Good News for Bryan Stevenson’s Equal Justice Initiative

Bryan Stevenson at Google headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., Feb. 26, 2016, 510 Media

By Ruby Maddox
Ever since I read Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption, he's been a personal hero of mine. Last month Google announced that they would donating $1 million to Bryan Stevenson’s Alabama-based nonprofit, Equal Justice Initiative.

(Read full story The Root here)

According to their website, The Equal Justice Initiative provides legal representation to  indigent defendants and prisoners who have been denied fair and just treatment in the legal system.

"We litigate on behalf of condemned prisoners, juvenile offenders, people wrongly convicted or charged with violent crimes, poor people denied effective representation, and others whose trials are marked by racial bias or prosecutorial misconduct. EJI works with communities that have been marginalized by poverty and discouraged by unequal treatment." - EJI.org
Stevenson and his team remind me that there still are real life heroes out there fighting for those forgotten by an unjust system. Many of us may never know what's it like to experience first-hand, the despair and frustration of institutionalized subjugation. While we continue to be horrified by what mass-incarceration has done to our communities and to our country, it's organizations like EJI that are providing hope. And men like Bryan Stevenson who are the real Leaders of the Free World.

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