The gay people with whom I am close are some of the strongest, most passionate and caring people I know, and their demands for justice are no less imperative than those of any other community.

The disgust and latent hostility I felt toward gays were subcategories of hatred, plain and simple.

Government has got to open up and engage citizenry as partners.

When people jump on your mistakes, don't hide from them; let people know that you're human, too.

If I just retweet the nice things, it rings hollow after a while.

I live in Newark. My family lives in Newark. I own a house in Newark.

I have got the job of my dreams.

I am a Yale Law School graduate.

I love seeing on Twitter when someone says I'm gay, and I say, 'So what does it matter if I am? So be it. I hope you are not voting for me because you are making the presumption that I'm straight.'

I was born after the Civil Rights Movement.

Newark faces real challenges.

My father was not going to let me sit back and just consume my blessings. He wanted me to contribute, and to do that, you have to be mission-oriented.

My parents were obsessed with my education.

I wrote down the grades I wanted in every class.

My story starts with my dad, a black boy born to a single mother in a small town in North Carolina. It starts with my parents meeting in Washington, D.C., in the '60s, at a time of incredible activism.

The drug war has been a war where the direct casualties have primarily been America's poor; America's minorities; and often, unfortunately, America's vulnerable, in terms of people with disease and addiction and mental health.

If we are going to do big things in our country, we're going to have to think about better ways working across our differences.

So many great movements didn't succeed the first time, but people kept trying and trying and trying.

I have not settled down with a life partner.

I spent eight years living without heat and hot water.

My whole life has been about confronting cynicism.

I'm very knowledgeable of the challenges before me.

Kids born into certain ZIP codes will most likely have certain educational outcomes. And we've got to end that. If we end that, we explode economic development.

We've got to be entrepreneurial; we've got to be innovative, and we've got to figure out ways of getting things done that people might think are very unorthodox.