If we cannot provide excellent educational opportunities to all children, safe communities, quality health coverage, or robust and fair avenues towards wealth creation, then our nation will increasingly be in peril.

I have my rights, not because of Washington suddenly deciding, Strom Thurmond and others, "Hey, let's give certain Americans equal rights." But because of the ardent, unyielding voice of protesters.

Give the respect you want to receive; embody the grace you hope to encounter; and help others with no expectations whatsoever.

We have had in our nation a well-celebrated Declaration of Independence. But our success as a country will depend upon a new 'Declaration of Inter-dependence.' A belief in how much we need each other, how much we share one common destiny.

No matter what, we always have the power to choose hope over despair, engagement over apathy, kindness over indifference, love over hate.

Speaking as somebody who voted against TPA and has a lot of suspicions about Trans Pacific Partnership that are reflected in our concerns about what's hurting the American economy and what the opportunity is to grow, I have to say I like a person like Hillary Clinton who is willing to analyze the facts. I have met no one smarter than her in politics.

The War on Drugs is a war on people, but particularly it's been a war on low-income people and a war on minorities. We know in the United States of America there is no difference in drug use between black, white and Latinos. But if you're Latino in the United States of America, you're about twice as likely to be arrested for drug use than if you're white. If you're black, you are about four times as likely to be arrested if you're African American than if you are white. This drug war has done so much to destroy, undermine, sabotage families, communities, neighborhoods, cities.