Bryan Stevenson

I think we have to train ourselves, prepare ourselves to be hopeful in the midst of so many difficulties.

And the world is just filled of stories about hopeful people.

And I think we need to learn them and be shaped by them.

I never really talked much about my grandmother or my great-grandparents who were enslaved.

Until I was in my 40s.

I didn't want to forget about it.

It just wasn't relevant in my head.

Now I talk about them all the time.

Now I see in their lives strength and knowledge and wisdom and power.

And it shapes what I do.

And part of the reason why I'm so committed to reckoning more honestly with our history of injustice is because buried in that history are stories of hope and resilience that we need to know and we need to understand.

Yeah.

I mean, there's a long list.

I mean, we have hundreds of thousands of people coming out of jails and prisons that have no one to help meet their needs.

We don't do anything in this country to help people recover from five years, 10 years, 20 years of incarceration.

So we're going to need people to step up, to volunteer, to help the institutions in your community that are trying to provide support.

People coming out of jails and prisons with clothes, jobs, opportunities, counseling.

Many of the clients that I represent went to prison before the digital age.

They've never used an ATM.

They don't know anything about cell phones.