On November 5th, 2019, RE·Center Race & Equity in Education hosted a community screening and discussion of True Justice: Bryan Stevenson’s Fight for Equality, now available on HBOGo.
The film examines the journey of Bryan Stevenson, a public defender in Alabama and the founder and director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI). EJI, based in Montgomery, Alabama, works to bring justice to the incarcerated, wrongfully convicted, and disadvantaged. The film weaves together Stevenson’s own story, those of his clients, and the history of injustice and complicity in the United States justice system to reveal how a narrative of racial inequality emerged in this country. As Stevenson says in the film “the North won the Civil War, but the South won the narrative war.” True Justice highlights the ways the ideology of racism becomes codified through the law, resulting in the inequitable treatment of Black and Brown citizens by the criminal justice system.
Among the historic court cases outlined in the documentary was Stevenson’s 2012 Supreme Court case against juvenile life sentencing. By a small margin (5 to 4), the Supreme Court Justices declared unconstitutional any mandatory penalty that essentially dooms a juvenile offender to a life sentence. When speaking about this case in the film, Stevenson and his colleagues at EJI also spoke about the school-to-prison pipeline—a “national trend wherein children are funneled out of public schools and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems” (ACLU). Research on the school-to-prison pipeline shows that the pipeline begins with inadequate resources in public schools, pressures of national test-based accountability legislation such as the No Child Left Behind Act, and school discipline policies such as “zero-tolerance policies,” cops in schools, and other forms of punitive in-school discipline. All these policies and actions have been shown to disproportionately affect Black and Brown students across the country. While True Justice largely focuses on the American South, the issues of racial inequity highlighted can be seen across the country, including here in Connecticut.
To bring the conversation back home and provide some time to collectively digest all the heavy content of the documentary, RE·Center staff facilitated dialogue in three small groups. These groups discussed the Criminal Justice System, Narratives of Race, and the path to Truth and Reconciliation. This conversation was not the end, RE·Center facilitators ended with a call to action. Encouraging others to take the tears and heavy emotions left at the end of the film and use it to get involved locally, the attendees were given an engagement guide (which can be found here) with information about Bryan Stevenson, the Equal Justice Initiative, and a list of Connecticut-based organizations who do work focusing on incarceration and racial justice. The night ended with attendees sharing information about other events and community conversations happening in the coming weeks.
Each time RE·Center hosts a film showing, we are reminded of the collective brilliance, wealth of knowledge, and passion in the Hartford community. Thank you to all those who attended for making the event a success!
RE·Imagine
We look forward to hosting more community conversations and film showings in the future. Have something you would like to see us host? Let us know at info@re-center.org or via Facebook and Instagram! Want to stay in the loop and hear about more events like these? Follow us on social media and sign up for our mailing list!