But is it justice?

Leela Sinha: 00:00:02

Listen, y'all, this is not the way. When I woke up

Leela Sinha: 00:00:06

this morning, and I saw that the Supreme Court had re-instituted

Leela Sinha: 00:00:12

the death penalty, in the case of one of the Boston Marathon

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bomber... people, I was horrified. I was horrified.

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Either we are for a more humane society, or we are not. Either

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we are for justice reform, or we are not. I can't say I was

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surprised, given who's on the Supreme Court. But I was

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horrified. Believing in people is never easy.

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Whether you do it as an act of faith, or a practice of

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religion, or a matter of principle, or because it's the

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only thing you can do. It's still hard. Believing in people

Leela Sinha: 00:01:12

when people are mean, when people are cruel, when people

Leela Sinha: 00:01:15

are destructive, when people are committing what most of us find

Leela Sinha: 00:01:21

unthinkable acts of violence toward huge swathes of the

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population... believing in people becomes an act of

Leela Sinha: 00:01:35

defiance. But that doesn't get us off the hook for doing it, we

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still need to do it, we still need to believe in people, we

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still need to believe in people because the only way we can

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believe in ourselves is by believing in everyone. And that

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doesn't mean that we let people do destructive things. It

Leela Sinha: 00:01:58

doesn't mean that we expect that everyone's ethics or everyone's

Leela Sinha: 00:02:01

values or everyone's morals are equal to everyone else's.

Leela Sinha: 00:02:04

Sometimes people lack of conscience. Sometimes people use

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that lack of a conscience and their power to wreak havoc.

Leela Sinha: 00:02:20

Sometimes that havoc is cruel, as well as just bad. But if

Leela Sinha: 00:02:28

we're going to believe in people, if we're going to

Leela Sinha: 00:02:31

believe in ourselves, we're not different. That's the important

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is that we are not different. I am not

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different from you. But I am also not different from all of

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those people who are doing those abhorrent things. We are made up

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of the same cells, the same flesh, the same blood, we are

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the same as our oppressors, we are the same as those we

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oppress. We are the same, we are made up of the same stuff. We

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are the same species. And the only thing that makes my

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behavior different is my commitment to behaving

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differently. And that commitment comes from different places for

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different people. For some people, that commitment comes

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from duty, for some people, that commitment comes from faith. For

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some people, that commitment comes out of habit or out of a

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kind of begrudging obligation. It doesn't matter. I mean, it

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probably matters on the inside. But it doesn't matter on the

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outside because on the outside the result is the same, which is

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that the people are doing the thing. So that we can believe in

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each other and we can believe in ourselves collectively. And

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what's been happening in the United States over the last

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bunch of years- and that bunch may be a very big bunch or maybe

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a little shorter, depending on your level of awareness- what's

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been happening in the United States over the last bunch of

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years is that people have been floundering, looking for ways to

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believe that we're better than that. Pro-tip: we're not better

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than that. We're not. We have never been. We have lost sight

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of our own potential, of our own honor, of our own capacity for

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heroism and selflessness and nobility. And reimplementing the

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death penalty in any one case or in any broad set of cases, this

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is not the way to bring that back. Yes, we need clear senses

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of right and wrong. And yes, that gets more complicated. The

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more factors you include, the more people you include in "we",

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the harder it gets to know what "we" should do to uplift all of

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us. "We" and "us" become very complicated ideas. When we have

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different cultural expectations, different cultural values,

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different ways of being in the world, it's much easier to feel

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united, when you start out mostly united. When you start

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out mostly the same. When you start out mostly different-

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except, you're not mostly different are you? You're not

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mostly different at all, you're the same handful of elements, a

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bunch of water. Probably some moderate need for sunlight,

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probably need to eat. There are levels of same and levels of

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difference. But when we say that it's not okay to kill people, we

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can't then go around killing people. To me, this should be

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obvious.

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We lose not only our own humanity, but we lose our moral

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high ground if we ever had it in the first place. Because it's

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hypocritical. It's hypocritical to say that it's wrong to kill

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someone here, but not wrong to kill someone there. It gets

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complicated. Like everything, it gets complicated. If one person

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is going to die to save the lives of hundreds or hundreds of

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thousands, is that a worthwhile trade off? It's a hell of a

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trade off. It's terrible. Nobody should ever ever have to be that

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sacrifice. Nobody should ever have to look that sacrifice in

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the eye and make a decision. Nobody, and certainly not all of

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the frontline workers who have had to make decisions like that,

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since the pandemic started, but we can't rely on those

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exceptional situations to get us out of having to behave

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ourselves the rest of the time. And by behave ourselves, I don't

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mean constrict ourselves. I mean, blossom, I mean, put roots

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down, and leaves up. I mean, become so much more than the

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acorn. The acorn has value in and of itself. It's food, it's a

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seed, it's an entire tree in a tiny little cup with a hat on

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it.

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And when the roots go down, and the leaves and branches go up,

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that one tree, that one seed, that one little cup with a hat

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on it becomes hundreds of cups with hats on it, becomes food

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for entire families of animals, including humans. It becomes

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shade, it becomes compost, it becomes soil again. It becomes a

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nourishing, nurturing part of a forest community. We need to

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become. We need to keep becoming, because it is our

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nature. It is how we are. If we are going to move toward

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something that is actually just in a justice system. We have

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absolutely 100% got to put down the idea that it's ever okay to

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kill someone in the name of the State. It may happen

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occasionally. But as a last resort and never, never under

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circumstances where other people's lives are not

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threatened.

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I'm not a pacifist. I know I sound like one. I wish I

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believed in people well enough to be a pacifist. But I am very

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close. Not because I believe that people are always good, or

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always kind, are always wise, but because I believe that it's