Movement time.

• Author: Gray, Kevin Alexander
• Position: Political reform

I'd like to talk today about where to go from here and what's at stake in changing our politics beyond voting.

Back in the anti-apartheid days, I used to start my speeches by saying "Amandla," "Power." But some people have enough power.

We ought to be talking about power to the people who are for justice, peace, freedom, and a love for all humanity.

That's what progressive politics is about.

That's what we ought to be about.

And we ought to be talking about peace not in terms of quiet. In Ferguson, we saw a lot of people parachuting in, and they talked about peace, but they were really talking about quiet.

We don't need quiet in our country, where our politics is so guided by violence, and war, and killing, where we saw a President get on TV the other night and talk about American exceptionalism, like that was any different than Manifest Destiny or God's Chosen People or somebody's chosen people. But other people aren't chosen. Other people have to give up their lives, their land, their labor.

We've got to move in a new direction in this country. It's got to be more than voting for people who don't reflect our values, be they black, be they white, be they whatever.

Look at President Obama, who looks a lot like George Bush, who looks a lot like Bill Clinton, who looks a lot like Richard Nixon. They all shared the idea that every President has to take this country to war.

We can't give anybody a pass. We ought not think that President Obama--black guy, he's got a nice wife, and a nice family, and they look good--he might do better, he might understand something.

Well, I know a lot of black politicians who believe that money is power, who believe they're put in power for Wall Street, that they're put in power for the people who have the money and the control.

We've all heard the comment, "We do better when we all do better."

It's time for this country to be about doing better.

It's time for this country to be about protecting everybody, and looking at the people in the past who we've wronged.

Now you want to talk about Scott Walker?

I picked up the paper this morning and I looked at this voter ID law, and I also saw that Wisconsin, like South Carolina, is limiting Medicaid funding.

It's politics based on keeping the niggers from getting something.

Keep them from voting.

Keep them from having health care.

And let the police shoot them down in the streets because they're nothing but animals.

We've got to talk about changing the violent nature of...