Public education is so important - resisting privatization and charterization, high-stakes testing, and defunding. It's important for New York, but it's also important for the country.

What happens in New York affects national policy in very significant ways.

There's a tendency, especially among academics, to see politics as deeply dirty and deeply egotistical.

New York City is one of the most vulnerable cities in the world to climate change, so I see Keystone as the central threat to New York.

I think part of the reason the Tea Party has resonated is that people feel disempowered. The Tea Party says, "You are out of power because of big government." Then some Democrats tend to respond by saying, "No, you're wrong, you're not out of power." It's a sense that doesn't resonate with people's lived experience.

I tend to be a kind of left federalist. There's a value to more power of certain kinds being positioned at a more local level.

I think that most people have deeply creative sensibilities.