Our crime was that we were beginning to live a new and contagious life-style without official authorization.

What I said was that I was at first supportive of Bernie [Sanders] when he came to Los Angeles for his first rally, I was there, I was supportive.

All my life I've been involved with racial politics. I was a Freedom Rider in the South. I was the author of books on gang violence, I was a community organizer in Newark, New Jersey, and when I spoke to the Black Caucus, congressional and state, I realized they were going all the way for Hillary [Clinton] and so was the Latino caucus in Sacramento and I asked myself this question: "Do I really want to cast my vote against these people who have been central to my life and to the soul of the country?" And so I went with them. Period.

I was in the category of people who thought that his [Bernie Sanders ]campaign was worthy, even noble and it would push Hillary [Clinton] to the left.

I'm not ready to give you a clear answer on whether electoral politics holds any particular hope for progressives. It would mean that nothing I did ever mattered.

It was gonna be a race [2016] that set a foundation for the Left in the future. But given the math, I didn't think he was gonna make it. And so I started to shift to Hillary [Clinton] and to discussions of the platform and discussions of what to do.

Our crime was that we were beginning to live a new and contagious life-style without official authorization.