Religion has gotten a bad rap for good reasons. Often, there are a lot of people - women, LBGT, and others - you know, hierarchical monotheism has been a real source of a type of oppression.

We should not allow the fundamentalists and the bigots to take over and speak for the great faiths any more than we should let them take over and speak for the great nation.

A green economy begins to replace some of the clunking and chugging of ugly machines with the wise effort of beautiful, skilled people. That means more jobs.

Little kids sing a song called "America the Beautiful." They sing a song called "This Land Is Your Land, This Land Is My Land." To me, those songs are not just nice little ditties. They are marching orders. They are commandments that we must protect America's beauty from the clear-cutters, the strip-miners, the oil spillers. They are pledges we have made. They are promises to keep.

"Big" government? Who wants that? I just want effective government. That means America's government needs to be big in some places, small in others and non-existent in others.

In addition, black folks need to attend green conferences, too. We just self-segregate and don't go. They might even waive your fee if you apply on a diversity basis, because they'd be so shocked to see somebody from a different background wanting to be a part of the green movement.

That's one component: rather than creating job-training pipelines that put these kids at the back of the line for the last century's pollution-based jobs, we need to be creating opportunities for them to be at the front of the line for the new clean and green jobs.