I know that's a little jarring, coming from a Weatherman, but what I mean by being humble is doubting if your action did anything. So you have to open your eyes, act and doubt. And then you have to repeat for a lifetime.

One question is: Who is the working class today, and how has it changed? Where are we in that? I don't have a knee-jerk kind of 1930s thing about we must build the unions and that's the way to the future. I'm writing this book right now called Pallin' Around, and the subtitle is: "Talking to the Tea Party." And frankly I find talking to the Tea Party exhilarating, I love it.

That's in the nature of social change. So you can analyze what didn't work, but it's very hard to predict what will work.

I breathed the air of deliverance through books, and through books I leapt over the walls of confinement.

[Lyndon ] Johnson was responding to a black freedom movement that was tearing the country open and he did what he had to do as a conservative politician.

You cannot live a political life, you cannot live a moral life if you're not willing to open your eyes and see the world more clearly. See some of the injustice that's going on. Try to make yourself aware of what's happening in the world. And when you are aware, you have a responsibility to act.

It felt to me like I was living my life in a way that didn't make mockery of my values. That's what I intended to do. So, that became a very radicalizing proposition for me.