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.

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.

Yes, (Bush is a) racist. We all knew that but the world is only finding it out now. As Texas's governor, Bush led a penitentiary system that executed more people than all the other U.S. states together. And most of the people who died from (the) death penalty were Afro-Americans or Hispanics. (Bush) promoted a Conservative program, designed to eliminate everything Americans had accomplished so far in matters of race and equality.

Freedom Summer, the massive voter education project in Mississippi, was 1964. I graduated from high school in 1965. So becoming active was almost a rite of passage.

The strike and its outcome had an enormous impact on the system of education and on our lives as well. The strike began as a response to the college's refusal to hire Professor Nathan Hare [the so-called father of black studies], and certainly unified the college around issues of justice. These issues were reflected in many communities: the Asian American community, Hispanic community, Native American community.

When you've moved past a point where you're just scrambling for jobs, you think about the things that you want to do. And the things that you want to do are governed by what you've seen, what you choose to embrace

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