Susan Burton's life story - filled with trauma, struggle, and true heroism - is precisely the kind of story that has the potential to change the way we view our world.

I don't think I understood the full extent of the trauma experienced by people who churn through America's prisons until I began taking the time to listen to their stories.

We cannot 'fix' the police without a revolution of values and radical change to the basic structure of our society.

On any given day, there's always something I'd rather be doing than facing the ugly, racist underbelly of America.

I am inclined to believe that it would be easier to build a new party than to save the Democratic Party from itself.

The success of the few does not excuse the caste-like system that exists for many. In fact, black exceptionalism - the high-profile, highly visible examples of the black success - actually serves to justify and rationalize mass incarceration.

Prosecutors frequently overcharge, load up charges on individual defendants, knowing that three strikes laws and harsh mandatory minimum sentences will force people to plea bargain and essentially convict themselves because they're terrified of doing a life sentence for a relatively minor crime.

Thousands of people go to jail, go to prison, every year without even meeting with an attorney.

People have a false understanding of what our legal system is like - how it works/operates - from shows like 'Law and Order,' which suggest that lawyers appear on demand and do a tremendous amount of investigation and background research.

In 2004, there were more black men disenfranchised than in 1870 - the year the 15th Amendment was ratified, prohibiting laws that deny the right to vote exclusively on the basis of race.

Private landlords as well as public landlords are free to discriminate against people with criminal records for the rest of their lives. You come out of prison, and where are you expected to go?

If you take into account prisoners, a large majority of African American men in some urban areas, like Chicago, have been labeled felons for life. These men are part of a growing undercaste - not class, caste - a group of people who are permanently relegated, by law, to an inferior second-class status.

The uncomfortable reality we must face is that California, like the nation as a whole, has treated generations of African Americans and Latinos as largely disposable.

Discrimination in virtually every aspect of political, economic, and social life is now perfectly legal if you've been labeled a felon.

The cyclical rebirth of caste in America is a recurring racial nightmare.

In the 'era of colorblindness,' there's a nearly fanatical desire to cling to the myth that we, as a nation, have 'moved beyond' race.

Almost no one refuses the police when confronted on the street or in a train or plane or train station. When you're confronted by the police, very few - either the foolish or the very brave - will refuse consent when confronted by the police.

The same kinds of stereotypes and hunches that George Zimmerman used when deciding that, you know, Trayvon Martin seemed like a threat in his neighborhood, law enforcement officers employ all the time.

After years as a civil rights lawyer, I rarely find myself speechless.

There has been an outpouring of anger and concern because of the actions of George Zimmerman, a private citizen who profiled a young boy and pursued him and tried to confront him, perhaps. But what George Zimmerman did is no different than what police officers do every day as a matter of standard operating procedure.

People are swept into the criminal justice system - particularly in poor communities of color - at very early ages... typically for fairly minor, nonviolent crimes.

Our criminal-justice system has for decades been infected with a mindset that views black boys and men in particular as a problem to be dealt with, managed, and controlled.

The sprinkling of people of color through elite institutions in the United States, due to affirmative action policies and the limited progress of middle-class and upper-middle-class African Americans, creates the illusion of great progress.

I believe that Trayvon Martin's life might well have been spared if many of us who care about racial justice had raised our voices much, much sooner and much, much more loudly about the routine stereotyping and profiling of young black men and boys.