What created democracy was Thomas Paine and Shays Rebellion, the suffragists and the abolitionists and on down through the populists and the labor movement, including the Wobblies. Tough, in your face people... Mother Jones, Woody Guthrie... Martin Luther King and Caesar Chavez. And now it’s down to us.

Bush and the corporate kleptocrats have stomped on too many people and left too many people out of the system, and those people are now in rebellion. It's not just poor people they are holding down but the middle class, as well. I have a favorite bumper sticker I saw on a pickup truck last year in Austin. It said, "Where are we going? And what am I doing in this hand basket?"

Democracy is not something that happens, you know, just at election time, and it's not something that happens just with one event. It's an ongoing building process. But it also ought to be a part of our culture, a part of our lives.

But, as my mother used to tell me, two wrongs don't make a right. But I soon figured out that three left turns do.

It's hard for the donkeys to win the race if they're going to carry the elephants on their backs.

Some of these rich folks seem to think that everything belongs to them and they'll even get to take it with them when they die. But you know what? You don't ever see a hearse pulling a U Haul.

You can't do progressive government from the inside. You have to rally those outsiders and make them a force.