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Mel Gibson Is My Friend. I Love Mel. He's Not The Person That I Hear People Are Often Trying To Diminish. Whatever His Challenges Are In Life, He Still Remains Someone I'm Very Close To.

-Danny Glover

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Mel Gibson Is My

Danny Glover

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Mel Gibson Is My Friend. I Love Mel. He's Not The Person That I Hear People Are Often Trying To Diminish. Whatever His Challenges Are In Life, He Still Remains Someone I'm Very Close To.

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Democracy Is About Criticism. I Didn't Elect Obama Because He's A Black; I Voted For Obama Because He Was The Right Person At The Time. Period. The Exceptionalism Of A Black U.s. President Is Not Important To Me. It's What He Does. And Who He Has At The Table. And What He Does To Change The World - That's What's Important.

But Rarely Have I Made Choices That Made Me Feel I Was Really Compromising What I Believe.

If We Talk About The Environment, For Example, We Have To Talk About Environmental Racism - About The Fact That Kids In South Central Los Angeles Have A Third Of The Lung Capacity Of Kids In Santa Monica.

Some Of The Most Amazing Stories Are Happening On The Global Scene. My Extraordinary Producing Partner, Joslyn Barnes, She's Just Virtually Changed My Life With The Way She Constructed This Company And How We Go About Telling The Stories We Want To Tell.

You Have This Response Of Angry Young People, With A War Going On In Vietnam, A Poverty Program That Was Insufficient, And Police Brutality.

What Happened To Haiti Is A Threat That Could Happen Anywhere In The Caribbean To These Island Nations, You Know, Because Of Global Warming, Because Of Climate Change And All This.

I Was Able To Do To Sleep With Anger, A Very Powerful Film About African Americans, Their Spirituality, And The Things That Happened Within A Small Community And A Family.

New Orleans Is A City Whose Basic Industry Is The Service Industry. That's Why It Makes Its Money. That's - It Brings People To The City. People Come To The City And Experience The Wonders Of This Extraordinary City And Everything Else. The Question Is That, How Do We Create Jobs Which Are The Jobs That Have Pay, That - Living Wages?

The Progressive Movement Against The War Of Occupation In Iraq Is A Reason For Hope, As Is Resistance To Free Trade Agreements In Latin America. Those Are Moments That We Have To Celebrate: That People Still Find The Resolve And Energy To Resist

Art Is About The Dynamics Of The Human Experience.

Human Experience

When You've Moved Past A Point Where You're Just Scrambling For Jobs, You Think About The Things That You Want To Do. And The Things That You Want To Do Are Governed By What You've Seen, What You Choose To Embrace

We're Trying To Tell Stories. We're A Company That's Concerned With Global Change And The Effect Of Global Cinema. We're Not Simply Tied To The Very Limiting Framework Of U.s. Film-making.

Those Titles, Executive Producer Or Actor, Are Unimportant. I Always Try To Approach My Role As An Artist. The First Thing You Want To Do, That You Attempt To Do As An Artist, Is To Have Some Sort Of Input Into The Material That You Are Working On. That Is How My Process Begins; I Say To Myself: "i Want To Do This Kind Of Work Or I Want To Do That Kind Of Work."

The Strike And Its Outcome Had An Enormous Impact On The System Of Education And On Our Lives As Well. The Strike Began As A Response To The College's Refusal To Hire Professor Nathan Hare [the So-called Father Of Black Studies], And Certainly Unified The College Around Issues Of Justice. These Issues Were Reflected In Many Communities: The Asian American Community, Hispanic Community, Native American Community.

Native American

I Didn't Elect [barack] Obama Because He's A Black; I Voted For Obama Because He Was The Right Person At The Time.

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I Never Thought About Being An Actor. I Was Just Going To Play Music And Baseball. That’s All I Was Going To Do. To This Day, That’s What I Do. I Just Added Movies To It.

We Have To Be That Wedge That Drives The Question And Asks The Hard Questions

Mother Earth Is In Pain And Ailing - Bglobal Warming. The World Is Dealing With Issues Of Immigration, Deindustrialization, And Poverty. When I Was Born, There Were 2.5 Billion People Living On The Whole Planet. Now There Are 2.5 Billion People Living On Less Than $2 A Day. That's The Kind Of Reality We Have To Deal With.

When You Have Powerful Unions, You Have A Working Class That Is Politicized.

I Was Involved With The Anti-apartheid Movement Through My Work As An Artist And Also Through My Political Commitment.

We All Know Reagan's Legacy, From The Iran-contra Affair To The Funding Of The Nicaraguan Military In Which Over 200,000 People Died. The Groundwork For The Move Steadily To The Right Happened With The Reagan Administration. People Want To Elevate Him To Some Mythic Level; They Have Their Own Reason For Doing That.

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I've Been A Goodwill Ambassador For The Unicef And The Unicef Family For More Than Twelve Years

Im A Child Of The Civil Rights Movement.

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I Was Able To Do The Saint Of Fort Washington, On The Relationship Between Two Homeless Men.

Some Of These Things I Saw In Foreign Films - African Films, Cuban Films - Long Before I Decided To Really Go On This Course As An Actor. I Started To Think About What Values I Saw In Those Films That I Wanted To Bring To My Projects

In 1967, The Students At San Francisco State Invited The Poet Amiri Baraka To The Campus For A Semester. He Attracted Other Influential Black Writers Such As Sonia Sanchez, Ed Bullins, Eldridge Cleaver. What Emerged Was Something We Called The Community Communications Program. That's How I Got Involved; I Got Involved In A Little Play

Just Look At The Cinema Itself: It's Comprised Of Lots Of Movies About Graphic Novels, And If You're Not 20 Years Old And Wearing A Cape And A Mask And White, You're Out Of Business. Today's Cinema Is A Proliferation Of Comedies, Which Are In Some Ways Creating Caricature Images. They're One-dimensional.

Kids Made Fun Of Me Because I Was Dark Skinned, Had A Wide Nose, And Was Dyslexic. Even As An Actor, It Took Me A Long Time To Realize Why Words And Letters Got Jumbled In My Mind And Came Out Differently.

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Every Day Of My Life I Walk With The Idea That I Am Black, No Matter How Successful I Am. And Our Success Is Tempered By That; You're Successful In This Way Given The Fact You Are Black, And Most Blacks Don't Get To That Point.

Yes, (bush Is A) Racist. We All Knew That But The World Is Only Finding It Out Now. As Texas's Governor, Bush Led A Penitentiary System That Executed More People Than All The Other U.s. States Together. And Most Of The People Who Died From (the) Death Penalty Were Afro-americans Or Hispanics. (bush) Promoted A Conservative Program, Designed To Eliminate Everything Americans Had Accomplished So Far In Matters Of Race And Equality.

Every Day Of My Life I Walk With The Idea I Am Black No Matter How Successful I Am.

The Civil Rights Movement Didn't Deal With The Issue Of Political Disenfranchisement In The Northern Cities. It Didn't Deal With The Issues That Were Happening In Places Like Detroit, Where There Was A Deep Process Of Deindustrialization Going On.

I've Always Been Able To Make Choices That Don't Embarrass Me.

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I Was A Member Of The Black Student Union, Part Of The Central Committee At San Francisco State. During The 1968 Strike There, I Was Certainly Very Much Involved In The Activities That Occurred On Campus. It Was Part Of An Extraordinary Period In My Life

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I Remember When Langston Hughes Used To Write A Column In Black Newspapers Around This Character Jesse B. Semple. He Always Used That As A Voice, Sometimes In Comic Ways, Of Having Everyday People's Voice Come Through This Common Folk Hero, Who Was An Ordinary Working Guy. He Would Talk About Anything From Police Brutality To The Korean War. Those Kinds Of Expression And Identification Are No Longer Prevalent In Our Popular Culture.

It's A Misconception To Believe That The Resistance Ended With The Civil Rights Movement.

Since 1957, Black People Have Experienced Double-digit Unemployment - In Good Times And Bad Times. Look At The Population Of African Americans In Prison. They Represent More Than Half The Population Of Prisoners In The Country, 55 Percent Of Those On Death Row

African American

Leadership Has To Be Focused On Some Very Radical Ideas That Only We As 21st Century People Can Talk About: Making Sure People Have A Livelihood, Making Sure People Receive A Living Wage, Making Sure The Environment, The Mother Earth, Is Embraced And Cherished And Not Destroyed. Making Sure People Are Healthy In What They Eat, Making Sure We Hold People And Corporations Accountable For The Damage They Do Not Only To Our Environment But To Our Institutions.

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Remember, We're Talking [in The Black Power Mixtape] About 1967, The Year Before [martin Luther] King's Assassination. We're Talking About The Emergence Of Black Power, Which Is A Discussion King Mentioned In His Last Book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos Or Community? We're Talking About The Meaning Of Black Power And The Possibility That It Alienated Our Supporters, Both White And Black.

But I Think It's Very Key That There's A Plan For Haiti. And We Have To Begin To - As Progressives And People Who Are Concerned About Haiti And Have Been Concerned About Haiti, We Have To Begin To Build Some Sort Of Consensus, A Movement Around The Haiti That The Haitians Envision.

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Native American

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What's More Important Is That We Talk About Movements; Change Happens Through Movements. The Movement To End Slavery, The Movement To Bring Justice For Those Who Have Been Left Out Of The System, Movements To Include Women, Movements Around Sexual Preference - All These Movements Brought About Change.

Popular Literature And Culture Used To Reflect People's Aspirations, Pain, And Passion. All Those Particular Things Are No Longer Available To Us.

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We Live In A Climate Of Fear, And Because Of This Whole Ideology Of Consumption Almost To The Point Of Religion.

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[the Strike In 1968] Brought Us Together With Teachers And Also With Progressive Whites. All Of Us Came From Diverse Backgrounds, But At The Same Time The Reasons Why We Were At San Francisco State In The Late Sixties Was Because Of The Agitation And Movement Building That Had Occurred Within Our Communities. We Saw Ourselves Not Separate From The Community But Intimately Connected To It.

The Black Power Movement Was Not A Separation From The Civil Rights Movement, But A Continuation Of This Whole Process Of Democratization.

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There Are Things That Make Me Excited About What I'm Doing: Trouble The Water [the 2008 Documentary Glover Executive Produced] On New Orleans, Or Something Like Soundtrack For A Revolution, About The Power Of The Music Of The Civil Rights Movement [which He Executive Produced In 2009]. Or Bamako, About The African Debt Crisis, A Platform To Discuss The Experience Of People Who Actually Live It. All Of These Are Important Ways We Can Use Film As A Forum Inviting People Into A Dialogue.

The Civil Rights Movement Didn't Deal With The Issue Of Political Disenfranchisement In The Northern Cities. It Didn't Deal With The Issues That Were Happening In Places Like Detroit, Where There Was A Deep Process Of Deindustrialization Going On. So You Have This Response Of Angry Young People, With A War Going On In Vietnam, A Poverty Program That Was Insufficient, And Police Brutality. All These Things Gave Rise To The Black Power Movement. The Black Power Movement Was Not A Separation From The Civil Rights Movement, But A Continuation Of This Whole Process Of Democratization.

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Lack Of Leadership

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I Have The Capacity To Express What I Feel Needs To Be Expressed. And I Try To Do What I Believe In.

President [barack] Obama Is A Man Who Had Certain Advantages Because Of The Civil Rights Movement.

Whole Ideology Of Consumption Almost To The Point Of Religion. Whether It's The Consumption Of Entertainment Or The Consumption Around Buying Things, We're So Caught Up With Our Appetites That We Don't Have A Clear Distinction About What We Need And What We Just Want. Plus, The Decline Of Trade Unions Is A Factor. When You Have Powerful Unions, You Have A Working Class That Is Politicized.

Lethal Weapon 2 Used The Platform To Talk About The Apartheid System. That Was A Very Important Moment For Us.

I'm Not So Vain As To Believe That My Involvement Changes Anything Whatsoever.

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One Of The Main Purveyors Of Violence In This World Has Been This Country America.

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