Because no matter who we are or where we come from, we're all entitled to the basic human rights of clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and healthy land to call home.
It's time for political leaders across the ideological spectrum to realize that, while partisanship is understandable, hyper-partisanship is destructive to our country. We need more visionary leaders who will earnestly strive for bipartisanship and finding policy solutions that can move America forward.
Whether it is a tsunami, or whether it is a hurricane, whether it's an earthquake - when we see these great fatal and natural acts, men and women of every ethnic persuasion come together and they just want to help.
Our challenge is to mobilize a new coalition of conscience to restore the Voting Rights Act, strengthen voting rights and broaden voter access in the legislatures of the 50 states.
I'm totally against the death penalty - which, if anyone has a right to support, I do - because I do not see it as a deterrent to crime.
I just think we have to create the climate so that people will come out on election day and vote.
Our leaders should certainly engage passionate advocacy of needed reforms, and equally strong criticism of policies they believe are destructive to America. But, from the school boards to the White House, let's elect more candidates who are committed to constructive dialogue and reasonable compromises.
Individuals cannot be free if there are impediments to reaching their full potential as human beings.
I think that it's appropriate to have the Confederate flag perhaps in a museum, but it is not a unifying symbol.
Reforms are needed to stem the tide of outsourcing good jobs to other nations and to educate and train American workers to meet the challenges of the 21st-century world economy.
It's clear to me that millions of young people understand and value my father's legacy of social change through nonviolence.
I think a culture of nonviolence will help create the condition where poverty is unacceptable, where racism is way behind us and not something that we have to deal with on a frequent basis, and where militarism and violence are reduced almost to be nonexistent.
What we have still not learned is how to treat our fellow human beings... We have to find a way to coexist without doing harm to one another and that is whether it's in the United Stated or in the Middle East or in the African continent or in Asia or anywhere on the planet.
The best way to overcome joblessness is to create a social contract between the public and private sectors to provide decent jobs for the unemployed. The decaying infrastructure of our cities is in urgent need of repair and restoration.
There is more racial integration in American life and many more people of color serving as elected officials and corporate leaders than there were during my father's time. But there is also reason for concern about new forms of racial oppression, such as measures to make it harder to vote, racial profiling and crushing public worker unions.
Because when we look at the modern civil rights movement under the leadership of my father and the team that he developed, it was at the federal level that we were able to appeal to bring about justice, whether it was in relationship to voting rights - just a number of issues.
President Obama certainly has an impressive gift for eloquence, and he has a global vision, as did my father. He doesn't rattle easy, and he doesn't harbor animosity, which were also characteristics my father had. But my father's arena was far broader than politics.
It would be wonderful to have a president who talked about bringing America together and exhibited that, who was involved in doing a social project... that would show humility.
Violence is the language of the unheard.
I was told that Daddy was murdered by a white man. I could have adopted an attitude of hating whites. But then in 1974 my grandmother was killed by a black man, so I could have hated blacks too.
