Boots Riley

I thought my parents were always having card parties - and they were - but they were actually also having meetings to organize people. My older sister would be part of youth organizing, and she'd have dance parties. People would be dancing and talking about how to improve their neighborhood.

My training was with some old British communists who had organized unions in the '60s and '70s. And their philosophy was, if you can't drink a pint with a man, how are you gonna get him to go on strike and risk his life?

For me, the association with rock is one of force and anger and aggression. And definitely, in the past, I've made songs that attack like that. But what I usually try to appeal to is peoples' everyday feelings, the things that they're going through as they deal with the system on a one-to-one level.

Until we can democratically control the wealth that is created from our labor, there isn't real democracy.

Redistributing the wealth' - that phrase gets used so much that you almost get numb to it.

There are a lot of leaders that talk about ending things like oppression - whether it's discrimination or getting a job - but the reason for all of this stuff is somebody's making a profit off our backs. That's the reason why black people were brought here in the first place. It was a profit motive.

People want things that address their everyday reality, and that goes for stuff that isn't political - with singer-songwriter music, people want things that touch them.

I think voting is the lowest form of political action that you can do. A lot of times, it keeps people from doing stronger things.

I'd been working since I was eleven so I could buy my own comic books. I was that kid knocking on your door, selling subscriptions to the paper and crying because I wasn't going to sell that last paper that would allow me to go to Disneyland.

I want to fight the McCarthyist state that's developing in this country so my kids won't live in a world where people are afraid to speak out.

The crux of our power isn't only in our voice. It is in our economic function in society.

We all - even at a base level, even a Republican - understand that the people with the money are the ones with the power. We all learn that.