We cannot assume that people by virtue of the fact that they are black are going to associate themselves with progressive political struggles. We need to divest ourselves the kinds of strategies that assume that black unity black political unity is possible.

The de industrialization of the US. economy based on the migration of corporations into third world areas where labor is very cheap and thus more profitable for these companies creates on the one hand conditions in those countries that encourage people to emigrate to the US. in search of a better life. On the other hand, it creates conditions here that send more black people into the alternative economies, the drug economies, women into economies in sexual services, and sends them into the prison industrial complex.

The prison is not the only institution that has posed complex challenges to the people who have lived with it and have become so inured to its presence that they could not con­ceive of society without it. Within the history of the United States the system of slavery immediately comes to mind.

Often young black people are looking towards the alternative economies. They are looking towards the drug economy.... the economies that are going to that apparently will produce some kind of material gain for them.

I believe profoundly in the possibilities of democracy, but democracy needs to be emancipated from capitalism. As long as we inhabit a capitalist democracy, a future of racial equality, gender equality, economic equality will elude us.

Walls turned sideways are bridges.

Well of course I get depressed sometimes, yes I do.