Amanda Knox

And so I ended up, I ended up being a part of,

the movement to abolish the juvenile death penalty like in 2005.

So for me, like that advocacy was like that thing that I couldn't unsee because I realized that like we had been fed this information about a criminal justice system.

When really, when you looked at the history of the death penalty, why the death penalty, like we went from slave codes to, you know,

the death penalty and who largely got the death penalty, largely black and brown men and women in the United States.

Just the unfairness, the bias in the system.

And so that was just something that was just a calling for me.

And so when I was in

I think I was in maybe the 10th grade.

My high school teacher recommended me to go to the National Youth Leadership Forum on Law and Constitution in D.C.

And it cost $3,000 to go.

And it was $3,000 my mom and daddy didn't have.

And so the town of Johnsonville, all of the good people of Johnsonville, many black women in my church, they raised the money, sold cakes and dinners and put me on an airplane that many of them and some of them have never even been on still today and sent me to Washington, D.C.,

And there I met the executive director, Steve Hawkins, of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

I'm like 60 years old.

And I'm like, I want to come work and abolish the death penalty.

And he offered me an internship.

He said, when you finish high school.

And I begged my mom and dad to let me go to D.C.

And when I graduated high school, I went to stay with a distant cousin, my cousin Mildred.