I think the press is here to inform and empower people.

I think, for one, the LGBTQ community is just a paragon of leadership, of standing up and saying "these are our rights, and we deserve them." As a model of activism, it's so wonderful what the community has been able to achieve towards goals like marriage equality.

If you've been paying attention to politics for the last, you know, 30 years, it would not have shocked you, but what was amazing was that there it was, you know, in irrefutable colors, you know, there on paper, or there on your computer screen.

There was really interesting work going on, for example, in the Mississippi bayou, where there were some really exemplary health centers that also became centers with kind of political organizing.

The largest bloc of voters now has divorced the Democratic and Republican parties, which are now minority parties and the plurality of voters now are independent. They're looking for something else.

For me, the overarching issue here is that we need regulatory agencies that are standing up for us, that do not have a revolving door between, you know, Monsanto, and then suddenly Monsanto lobbyists are in charge of, you know, telling us whether GMOs are, you know, good for our food or not.

It's not a matter of just what we don't like and who we are most afraid of. We need an affirmative agenda if we're going to move forward as a democracy.