I think social change work is some of the most extraordinary dreaming that any of us have the possibility of doing.

We gain power in our refusal to accept less than we deserve.

In a different moment, in the 60s and 70s, I did believe we were going to succeed - that we were going to create a revolution, that America was going to be a completely transformed nation state and that there would be an amazingly different set of beliefs; that this country would reflect. And I thought that that was the fulfillment of the American democratic dream and I believed in it passionately.

If you want to be backed by corporations so that you're elected mayor, then it's going to be very problematic for you to support a living wage campaign that would shift the minimum wage to something else.

In some ways, the challenge of staying political is to stay a dreamer at the same time.

I think desire gives us - imagination - as well as actually often we pay a terrible price for it. Women are punished around their sexuality and perceived to be immoral if they practice a certain kind of promiscuous sexuality. It's a very different thing still if you're a guy, if you're a woman and you're straight.

If you can't do anything but fight, so every single solitary thing, every single solitary day, then the privilege of dreaming becomes something that only a few people have.