In 1967, the students at San Francisco State invited the poet Amiri Baraka to the campus for a semester. He attracted other influential black writers such as Sonia Sanchez, Ed Bullins, Eldridge Cleaver. What emerged was something we called the community communications program. That's how I got involved; I got involved in a little play

The death penalty is inhumane... whether that person is in a [jail] or it's bin Laden.

We live in a climate of fear, and because of this whole ideology of consumption almost to the point of religion.

Mother Earth is in pain and ailing - bglobal warming. The world is dealing with issues of immigration, deindustrialization, and poverty. When I was born, there were 2.5 billion people living on the whole planet. Now there are 2.5 billion people living on less than $2 a day. That's the kind of reality we have to deal with.

Today's cinema is a proliferation of comedies, which are in some ways creating caricature images. They're one-dimensional.

The Black Power Mixtape is a documentary, first of all. It brings us closer to the voices we heard at that particular point in time.

In The Black Power Mixtape , you hear the voice of Angela Davis - not someone playing Angela Davis.