I was never fearful or scared. I knew God had me and my wife and children knew it as well so we just marched.

There were never a lot of attacks on my work. We were building more parks than were ever built in the city, building more recreation centers, fixing more streets. We had national events, the Super Bowl, the (Major League Baseball) All-Star game, Final Four. We built seven hotels. The city hadn't built a hotel in 20 or more years.

We do need brothers and sisters to go into elected offices and political offices and do that, but my spirit is telling me something different. Because you are a Democrat or Republican you have to do this but you can't do that and so it's somewhat limiting in what you can actually do and I've done that.

Character issues such as drug abuse are not exclusive to Detroit Public Schools. My reference to substance abuse, not intended to focus on any particular school district, was simply used to illustrate this position.

This is the United States of America and unfortunately, race still matters to a lot of people. The evil head of racism doesn't hide, it sticks its head up.

I don't think there has been any mayor in America scrutinized that way. I don't think there has been any mayor as a matter of fact, Coleman Young I think received an incredible amount of scrutiny and he was kind of the poster child for that in Detroit. He was the first Black mayor who really expressed his manhood in a different way than had been seen from African-American man that was projected across the country.

What is happening in Detroit is not good so I don't even want to be a part of that, but there is something on the other side that I may want to be a part of so I don't know yet.