Put the strong, masculine figure in a school with tough kids and you have a certain control. It's very demeaning to the kids and very demeaning to the tough, black guy, but that's how they worked it.

You're working not for the corporate interest, not for the government interest, not for your own self-interest. You have a higher calling.

I took anything that came across my doorstep. I started getting a reputation.

My anti-authoritarian instincts let me directly to criminal defense work.

We had people who did housing, people who did anti-war, people who did schools. Everyone operated in their own niche, but not separately. We all were together on certain issues when it was important. Everybody was active in the '60s. I feel that there's a lot of active radical thought today but not much action.

I don't have any problem with Mao or Stalin or the Vietnamese leaders or certainly Fidel locking up people they see as dangerous. Because so often, dissidence has been used by the greater powers to undermine a people's revolution.

I would never take a case that had to do with abusing children. They're the true innocents.