If the only time you bang the drum is when it's time to get someone elected, and you don't get involved in a mass movement, then you're working against real and substantive change.

The Obama campaign decimated the newly regenerated anti-war movement in 2008. And he definitely isn't anti-war.

Until we can democratically control the wealth that is created from our labor, there isn't real democracy.

If what you want is actual change, then what has to be built is a mass movement that is militant and can use direct action to slow or stop profit. A movement that can do that can demand whatever it wants.

The Coup does not support the American flag.

If I want to get my ideas out, I have to be involved in the mechanism that the world is ran by.

I'm not a classically trained composer, and I can't sing very well.

If people come to a record store, and they can't find your album, they buy something else.

Rarely, someone comes around that is influenced by so many things but is looking for a new way to do something.

The goal with a show is to push forward the passion in a visual and sonic way. It all comes out in a trance-like way, fast and pulsating. Then people can go home and think about the lyrics later.

I just make music based on what I believe.

A lot of organizers tell me that while they are making signs or doing whatever they do, they are listening to the Coup.

Capitalism and people who control the market have a large hand in everything. It doesn't have anything to do with figuring out what the crowd wants to hear. It has to do with the media deciding what they think people want to hear.

A lot of us don't get a sense of our personal power. I know the vast difference that one person can make in changing things.

If we created a society based on love, it would be a society without exploitation.

I think it's important for us not just to edit the culture that capitalism creates but to create the material basis for a culture that we want.

My father joined the NAACP when he was 12, in the '50s. He was part of the organizing efforts that led to some of the first sit-ins in North Carolina.

I try to find creative ways to put ideas out to make the ground fertile for organizers.

I used to be mad, at first, that I couldn't sound like Ice Cube. And I think that was probably one of the best things for me.

I was in an organization called Progressive Labor Party and International Committee Against Racism. And I was - I started out helping to organize a farm workers' union in Central California.

I was born in Chicago. I moved to Detroit until I was six and moved to Oakland at that point. And then we had a couple years in Stockton and Pasadena. And by the time I was 13, I was back in Oakland.

I think I'm a little superstitious.

People want things that address their everyday reality, and that goes for stuff that isn't political - with singer-songwriter music, people want things that touch them.

We're told, 'If you want to change the world, vote.' And really, if you want to change the world, there's a lot more things that you can do.