Bryan Stevenson

So the, the crash was in June.

In November, we took a trip with the community 109 people in the ECAR community went to Montgomery, Alabama to go to Bryan Stevenson's Legacy Museum and Memorial, which also will become, I think, a re- relevant piece of this story later on in our conversation.

Mm.

But it was there that you connected with Rebecca.

But there's a prophetic argument against permanent stigma.

Mm.

And it makes me think back to November in 2019 when we were at Bryan Stevenson at the, um, at the Legacy Museum and the Lynching Memorial, and Bryan, who famously says that a person should not be judged by the worst thing they've ever done in their life, and that the work of this holy day is to expand our understanding of ourselves and our understanding of each other.

Mm.

Thank you for being a good sp- sport.

So part of it is that, as I mentioned, it started as a podcast, and we had guests like Jane Fonda talking about climate, and Bryan Stevenson talking about Civil Rights, kind of trying to do that un-erasure of the truth, right? That, I mean, w- we're in a country where the websites are being scrubbed daily, and you can just lose information, you know, right through your fingertips.

But that podcast was originally hopeful and happening around the 2024 election when we hoped sanity might prevail.

And then once we got the result that frankly still seems a little suspicious to me, [laughs] speaking of, you know, r- rigorous honesty and truth, s- I sometimes worry that w- we're all missing the reality of what happened with that election, but that's a whole other story.

And we can't be granting them all a rehearing because that would just gum up the works.

You know, it's kind of like the argument that Bryan Stevenson makes about McCluskey.

McCluskey will admit that the U.S. Supreme Court refused to recognize McCluskey.

McCluskey's claim of racism in the capital punishment system because it would impact far too many people and there was a fear of too much justice.

moment? Yes.

Originally, it was a podcast where we had like Jane Fonda talking about climate and Bryan Stevenson on civil rights, Laverne Cox on trans rights.

We were having the conversations we hoped were moving the country forward before the election.

And then after the election, it became clear we need triage.

Now get down.

visionary civil rights lawyer and founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, Bryan Stevenson.

I continue to believe that the great evil of slavery in the United States wasn't the brutality and the violence that was horrific, but it was the narrative we created to justify enslavement.

The enduring evil of slavery was the narrative because people who enslaved other people didn't think of themselves as immoral or indecent or unchristian.

And the second is racial healing in the US.

And, uh, so a- a portion of our profits every month goes to that foundation, and we spend it, uh, everywhere from Montgomery, Alabama, on, uh, some of the efforts of Bryan Stevenson, uh, like, uh, the building of the monument for, um, I think it's called Peace and Justice, uh, as well as, you know, in The Gambia, where we have after-school, uh, uh, education programs-

Mm-hmm

... uh, for, for girls, uh, that we support.