I can be all pissed off at the oppression of the state, but what does that really mean? Well, it's the tacit consent of a public.

I think the big turning moment was when I joined the student political action club and started studying nonviolent civil disobedience in response to the Iraq War. The first anti-Bush protest in Atlanta was the first protest that I'd ever been to, and I helped organize the school walkout when I was a junior. It was a really solidifying moment.

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

You can't put people in jail for having mental disorders. You can't do that, and they should not be held there. They need rehabilitative therapy.

I cannot speak adequately, especially considering my race and my privilege, to the violence of the NYPD or the police in racial terms. That is something that I cannot speak adequately to.

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.

If somebody is acting maladjusted - which means not happy to be at Rikers - the protocol, as I understand it and have been told by COs unofficially or officially, is to pepper spray that individual to sedate them.