Bryan Stevenson's Brilliant Ware Lecture (Leora)

One of the highlights of the GA for me was Bryan Stevenson's Ware lecture which, unfortunately, was not recorded so it isn't available to people who didn't attend the GA or watch it live streamed.  I took pretty copious notes at the lecture and thought I'd post them here for those who might be interested. (David also posted a link to Stevenson's Ted talk on First U's Facebook page.) One of Stevenson's final points, which profoundly moved me was that the opposite of poverty isn't wealth; it is justice.
Here's my notes:

Stevenson said there are four essential things we need to do to achieve a just society.

Get proximate to the poor, the excluded, neglected and abused.

• We will discover what we truly can do when we get proximate.
• The solutions come in proximity not before you get there.
• Story re: visiting death row prisoner to tell him he would not be executed in coming year led Stevenson to find passion in studying law and identify his life’s work.

Change the narratives that underlie inequality and injustice.

• Resist fear and anger. Fear and anger lead to narrative that tolerates injustice.
• Narrative: We decided addicts are criminals, not suffering a disease; while alcoholism is a disease.
• Oppressor justifies oppression with a story of fear and anger.
• Another example = criminologists who said some children who commit crimes are not children at all. They are super predators.  This created the school to prison pipeline.
• The narrative has to be children are children.
• We need to look at how we treat poor kids.
• We have to change the narrative about race. Acknowledge we live in a post-genocidal society where more than 10 million native peoples died of disease or murder.
• The great evil of American slavery wasn’t involuntary servitude. It was the narrative of racial difference that was used to justify slavery. Even the Supreme Court bought into this.
• 13^th Amendment addresses involuntary servitude, but not the narrative of racial difference so slavery didn’t really end.
• From Civil War to WWII was an era of terrorism against blacks. Sept. 11 was not the first major terrorism attack in US. How do black Americans feel when they hear Sept 11 referred to this way?
• Blacks in northern cities fled South as refugees and exiles from the terror in the South. We never talk about this.
• Civil Rights Movement did not eliminate the narrative of white supremacy and is recounted like a fairy tale. (Reminds me of every French person saying they were in the resistance when so few really were)
• People of color are presumed dangerous and guilty, no matter social class, age or how much money they have.
• In So. Africa, you have to listen to the history of apartheid. Germany has placed holocaust stones in front of homes Jews were taken from and set to camps. Because Germany is trying to change the narrative. 
• But in US, we don’t talk about slavery or lynching.
• He has project to put markers at every lynching site. In April 2018, will open museum in Montgomery. History through era of mass incarceration.
• Working on National Memorial to Peace & Justice with columns for each county where lynchings occurred and smaller replicas people from those counties can take back to their county as memorial to lynchings that took place there.
• He isn’t trying to punish America. He wants to liberate it. On the other side of confession comes freedom.

Stay Hopeful about creating justice.

• Hopefulness is the enemy of justice.
• Hope makes you speak out.
• You must fight against what makes you hopeless.

Be willing to do uncomfortable things.

• It’s human nature to do what is comfortable.
• Doing uncomfortable things is a matter of choice.
• You have to make that choice. Choose to do something even if it is uncomfortable.
• Say uncomfortable things.
• Be in uncomfortable places.

The opposite of poverty isn’t wealth. It is justice.