My name is Brian Stevenson and I just want to add my voice in celebration of the
extraordinary achievement that has taken place in Virginia through the
abolition of the death penalty. I don't think people will really appreciate what
a significant advance this is, what a significant moment this is, not just for
the state of Virginia, but for the entire country. My people are from Virginia, my
great grandparents were enslaved in Caroline County, Virginia. My grandmother
was born in Bowling Green. My relatives fled Virginia when terror and
lynching threatened their lives. I grew up on the Eastern Shore. I have a
living memory of segregation and the burdens and the pain of racial
segregation, the marginalization, the abuse of being taunted and terrorized.
And the death penalty was at the center of this menace that black people had
to face, this weight, this threat. I came of age during the time when our prison
population went from about 300,000 in the 1970s to 2.3 million today. I've spent
the last 35 years standing with the accused, the convicted and the condemned.
And that's why I know that what you have done is not just a first step, but it is a
giant leap. The death penalty is something that weighs on a civilized society.
We will never be a free and just society if we continue to embrace the
fiction that it is legitimate to execute people. The death penalty in this
country can't be resolved by asking whether people deserve to die for the
crimes they've committed. The threshold question is do we deserve to kill? And for
better or worse, we have a legal system in this country that treats you better if
you're rich and guilty than if you're poor and innocent. And Virginia has
recognized that. We have a system in this country that is still haunted by our
long history of racial inequality. There's a smog and the air contaminates our
ability to impose punishments. There is this difference, this mindset, this
presumption of dangerousness and guilt that gets assigned to people of color. And
we've got to fight against it. We've got to keep working against it. But we cannot
kill being infected, contaminated by that mindset, by that history. And
Virginia has recognized that. We have many of us been called by our faith to do
justice and to love mercy and to walk humbly with God. And we cannot do that if
we systematically kill people. I believe that Virginia's commitment to abolition,
it's ending the death penalty, opens the door to now do even bigger and better
things. Not only can we end the violence of capital punishment, but this opens the
door to end the violence of violent crime. I don't think a state that continues to
model violence through executing people will ever end murder, will ever end
sexual violence, will ever end abuse, assault and all the horrific manifestations of
violence that we still see too much of. But once we begin to model what it means to
reject violence, I hope we can spread. I want us to us, I want us to abolish crime,
I want us to abolish the conditions that give rise to crime. But it begins with
abolishing this barbaric form of punishment. And for that, we owe you a lot
Virginia. We owe you so much. I went to an anti-death penalty event in Virginia,
maybe 30 years ago, there weren't many people there. And if you asked folks then,
will we get to this moment, many would have had doubts, but you have proved them
wrong. You have stood up even when people said sit down. You've spoken even
when people said be quiet and for your courage, for your leadership, we have now
the state of Virginia as an abolitionist state, a state that no longer will
engage in the barbaric and heartbreaking practice of systematically killing
human beings who are not a threat, cannot confine in prisons. For that, I'm
both excited and energized. The work is just beginning in many ways. And you have
helped us see the power of what continued advocacy, continued work, continued
community. There's a place in our community for everyone, for those who've
been victimized by violent crime, for those who have dealt with the challenges
created by hatred, for those who have been marginalized and excluded. And that's
the witness that makes me inspired, that makes me believe, that we will get to a
point where there is no state in this country that executes human beings, where
abolition is not just something that happened in Virginia, but happened all over
America. For your leadership, thank you, for your continuing work, thank you. And
for giving me this opportunity to express my gratitude. Thank you.
