Justice
Bryan Stevenson isn’t your typical crusader. He’s relatively soft-spoken, tells winsome stories, and makes his arguments as much by sharing his own experiences as by sharing facts. But make no mistake: his is a passionate crusader for justice. Founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, Stevenson has devoted his career to challenging unfair sentencing practices, exonerating innocent prisoners on death row, and working to ensure that children are prosecuted as children rather than as adults.
His topic is justice and, in particular, our need to talk about something that is very uncomfortable for citizens of a country that highly values justice along with truth and equality: our criminal justice system is incredibly, systematically unjust. As he says, “It is much better in this country to be wealthy and guilty than poor and innocent.”
In another way, however, his talk is about identity. What kind of people will we be? What do we value? What kind of character will we embody? As he says, not quoting Scripture but affirming an essential tenant of the Christian faith, one’s character is not revealed by how we treat the wealthy and powerful but by how we treat the poor and vulnerable.
Stevenson’s talk is one of the most moving and important TED Talks I’ve ever heard, and I share it less than a week before the presidential election wondering why there has been so little talk in this campaign season about poverty. Yes, we’re in an economic downturn and so we are understandably focused on jobs. But as poverty swells, our future hopes for a just, equitable, and peaceful world shrink. Who, then, will advocate that we take as much care of “the least of these” – which include, as Jesus notes, those who are in prison (Mt. 25:36) – as we do those who enjoy so much of the world’s bounty?
Bryan Stevenson – truly blessed as one of those who “hungers for righteousness” – invites us to imagine that we are the ones to do just that by “keeping our eye’s on the prize” and hanging on.
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Yes, this is absolutely one of the most empowering TED talks and for the students of the scriptures it brings to our ears God’s resounding cry for justice.
WOW! This is one to watch on a regular basis to help us ALL keep “Our Eye on the Prize.”
I agree with Rene: “Wow!” I’m tempted to present this TED talk video as a challenging illustration of what it means to be a saint– to bear the reality of the “long arc of history that bends toward justice” embodied in Christ Jesus into the world as a reminder of triumphant, death-defiant life…