As legal slavery passed, we entered into a permanent period of unemployment and underemployment from which we have yet to emerge.

Marriage is a civil right. If you don't want gay people to marry in your church, good for you. But you can't say they can't marry in your city.

People don't just show up and lie down in the middle of the street some place out of nothing. Somebody said meet me there, let's get together, and let's do this thing. The interesting thing is that we don't know who all of the leaders of these groups are, but we know that they're out there, and we know a new group of leadership is being created. It shows you that leadership can come from anywhere.

The humanity of all Americans is diminished when any group is denied rights granted to others.

Working in a situation with men and women, and seeing women take on roles equal to the roles taken by men made you understand that, "Hey, these people can do things too." And I think it made me and other people in the movement realize that we're living in a community of equals. And that among those equals, they have equal rights. And we ought to respect their rights if they respected ours.

The First Amendment means everything to me.

We know that if whites and nonwhites vote in the same percentages as they did in 2000, Bush will be re-defeated by 3 million votes.