I don't like to just talk of Africa, and south of the Sahara in general. No, I'll talk about the Third World in general. I'll like to say this - we in the United States would never believe that another form of goverment - I don't care even if it's against the racism, etc. - it is hard to get the masses of people to believe or accept that a socialist government will relieve them of most of the problems.

I worked in the mechanical factories repairing cement trucks. The Cuban government wanted me to work in the university as a teacher in literature, but I declined because I wanted a more sense of the countryside.

I think it's wrong for North America in particular, the West in general to make a comparison between the economic situation in Cuba and the extraordinarily developed industrial complex of North America.

Institutions work this way. A son is murdered by the police, and nothing is done. The institutions send the victim's family on a merry-go-round, going from one agency to another, until they wear out and give up. this is a very effective way to beat down poor and oppressed people, who do not have the time to prosecute their cases. Time is money to poor people. To go to Sacramento means loss of a day's pay - often a loss of job. If this is a democracy, obviously it is a bourgeois democracy limited to the middle and upper classes. Only they can afford to participate in it.

I don't want people to think he [Eldridge Cleaver] is so important - our party is important because our party works for the people and no individual is important in our party, including myself.

There will be no prison which can hold our movement down.

I had a lot of time and the first year I was in prison, I tried to get the party to stop the shooting, to stop the talk about the gun thing.