We need to put strong Democratic pressure on President Obama in the name of poor and working people.

I think we must never, ever demonize one another. That's true not just black people to black people; that's human being to human being.

Nobody in my family or in my neighborhood used the language that they used at the University of Chicago. I remember the first time I heard the word "value" repeated again and again by my professor. Value to me was the price of a frying pan.

White supremacist ideology is based first and foremost on the degradation of black bodies in order to control them. One of the best ways to instill fear in people is to terrorize them. Yet this fear is best sustained by convincing them that their bodies are ugly, their intellect is inherently underdeveloped, their culture is less civilized, and their future warrants less concern than that of other peoples.

As human beings, everyone has stuff coming at them, and a certain kind of fear.

I take my fundamental cue from John Coltrane that says there must be a priority of integrity, honesty, decency, and mastery of craft.

We have to be self-critical even in context that we might be critical of, even as we - our pieces appear in it.