Bryan Stevenson

I don't want them to be part of gangs.

I don't want them to be part of things that create injuries and violence.

I want healthier communities.

But that means we have to help these kids who are being pushed in all of these unhealthy ways.

And we don't get to that when our policymaking is blinded by our fear and our anger, just like we don't get to healthy parenting.

We don't get to healthy education.

we don't get the healthy relationships with one another, if we're blinded by our fear and our anger, when we don't see the humanity of the people, even that we care about, we do things that can be really destructive.

What gives me some comfort is that I meet very few people who wouldn't

want to do exactly what I did when I met that little boy.

I think if most anyone listening to this, if they had been in that room and held that little boy while he was crying, talking about these things, even knowing what he has been accused of, I think almost everyone would leave there saying, we've got to get that child out of that environment.

And

I think the power in that instinct, in that desire to not add suffering to suffering, not to add violence to violence, not to add wrongdoing to wrongdoing, is that that can yield something extraordinary.

It can yield something redemptive.

It can yield something that

can feel healing almost.

So we were able to get him out of that facility that day and ultimately was able to get a resolution of the case where he got released.

After he got out, he got his high school degree, his GED.

Then he went to college.

He actually became an engineer.

He got married.