Editor's note: Bryan Stevenson is executive director of the
Equal Justice Initiative, an Alabama-based nonprofit that
provides legal representation for indigent defendants and for
people it believes have been denied justice in the courts. He is
a professor of clinical law at New York University Law School.
Stevenson spoke at the TED2012 conference this month in Long
Beach, California. TED is a nonprofit dedicated to "Ideas worth
spreading," which it makes available through talks posted on its
website. Montgomery, Alabama (CNN) -- I'm an attorney and I
represent incarcerated people, both in my home state of Alabama
and across the United States. I spend every day with people who
are poor, disadvantaged, condemned and marginalized. I am
persuaded that we can and should do better to create more
hopeful and encouraging solutions to poverty, crime and
inequality in this country. In the last 40 years, our society
has witnessed unprecedented technological change, incredible
innovation and a great deal of promise and