We'll only really know we've succeeded when a mediocre woman does as well as a mediocre man. You shouldn't have to be extraordinary. That's the point!

Think about the pressure to "pass" by lying about one's agethat familiar temptation to falsify a condition of one's birth oridentity and pretend to be part of a more favored group. Fair-skinned blacks invented "passing" as a term, Jews escaping anti-Semitism perfected the art, and the sexual closet continues the punishment, but pretending to be a younger age is probably the most encouraged form of "passing," with the least organized support for "coming out" as one's true generational self.

There's a wonderful cartoon of Reagan in a Western hat and he's saying, "A pregnant woman in every home, a gun in every holster. Make America a man again." That sums up his attitudes: pro-military, anti-equality, pro-rich, anti-poor.

One of our biggest problems in terms of effectiveness is that we have hopes, but our opposition has interests. We measure everything against our hopes, including politicians that we are voting for or choosing amongst. We don't measure up to our hopes ourselves.

A movement is only composed of people moving. To feel its warmth and motion around us is the end as well as the means.

Economic systems are not value-free columns of numbers based on rules of reason, but ways of expressing what varying societies believe is important.

Racism is not real, it's made up, it's cruel, it can be stopped.