We have a system of justice in [the US] that treats you much better if you're rich and guilty than if you're poor and innocent. Wealth, not culpability, shapes outcomes.

Somebody has to stand when other people are sitting. Somebody has to speak when other people are quiet.

The reality is that capital punishment in America is a lottery. It is a punishment that is shaped by the constraints of poverty, race, geography and local politics.

We've all been acculturated into accepting the inevitability of wrongful convictions, unfair sentences, racial bias, and racial disparities and discrimination against the poor.

Once we had a rail station in Montgomery that connected to Columbus and went all the way up to Virginia, slave traders could transport thousands of slaves at a fraction of the cost than they could transport by boat, and certainly by foot. And that's how Montgomery became such an active slave-trading space.

Always do the right thing even when the right thing is the hard thing

The opposite of poverty is not wealth. I don't believe that. I actually think, in too many places, the opposite of poverty is justice.