blogs/brentspodek

Bryan Stevenson is one of the most powerful advocates for changing, improving and really, healing our country today. 

Stevenson is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, a Montgomery, Alabama-based non-profit that provides legal representation to prisoners who may have been wrongly convicted, poor prisoners without effective representation, and others who may have been denied a fair trial. It guarantees the defense of anyone in Alabama in a death penalty case, since Alabama is the only state that does not provide legal assistance to death row prisoners. In 2018, the Equal Justice Initiative opened the Legacy Museum and its National Memorial for Peace and Justice, the country’s only lynching memorial, dedicated to the more than 4,400 African American victims of lynching.

I want to share with you two opportunities to learn more about the incredible work that Stevenson and the EJI is doing. 

• On Tuesday, December 10, BHA will be co-hosting a screening of True Justice: Bryan Stevenson’s Fight for Equality, followed by a discussion with the movie’s producers, and I hope you will come and learn more about Stevenson’s work, and what it means for all of us. The screening will take place at the Beacon Beahive; details and tickets can be found here. 

• In January, I will be traveling to the Legacy Museum in Alabama as part of a delegation from T’ruah, The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights. I will certainly share what I learn from that trip when I return, and in the coming year, I hope to organize a trip to the museum and other civil rights sites. 

Our tradition teaches that a hesbon ha-nefesh, an accounting of our souls, is a prerequisite for any serious attempts at teshuva. I hope that these efforts will help our community do that accounting so that together, we can help re-build this country into the beacon of freedom and justice we always imagined it to be.