The surreal whirlwind of the preceding weeks had left Walter devastated. … It’s necessary to recognize that we all need mercy, we all need justice, and–perhaps–we all need some measure of unmerited grace. Fear and anger can make us vindictive and abusive, unjust and unfair, until we all suffer from the absence of mercy and we condemn ourselves as much as we victimize others. An absence of compassion can corrupt the decency of a community, a state, a nation. We are all implicated when we allow other people to be mistreated. The opposite of poverty is not wealth the opposite of poverty is justice. It is about how easily we condemn people in this country and the injustice we create when we allow fear, anger, and distance to shape the way we treat the most vulnerable among us.

This book is about getting closer to mass incarceration and extreme punishment in America. Proximity to the condemned, to people unfairly judged that was what guided me back to something that felt like home. The distance I experienced in my first year of law school made me feel lost. In the words of NYU Journalism Professor Ted Conover, writing for the New York Times Book Review, “The message of this book, hammered home by dramatic examples of one man’s refusal to sit quietly and countenance horror, is that evil can be overcome, a difference can be made.”

Stevenson’s memoir Just Mercy, a film version of which was released in 2019, is both an account of his work with the EJI and a testament to the urgent need to challenge racial and economic injustice and to protect basic human rights for the most vulnerable members of society. Since 1989 the EJI has provided legal representation to people who have been illegally convicted, unfairly sentenced, or abused in state jails and prisons. You can find the NYU Library’s research guide for Just Mercy here.īryan Stevenson is a professor of criminal justice at NYU School of Law and the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI). All undergraduate students at NYU participate jointly in a common reading program, and the Skirball Book Club is reading this book along with them. “Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”īryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy is the Fall 2020 pick for NYU Reads.

Eji just mercy