In other words, "speaking truth" as a social movement may move you forward in some ways, but to really lock in and have real enduring change, it takes both a movement on the ground and an independent political party that is itself the defiance of that two-party corporate big-money control of politics.

We are plunging headlong into a cold war, and we have 2,000 nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert.

I was previously involved in local and state politics, but not national, because grassroots democracy starts at the bottom. This was the breaking point for me, though - and it made the case that in order to fight locally, we have to fight nationally; we can't afford to neglect any area of life in this democracy.

I was very engaged by the folk music movement.Bob Dylan; Joan Baez; Peter, Paul and Mary. And then I sort of discovered world music, and fell in love with ethnic music of all sorts.

Where does Donald Trump come from - and it's not just Donald Trump. It's a whole movement of right-wing extremism, not just in this country but also in Europe, which is a response to globalization, to the financialization of our economy, you know, to the trade agreements that throw working people under the bus.

We call for a green New Deal, like the New Deal that got us out of the Great Depression, but in this case focusing on green jobs to create 100% clean renewable energy by 2030, which is exactly what the science calls for.

I was really intrigued by how - sort of the common themes and sort of the blend among music, and that was sort of my real interest was, at one point, musically, was how you could weave those different kinds of songs and traditions together.