You cannot change any society unless you take responsibility for it, unless you see yourself as belonging to it and responsible for changing it.

People in Detroit aren't just urban gardening. They're starting a new mode of education. They're trying to give children the education to be "solutionaries" rather than people who are going to get jobs in the system. And that is a huge change, a cultural revolution.

The Vietnam War was taking place, which was raising all sorts of questions in the United States, and it was forcing Asian-Americans to stop thinking of themselves as model minorities and to identify themselves more with world revolution, which was very important in my development.

I'm not calling for a boycott on voting. But I think it should be very clear that just voting is not going to solve our problems.

History is not the past. It is the stories we tell about the past. How we tell these stories - triumphantly or self-critically, metaphysically or dialectally - has a lot to do with whether we cut short or advance our evolution as human beings.

Well, I would say that we've got to redefine democracy, that we have been stuck in concepts of representative democracy, that we believe that it's getting other people to do things for us that we progress.

How do we redefine education so that 30-50 percent of inner-city children do not drop out of school, thus ensuring that millions will end up in prison?