In many ways, we've been taught to think that the real question is, do people deserve to die for the crimes they've committed? And that's a very sensible question. But there's another way of thinking about where we are in our identity. The other way of thinking about it is not, do people deserve to die for the crimes they commit, but do we deserve to kill?

Knowing what I know about the people who have come before me, and the people who came before them, and what they had to do, it changes my capacity to stay engaged, to stay productive.

I do talk and think a lot about the legacy before me. I feel like if I didn't know that people had been in Montgomery sixty years ago trying to do similar things that I'm trying to do, with a lot less, with fewer resources, with less security, with less encouragement, with less opportunity - if I didn't know that, then I think doing what I do would be much, much harder.

The greatest evil of American slavery was not involuntary servitude but rather the narrative of racial differences we created to legitimate slavery. Because we never dealt with that evil, I don't think slavery ended in 1865, it just evolved.

You don’t change the world with the ideas in your mind, but with the conviction in your heart.

Finally I got to the point where I said, I'd like to start a project where we can actually talk about race and poverty, not through the lens of a particular case, but much more broadly.

We don't need police officers who see themselves as warriors. We need police officers who see themselves as guardians and parts of the community. You can't police a community that you're not a part of.