We're just trying to figure out what being a good citizen is, what participating in a democracy is, what taking responsibility for being an American citizen in a global context means to us.

I think any person who goes to Rikers is criminalized, even just for visiting. I go back every week to see my friends in there. When you go to see a criminal, you are by relation a criminal and subject to be treated like one.

I had a sense that my mother was struggling, when I was a kid, working twelve hour days, making $12,000 a year with two kids in a trailer park.

I think in short order all of us need to act like we are citizens with not only rights, but also duties.

I felt like there wasn't a political discourse. I felt like there was just one set of values, and any one set of values was wrong; that there should at least be room for conversation.

I think that by telling the truth and by attempting to be a good citizen, somehow I've ended up playing with fire. And that's really scary.

My town was all-white and shut down Section 8 housing because they didn't want black people to move into the town. And I thought that was wrong - duh.