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Just Mercy<\/strong><\/em> is excellent. \u00a0Stevenson weaves into his narrative the stories of a number of individuals caught in the criminal justice system, along with\u00a0his efforts to help them. \u00a0The stories are alternately emotional, heart-breaking, uplifting, and deeply sad. \u00a0I fully expect Stevenson’s life’s work to be made into a feature film in the next few years. \u00a0He and his team are\u00a0the Civil Rights activists of our time. \u00a0They demonstrate that empathy and social justice can be powerful forces for change.<\/p>\n Below I’ve posted a number of quotes taken from \u00a0Just Mercy<\/strong><\/em> by Bryan Stevenson.<\/p>\n \u201cSome states permanently strip people with criminal convictions of the right to vote; as a result, in several Southern states disenfranchisement among African American men has reached levels unseen since before the Voting Rights Act of 1965.\u201d \u00a0p. 16<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve represented women, whose numbers in prison have increased 640 percent in the last thirty years, and seen how our hysteria about drug addiction and our hostility to the poor have made us quick to criminalize and prosecute poor women when a pregnancy goes wrong.\u201d \u00a0p. 17<\/p>\n \u201cThe true measure of our character is how we treat the poor, the disfavored, the accused, the incarcerated, and the condemned.\u201d<\/strong> \u00a0p. 18<\/p>\n \u201cEven though the restriction couldn\u2019t be enforced under federal law, the state ban on interracial marriage in Alabama continued into the twenty-first century.\u00a0 In 2000, reformers finally had enough votes to get the issue on the statewide ballot, where a majority of voters chose to eliminate the ban, although 41 percent voted to keep it.\u00a0 A 2011 poll of Mississippi Republicans found that 46 percent support a legal ban on interracial marriage, 40 percent oppose such a ban, and 14 percent are undecided.\u201d \u00a0p. 20<\/p>\n \u201cIn debates about the death penalty, I had started arguing that we would never think it was human to pay someone to rape people convicted of rape or assault and abuse someone guilty of assault or abuse.\u00a0 Yet we were comfortable killing people who kill, in part because we think we can do it in a manner that doesn\u2019t implicate our own humanity, the way that raping or abusing someone would.\u201d \u00a0p. 90<\/p>\n \u201cIn 2014, Trina turned fifty-two.\u00a0 She has been in prison for thirty-eight years.\u00a0 She is one of nearly five hundred people in Pennsylvania who have been condemned to mandatory life imprisonment without parole for crimes they were accused of committing when they were between the ages of thirteen and seventeen.\u00a0 It is the largest population of child offenders condemned to die in prison in any single jurisdiction in the world.\u201d \u00a0p. 151<\/p>\n \u201cFlorida had the largest population in the world of children condemned to die in prison for non-homicides.\u201d \u00a0p. 154<\/p>\n \u201cIn 1996, Congress passed welfare reform legislation that gratuitously included a provision that authorized states to ban people with drug convictions from public benefits and welfare.\u00a0 The population most affected by this misguided law is formerly incarcerated women with children, most of whom were imprisoned for drug crimes.\u00a0 These women and their children can no longer live in public housing, receive food stamps, or access basic services.\u00a0 In the last twenty years, we\u2019ve created a new class of \u2018untouchables\u2019 in American society, made up of our most vulnerable mothers and their children.\u201d \u00a0p. 237<\/p>\n \u201cConvict leasing was introduced at the end of the nineteenth century to criminalize former slaves and convict them of nonsensical offenses so that freed men, women, and children could be \u2018leased\u2019 to businesses and effectively forced back into slave labor.\u00a0 Private industries throughout the country made millions of dollars with free convict labor, while thousands of African Americans died in horrific work conditions.\u00a0 The practice of re-enslavement was so widespread in some states that it was characterized in a Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Douglas Blackmon as Slavery by Another Name<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0 p. 299<\/p>\n <\/p>\n