no prior juvenile adjudications it was actually a decent student and he might have been tried as an adult but for the fact that the man that he shot and killed his mother's boyfriend well that man was a deputy sheriff and because it was a deputy sheriff the prosecutor insisted that this child be tried as an adult they certified him to stand trial as an adult and they immediately placed him in the adult jail today we have some ten thousand children under the age of seventeen in adult jails in prison he'd been there for three days before his grandmother called me and asked me to get involved and I said I would and I went to the jail this little boy came out and I started my interview but no matter what I asked him he wouldn't say a word he just kept staring at the wall and finally I put my pen down I said look I can't help if you don't talk to me got to talk to me I can't help you if you don't talk to me little boy wouldn't say anything I got up I walked around the table I pulled my chair closer to my said come on you got to talk to me I can't help you if you don't talk to me and he just kept staring at the wall it's couldn't figure out what to do and at some point I decided to just lean on him I don't even know why but I leaned on him and when I leaned on him he'd leaned back and when he leaned back I put my arm around him that said come on you got to talk to me and that's when this little boy started crying and through his tears began talking to me not about what happened with this mom not about what happened with the man but he started talking to me about what had happened at the jail he told me on the first night several men had hurt him he told me on the next night he'd been raped by several people he told me on the night before I've gotten there so many people had hurt him he couldn't remember how many there had been and I held this little boy while he cried hysterically for almost an hour I said look I'm gonna get you out of here and he begged me not to go never will forget he grabbed my arm said please don't go I said no I'm gonna get you out of here and I left that jail and the question I had in my mind is who is responsible for this and the answer is we are we are we're living in a country where we've allowed a narrative to emerge that some children aren't children we're living in a country where we have created so much distance from the poor and the abused and the marginalized that their victimization is something we don't even recognize and I believe we have to change that we have to get proximate proximity is important because we'll understand the solutions to problems but it's important because it will also change us when you get close to problems like that when you hold kids like that when you go into communities where they're suffering and despair and hopelessness it will change you and I think it will change you in ways that are important you'll learn that you have power that you didn't think you had that how sometimes just being a witness in a place of despair can be transformative proximity is essential if we want to change the world second thing we have to change the narrative I don't think we can actually problem saban understanding how problems get created we have to change the narratives that sustain these problems I believe we should cut the prison population in this country by 50% in the next eight years and I think we can do it we have a million people in jails in prison serving time for drug possession I represented people serving life in prison without parole for simple possession of marijuana hundreds of thousands of people in our jails in prisons who are not a threat to public safety after simple drug possession another low-level nonviolent crimes we can bring down the prison population but we will not do that if we don't change the narrative that has sustained it for the last 40 years our politicians have been competing with each other over who can be the toughest on crime and it's this narrative of fear and anger that is the problem and I will tell you any country any society that is motivated to do policy work to do governance through fear and anger is a society that will abuse other beings how human rights problems created its how oppression is created cell genocide is created and the narrative of fear and anger has to change so we can't be a part of those narratives when they come to us we have to resist them I think we have to change the narrative about race you know I think we are all burdened by the legacy of racial inequality that has never been addressed we're all infected by this disease this narrative of racial difference that our parents and our grandparents did not address we were silent when we should have been speaking and because of that it bothers and it burdens all of us we all see the world through this lens and we're not gonna get on the other side of that by pretending it doesn't exist we have to have a conversation we've never had I actually think we need to talk about slavery in America because we never talked about it I don't think the great evil of American slavery was involuntary servitude and forced labor I don't think the great evil of American slavery was the way we made people work in fields I think the great evil of American slavery was the narrative of racial difference we created to legitimated it was the ideology of white supremacy that we made up to make ourselves feel comfortable with slavery slavery existed all over the world but most countries were societies with slaves we became something unique we became a slave Society we wanted to feel good while we owned other human beings and this ideology of white supremacy this narrative of racial difference that was the great evil and the 13th amendment doesn't deal with that evil the Emancipation Proclamation doesn't talk about that and that's why I've argued that I don't believe slavery ended in 1865 I think it just evolved it turned into decades of racial terror and lynching we've just issued a report documenting thousands of lynchings in Americans health the demographic geography of this country was shaped by this era of racial terror older people come up to me sometimes they say mr. Stevenson I get angry when I hear somebody on TV talking about how we're dealing with terrorism for the first time in our nation's history after 9/11 they said we grew up with terror we'd aware about being bombed and lynched and menaced every day of our lives and we don't appreciate how it's shaped our world you know you've got African Americans in Phoenix in Los Angeles in Oakland in Seattle in Cleveland and Chicago in Detroit in Boston in New York and we don't think about is that the black people the african-americans that are in these communities did not go to those communities as immigrants looking for new opportunities they came to these communities as refugees and exiled from terror and we haven't talked about it even when we talk about civil rights I get worried because I think we're too celebratory we're not talking about the hard part's created by the decades of segregation I hear people talking about the civil rights movement and it sounds to me like a three-day carnival on day one Rosa Parks didn't give up her seat on the bus on day two dr. King led a march on Washington and on day three we just changed all these laws and if that was our history I mean we'd be a great country but that's not our history our history is that for decades we humiliated people of color for decades we burden and we battered and we excluded people for decades we told people that you're not good enough to go to school with the rest of us you're not good enough to vote and that narrative has not been confronted I believe we need Truth and Reconciliation in this country we have to talk more honestly about what this legacy has done I live in the American South which is littered with the iconography of a false narrative in my state of Alabama we celebrate Jefferson Davis's birthday as a state holiday Confederate Memorial Day is a state holiday we don't even have Martin Luther King Day it's Martin Luther King / Robert Ely day and this narrative has to change I believe on the other side of this narrative there's freedom there's something better than what we're experiencing in South Africa there was a recognition that after apartheid there had to be Truth and Reconciliation if you go to Rwanda people will tell you that they won't recover from the genocide without truth and reconciliation in Germany you go to Berlin you can't go 100 metres without seeing a marker or a stone that's been placed at the home of a Jewish family that was abducted and taken to the camps the Germans want you to go to the camps and reflect soberly on the history of the Holocaust in this country we do the opposite you start talking about race and people get nervous you start talking about racial justice people are looking for exits and that has to change we want to put markers every site where a lynching took place we want to create a consciousness that pushes us past the narrative and the presumption of dangerousness and guilt that it's created changing the narrative is important if we want to change the world third thing you can't do this work without being hopeful and the third thing I believe we have to do is protect our hopefulness about what we can do you see I'm persuaded that injustice prevails where hopelessness persists hopelessness is the enemy of justice and when you begin to think that you cannot do anything about these income disparities about income inequality about health outcomes that are bad about all of these challenges that you're seeing in communities across this country then we are not going to make progress your hope is important and I am persuaded that in technology and innovation you only succeed when you believe things you have not seen it doesn't work any other way most of you have done extraordinary things because you were hopeful enough to believe that the limits that had been previously defined are not the limits that alter define us hope is what gets you to stand up when other people are saying sit down hope is what gets you to speak what other people are saying be quiet and it's important that we protect our hopefulness I don't know what makes you hopeless I know it makes me hopeless and I have to protect against what makes me hopeless and I'm probably living in the worst place in America I live in Alabama it's probably the worst day for me to live in because I am sometimes provoked by the way we haven't dealt honestly with our history I don't like it when people talk about the good old days of the 40s and 50s I don't like it when we romanticize that part of our era in our history that was defined by enslavement and terrorism I don't like the Confederate flags I don't like the imagery of the hotel that provokes me I was going to a prison to see a client I parked my car in the prison there was a truck out there in this truck it was like a shrine to the old South you see this a lot in my state this truck had all of these bumper stickers it had these flags it had the gun racket at all of this imagery and I was really challenged by it because there were bumper stickers on this truck I've actually never seen before one of the bumper stickers read quote if I'd known it was gonna be like this I'd have picked my own patent hadn't seen that one before I was really challenged by it I went up to the door there was a white guard at the door door when I got there this man said to me I said hi my name is Bryan Stevenson I'm here for a legal visit and the man said you're not a lawyer I said no yes sir I am I've been to this prison before he said I don't believe you're a lawyer we Jabar car he made me go get my bar card which I was insulted by but I did I got it and it brought it back to my said here's my bar card he said well you've got a bar card but you're still gonna get in the bathroom I'm gonna give you a strip-search I said no sir lawyers don't get strip-searched coming into this prison it's why you're gonna get in that bathroom couldn't get anybody to help me so I subjected myself to this humiliating strip search I went in the bathroom came back out was trying to recover some dignity I said look I want to see my client now here's what you've got to go back there and sign the book I said lawyers don't have to sign that but get back there and sign the book so I did and finally was letting me into the prison I was about to walk inside they grabbed me by the arm II said hey did you see that truck out there with all those bumper stickers and flags I said yeah I saw that truck you said that's I want you to know something he said that's my truck really antagonize me I went into the prison the client came out first time I'd ever met this man is a young african-american man and the client came out the first thing he did was sit down and say to me quote did you bring me a chocolate milkshake and I thought to myself this is the strangest day I've had in a really long time I said no I didn't bring you a chocolate milkshake I'm your lawyer I'm here to represent you and I realized he was hung up on this milkshake he was very disabled lifetime of abuse was in 29 foster homes by the time he was 10 years old a schizophrenia psychosis in the midst of a psychotic episode he committed a brutal crime we started working on the case I got some great experts involved and every time I saw this man had that tell him I couldn't bring him a milkshake just to get him to pay attention and it finally was time to go to court about three months after I'd met him and we were there for a hearing and I had some great experts I felt good about the case I was about ready to start the case when I looked out of the corner of my eye and there was that guard who had dealt with me so badly sitting in the corner just staring at me I said I wasn't gonna let him distract him I put on our case we had three good days and quit I felt good about a month later I went back to the prison to go see my client I parked my car I'm walking inside and what do I see but that truck in the parking lot and I just didn't feel like dealing with it that day and I decided to come back another day drive for two hours to get there I'll just come back another day I was walking back to my car and I started hearing that song leads to sing during the civil rights movement used to sing this song can't let nobody turn me on turn me around turn me around and I realized I wasn't supposed to turn around so I got my bar cards I'm just gonna go deal with this guy and I walked up to the door and sure enough there was the officer I said hi I'm here for a legal visit man cut me off is it hello mr. Stevenson how are you I said I'm fine I said I'll go in the bathroom and get ready for your search he said I don't know mr. Stevens we're not gonna do that today through me I said I'll go back here and sign the book he said Oh mr. Stevenson I saw you coming and I signed you in could not make sense of it he walked me over to the door I was trying to figure out what was going on we got in front of the door and I was watching this man and when he got in front of the door he tried to unlock it but his hands started shaking so badly he could not get the key in the lock and I stood there staring at him and finally he got the key in the lock he turned around he looked up at me his face was bright red I said mr. Stevenson there's something I better say to you I said what's that he said well I was in that courtroom and I was listening is I want you to know that I grew up in the foster care system too it had it really bad he said I'm a really angry person but I learned something in that courtroom he said I've been thinking about this and there's something I need to tell you and he looked at me says I want you to know I think what you're doing is a good thing and then that guy said to me I hope you keep fighting for justice I would have never imagined it possible never imagined it I said thank you for that that means the world to me he said can I please shake your hand I shook his hand I walked inside to see my quiet and they grabbed me by the arm said wait wait wait I got to tell you something else so what's that so I just want you to know on the trip back from the courthouse to the prison I did something so what'd you do he said well I decided to take an exit and I took your client to a Wendy's and I bought him a chocolate milkshake it's a really it's a really silly story but it speaks to me about how important it is that we stay hopeful when you begin to accept the narratives that some people can't do this and that situation can't change you are going to be part of the problem and changing the hope is essential to changing the world I wish I could stop here but there's one more thing I have to tell you we can't change the world by just getting proximate just changing narratives and just staying hopeful the fourth thing we have to do and this is the hard one is that we have to do comfortable things but you do not create justice by only doing what's comfortable and convenient I've looked I've studied at research I've never seen but men to oppression an end to poverty and end to abuse and end to suffering when people only do what's comfortable and convenient to change the world to create justice we have to do uncomfortable things and that's hard but I actually believe that we are in a room full of people who know what it means to do uncomfortable things you cannot create the kind of dazzling things that you've created you cannot innovate without putting yourselves in uncomfortable situations you all take risks you all do difficult things and you accept that you will not succeed until you do the uncomfortable and that is why I believe that it is us in this room who are capable of getting proximate changing narratives and doing hopeful things and yes doing uncomfortable things that will ultimately be necessary to change the world I'll end with this there is a different metric system for those of us we're trying to change the world and I just hope you'll think about it if you're trying to change what you can't measure how you're doing but how much money you make but how many people applaud you but how many people think what you're doing is great you're gonna get a lot more people who think what you're doing is not so great if you try to intervene on behalf of the abused and the suffering but there's a different metric system it was taught to me by an older man I was in a church and this older man came into the church and he was sitting in a wheelchair I was giving a talk and he kept staring at me the whole time I was giving my talk and he had this very Stern almost angry look on his face and he was distracting me because he was looking at me so intensely but I got through my talk and people came up at the end of the talk they were very nice but that man kept sitting in the back staring at me and finally when everybody else left he got a little boy to wheel him up the middle aisle of the church to come and talk to me and this man came up the middle aisle of that church and had that very stern look almost angry look on his face and he came up the middle aisle and then he got in front of me and he put his hand up and he said do you know what you're doing and I didn't know how to respond I just stood there he said do you know what you're doing and I step back and I mumbled something I don't even remember what I said and then he asked me one last time you said do you know what you're doing and then this man looked at me said I'm gonna tell you what you're doing this man looked at me says you're beating the drum for justice you keep beating the drum for justice and I was so moved I was also really relieved because I just didn't know what he was gonna do then he grabbed me by the jacket he pulled me into the wheelchair come here convicted I must show you something this older man looked up at man he turned his head he said you see this scar I had behind my right ear because I got that scar in Greene County Alabama in 1963 trying to register people to vote he turned his head they said and he said you see this cut down here the bottom of my neck is I got that cut in Philadelphia Mississippi 1964 trying to register people to vote he turned his head he said you see this dark spy his that's my bruise I got my bruise in Birmingham Alabama in 1965 trying to register people to vote and then he looked at me son will tell you something young man he said people look at me they think I'm some old man sitting in a wheelchair covered with cuts and bruises and scars he said I'm gonna tell you something he said these aren't my cuts these aren't my bruises these aren't my scars he said these are my medals of Honor it is the uncomfortable things we do in service of Justice that I think ultimately honor us as a human race as a community of people who are committed to changing the world I believe really simple things I believe that no one is their worst act I think each of us is more than the worst thing we've ever done if somebody tells a lie they're not just a liar if somebody takes something they're not just a thief I think even if you kill somebody you're not just a killer I do believe that the opposite of poverty in this country is not wealth we talk too much about money I believe the opposite of poverty is justice and ultimately I believe that we have to judge how we are doing not just at zeitgeist but all over the world by not looking at how we treat the rich and the powerful in their privilege I think we have to judge how we're doing by how we treat the poor the incarcerated and the condemned and it's with that hope that I believe we tend to approximate we can change the narratives we can do some hopeful things and we can do some uncomfortable things and I'm excited that you've created space in your day to even consider the possibility thank you very very much
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Channel: Google Zeitgeist
Views: 21,791
Rating: 4.9049883 out of 5
Keywords: zeitgeist, ted talks, conferences, tech, business, arts, google, Criminal Justice, Prison, Equality, You Don’t Create Justice by Doing What is Comfortable
Id: OUfwI36Fdq8
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Length: 26min 37sec (1597 seconds)
Published: Tue Oct 20 2015
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