There are three dominant tendencies in a neoliberal society: financialized, privatized, militarized. And when it comes to black poor people, we get all three.

I am not optimistic, but I've never been optimistic about humankind or America. The evidence never looks good in terms of forces for good actually becoming prominent.

Martin Luther King would celebrate the symbolic status (of having a black president), but he would examine what the real substance was. And if he saw that poor and working people were not at the center of public policy, he would be deeply, deeply upset.

I think hip-hop can be prophetic and progressive, and at the same time, the dominant forms tend to be homophobic, misogynistic and something that we need to critically call into question.

I was blessed to be part of a commercial, pushing for this energy bill, but we've been unsuccessful.

It's a spiritual malnutrition tied to a moral constipation, where people have a sense of what's right and what's good. It's just stuck, and they can't get it out because there's too much greed. There's too much obsession with reputation and addiction to narrow conceptions of success.

I couldn't live without the genius of Stephen Sondheim, be it not just West Side Story,but Follies,Company,Sweeney Todd,Passion.You can go on and on.