Since 1957, black people have experienced double-digit unemployment - in good times and bad times. Look at the population of African Americans in prison. They represent more than half the population of prisoners in the country, 55 percent of those on death row

Im a child of the Civil Rights Movement.

Leadership has to be focused on some very radical ideas that only we as 21st Century people can talk about: making sure people have a livelihood, making sure people receive a living wage, making sure the environment, the Mother Earth, is embraced and cherished and not destroyed. Making sure people are healthy in what they eat, making sure we hold people and corporations accountable for the damage they do not only to our environment but to our institutions.

My Toussaint [Louverture] film is in limbo. We still hope after all this time that we can find another way to get this film done.

Art is about the dynamics of the human experience.

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

Those titles, Executive Producer or actor, are unimportant. I always try to approach my role as an artist. The first thing you want to do, that you attempt to do as an artist, is to have some sort of input into the material that you are working on. That is how my process begins; I say to myself: "I want to do this kind of work or I want to do that kind of work."