The poor have been sent to the front lines of a federal budget deficit reduction war that few other groups were drafted to fight.

I try to be a person of faith.

The question is not whether we can afford to invest in every child; it is whether we can afford not to.

I've always hated being hemmed in or seeing anybody being hemmed in. Even when I was the smallest child, I couldn't bear being told I couldn't drink at a so-called white drinking fountain.

If we don't stand up for children, then we don't stand for much.

When I fight about what is going on in the neighborhood, or when I fight about what is happening to other people’s children, I’m doing that because I want to leave a community and a world that is better than the one I found.

I'm tough in the sense that I believe as strongly in what I'm doing as anybody else believes in what they are doing.