“In order to bring down the incarceration rate, you’ve got to start with the beginning of life. You’ve got to make sure that parents and schools are prepared to prepare young people for success. You’ve got to deal with the next stage of life.”

You’ve got to make sure that people have the opportunity to work at a good job, they have access to good healthcare, and that they have the opportunity to build wealth over time.

The U.S. Constitution contains no right for a child to go to school, let alone for a child to go to a good school. And yet, we know that if they don’t go to a good school, they’re less likely to be able to realize all that this country has to offer.

I think we need to let the old racial order just stay where it is and not seek to improve upon it. Not try to create more racial categories, because all that does is it makes a race stick around longer.

No person can maximize the American Dream on the minimum wage.

I was raised in a family where we were taught that the best thing you could do with your life was to really kind of push the cause of progress and justice and human rights forward.

Let us invest less and less in war and tax cuts for the richest 1 percent, and more and more in jobs and schools for the other 99 percent.

White has always been an exclusive definition. I think one of the challenges for white people is to figure out how to have a more inclusive picture of who their families are, of who they are.

The right to vote is the right upon which all of our rights are leveraged – and without which none can be protected.

When somebody says the best thing you can do is be tough, the best thing you can do is use your brute force, then we’re selling ourselves short.

As an American people, what is greatest about our history are the many times we have led this world away from hate, towards hope.

It misdirects crucial resources and undercuts the trust needed between law enforcement and the communities they serve. It has no place in our national discourse, and no place in our nation’s police departments.

It’s a funny thing, in the US we all believe that we have a right to go to school. We have a right to a good education. And we don’t.

Race is a lie built on a lie. The first lie is that people are different, somehow skin color or hair texture is more significant than eye color, or the shape of one’s feet.

When you’re smart on crime, you start off by recognizing that both the victim, first of all, the victim, but also the person who did the crime are both human.

Civil marriage, like all civil rights provided by the government, must be provided equally to all Americans.

We really have to, as a country, recognize that school is where people get their identity not just as a scholar, or a future business person, but as a citizen. And we need to make sure that schools set them up for success as citizens.

The kind of job doesn’t matter. The length of time on the job doesn’t matter… If you work hard and do your best, you’ll be recognized and move onward.

I dont see myself only as a Somali character. I think of myself as an actor, and if the job fits me and I like the story, I will go for it.

It’s crazy to think of myself as a musician. It’s ridiculous that I get to do it, and I don’t necessarily mean music. Getting to do something you really enjoy as a job is an incredible privilege, I think. I still don’t really feel like a musician outside of the actual music.

Look, I’m a conservative, I’m a very conservative guy, and – and the Trump campaign is making your job over at NBC really, really, really easy in terms of going after conservatives and Republicans if he’s the standard bearer for conservatism.

Our first responders risk their lives to help others. The least we can do is make sure they have the resources they need to do their jobs.

When you start getting jobs, and see your mates from drama school, you don’t really want to talk about it, because you have this innate sense of guilt that it’s not fair that others aren’t doing exactly what you’re doing. I do have that.

I was literally just going and applying for jobs, and I couldn’t get a job, and I was getting more and more broke, and you find yourself groveling for jobs you don’t even want.

I’ve been pretty lucky, I like my jobs.