Our government has to be held accountable for enforcing the law. Tamir Rice, the fact that they could exonerate that police person [who killed him], and Tamir's family was charged for the ambulance to take him [to the hospital]. It's inhumane.

Democracy cannot breathe, indeed will die, if those enjoined to protect it and uphold the laws snuff it out - with no consequences.

The challenge of social justice is to evoke a sense of community that we need to make our nation a better place, just as we make it a safer place.

So much of the deep lingering sadness over President Kennedy's assassination is about the unfinished promise: unspoken speeches, unfulfilled hopes, the wondering about what might have been.

Much of what I do now stems from my rage at segregation and discrimination. I can't stand to see children not able to do anything, anybody not able to do what they can do. The daily lessons of exclusion, having hand-me-down books in schools, of seeing ambulances turn away and not give health care for people lying in the streets who are migrant workers. Everything I do today stems from that segregated existence.

When Jesus Christ asked little children to come to him, he didn't say only rich children, or White children, or children with two-parent families, or children who didn't have a mental or physical handicap. He said, Let all children come unto me.

I feel very lucky to have grown up having interaction with adults who were making change but who were far from perfect beings. That feeling of not being paralyzed by your incredible inadequacy as a human being, which I feel every day, is a part of the legacy that I've gotten from so many of the adult elders.