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.

Children cannot lobby and cannot vote. We must speak for them.

Be grateful for good breaks and kind favors but don't count on them.

Luckily, I had incredible parents who, when they saw a problem, didn't say, "Why doesn't somebody do something?" They would say, "Why don't we do something?".

It's deeply rooted in the American psyche. Black men have always been viewed as the other, which leads to a different application of the laws. The current laws are an obscenity. More black men are locked up for using pot than white folk are for far more serious crimes.

There are levels of outrage, and there's a point at which you can't be trespassed upon anymore.

I hope that people of all faiths will start looking for our too-invisible children who are crying out for help.