What's more important is that we talk about movements; change happens through movements. The movement to end slavery, the movement to bring justice for those who have been left out of the system, movements to include women, movements around sexual preference - all these movements brought about change.

I didn't elect [Barack] Obama because he's a black; I voted for Obama because he was the right person at the time.

We have to be that wedge that drives the question and asks the hard questions

Remember, we're talking [in The Black Power Mixtape] about 1967, the year before [Martin Luther] King's assassination. We're talking about the emergence of black power, which is a discussion King mentioned in his last book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? We're talking about the meaning of black power and the possibility that it alienated our supporters, both white and black.

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.

When you have powerful unions, you have a working class that is politicized.

If we talk about the environment, for example, we have to talk about environmental racism - about the fact that kids in South Central Los Angeles have a third of the lung capacity of kids in Santa Monica.