Approaches to growing food that align with nature changed human relationships.

I don't rule anything out, and I couldn't underscore more the importance of what YES! is doing to show that there are people who are pushing the edge of hope, who are stepping into the unknown and taking risks, because that will then enable others to do the same.

No society has fulfilled its democratic promise if people go hungry... If some go without food they have surely been deprived of all power. The existence of hunger belies the existence of democracy.

Democracy is not what we have. It is what we do.

Recently, [Diana Wilson] went on a hunger strike to protest Dow Chemical's refusal to accept responsibility for a 1984 chemical disaster in Bhopal, India, caused by a company they now own, Union Carbide. In the past, Diane's hunger strikes had been lonely affairs, but this time friends and co-conspirators from around the country took turns joining her on her flatbed truck under the hot Texas sun, greeting Dow workers as they entered the plant.

My path has not been smooth. But the great thing about getting to be an elder is that you can look back and see the intense times of confusion and challenge, and see that if you keep walking through them, they can lead to times of great satisfaction and reward.

A life-long mission has been to counter the notion that political engagement is the spinach we must eat in order to have the dessert of freedom.