Bring It On. Dissent Is Central To

In My Earliest Of Years, My Mother Was A Huge Force In My Life. She Was For All Intents And Purposes, A Single Parent. My Father Had Abandoned Us. He Was An Alcoholic And A Physical Abuser. My Mother Lived Through That Tyranny And Made Her Living As A Domestic Worker. She Was Uneducated But She Brought High Principles And Decent Values Into Our Existence, And She Set Lofty Goals For Herself And For Her Children. We Were Forever Inspired By Her Strength And By Her Resistance To Racism And To Fascism.

When I Went To Japan I Sang In Japanese; When I Went To Greece I Sang In Greek. When I Went To Spain, I Sang In Spanish. I Couldn't Speak It Very Well, But I Sang, I Was Beautiful In Singing It. These Things Just Constantly Attracted People To The Uniqueness Of Who I Was And The Way In Which I Performed.

The Usa Has More People In Prison That Any Other Country, Including Countries With Much Larger Populations. 13% Of The Population Is Black But 80% Of The People In Prison Are Black, Mostly For Soft Crimes.

We [americans] Move About The World Arrogantly, Calling Wars When We Want, Overthrowing Governments When We Want. There Is A Price To Be Paid For It -- Look At 9/11. [that] Wasn't Just Bin Laden. Bin Laden Didn't Come From The Abstract. He Came From Somewhere, And If You Look Where ... You'll See America's Hand Of Villainy.

I Don't Know What America Has Really Learned. We Are Too Quick To Do What's Expedient On Behalf Of Our Culture Of Greed And Hedonism. We're Quite Prepared To Go To Conditions Of Tyranny In Order To Sustain That Culture, And We Do It In The Name Of Democracy, When Nothing Could Be More Undemocratic. We Do It In The Name Of Saving The Values Of Our Society, When The Way We Behave Corrupts Those Values. We Do It In The Name Of God In Whom We Believe, When In Fact We Have Corrupted Our Own Vision Of The Christian Journey.