Just Mercy's Stories of Unjust Abelism and Racialization

Abstract

Bryan Stevenson is a renowned civil rights lawyer and the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, based in Alabama. Stevenson's 2014 book, Just Mercy, recounts his early career as a defense attorney for death row prisoners and his journey to making the Equal Justice Initiative the force it is today. He is passionate about fighting for people on death row and working against the tide of mass incarceration, which he defines as the system by which the nation has disproportionately incarcerated people of color and even profits from the criminalization of people. Mass incarceration fractures and disempowers poor, working-class, and racially-marginalized communities nationwide by holding them in punitive confinement, depriving them of potential workers in their economy, setting additional roadblocks on the path to higher education and employment, and overall inflicting trauma on individuals and communities. The cycle continues as it disproportionally criminalizes people who cannot financially support themselves - be it because of disability, economic depression, and/or systemic racism - for not being able to conform to the societal mold of the "good citizen" who has a job, a place to live, and access to affordable healthcare.