thank you for coming out tonight the nation love seattle we love seattle because we know that this city has long believed that another world is possible the battle for seattle in one thousand nine hundred nine was a defining moment for the nation my colleague  nichols was here along with a team of nation correspondents naomi klein's no logo framed that extraordinary moment and i think you can see the arc the continuum as you look out across the world today thousands of people in the streets countries fighting austerity politics discredited status quo politics and we see it in our own country coming back in seattle was central to that it is extraordinary to be with some of the people from the city you're going to hear from tonight want privilege paul because they give us inspiration in new york and they give inspiration to progressives to humanists around this country you are in for a treat a celebration an evening of inspiration and celebration and i now want to bring up here to who will help guide us tonight will emcee is truly extraordinary critical part of the  nation national affairs correspondent sean nichols if you don't know i'm going to meet him you're not going to want to say goodbye to him he is a contributor long time contributor the nation to many other publications he's the architect of the media and democracy movement desert john nickel sword is the sharpest before i turn it over to the great slayer john nichols let me just say that all of the speakers and performers here tonight would like to great  that's good because you use fire there and i just want to begin by saying that that your coolness kind of put us off a little i'm sorry you know that many of us come from rural places and we weren't sure we were ready and that's why we waited a hundred and fifty years to bring suit then to seattle washington because we feel we are ready to stand with you and i saw today i'm up there on pike street in terre and i'm walking around i saw that comet tavern and i thought to myself this is it finally the nation magazine in alcoholic form not kidding now i mean some of my so my comrades for the nation have not ben there yet but on the front of the comet tavern in huge very nicely printed lettering it says no sexism racism able ism homophobia transphobia or general hate we won no answers i come from wisconsin when the bar say that that is very good and then framing it was the clenched fist of solidarity of the trade union movement and social is reminded that seattle is a union town seattle is a union town i was here in nine hundred ninety nine and i remember the incredible excitement a billionaire just got the tax break or whatever you are now it's like it's a the town is sick with billionaires but so anyway have down there and and i think it was trumka got up and he said no i'm sorry  the long sure union had a long story and he got up and said we have just shut the ports from vancouver to san diego and i thought to myself this is so cool trade unionism actually making something happen or in this case not happen and the thing we made not happen and nine hundred ninety nine in seattle was an overwhelming wave of globalization on behalf of multinational corporations that sought to take away everything that we cared about and people in this town stood up so strong so well didn't stop them all didn't stop everything but it sent a message out from this town from seattle that they would not pass without a fight and brothers and sisters we've been fighting now for fifteen years sixteen years and each step of the way we have gotten stronger the trade union movement has changed we cover it  nation magazine more now than we have for decades because there's something vital and something real happening the nation is one hundred fifty years old but we keep getting reminded of what actually matters on the streets in places across this country and around the world we have to be in touch with it because the nation magazine doesn't know how to make money we got to be with the people no i'm serious this is this is a competence issue and i understand but this is really true then i got in trouble the other night because i said that in the entire hundred fifty years the nation magazine had only made a profit in one quarter now one quarter of one hundred fifty years one quarter of one year and i was corrected katrina then who immediately ran to me and said so no no no no you've got it way wrong it was several quarters but the truth of the matter is the nation has never ever than some big profitable journal the nation magazine has always wasted its money wasted its resources going out finding canadians like naomi klein given them work in america doing crazy things like hiring a sports writer trying to say that there's something political about sports dave zirin is with us tonight doing all these incredible things but also covering the grassroots politics of communities across this country and to do that you know make a big fortune it's not big money in it sometimes you're a little bit ahead of the curve right about something that people have to catch up with sometimes you have to read another magazine you got to say well who's a little ahead of us was how we always pick up our copy of yes magazine right here in seattle we got the folks from yes very good saying right here al and we got our comrades all and we love some seattle education association teachers jesse was just out on strike with the teachers but it was such a nation strike because when jessie and those teachers went out on strike they didn't just got on strike for their own pay or their own benefits they went on strike to challenge this over the top crazy testing they went on strike to challenge overcrowded classrooms they went on strike to challenge the not glut of children by a system that always has money for a war but never has money for public education and sisters i think they took a little bit of that occupy a message and brought it into the public education fight and you know in new york city when the occupy movement broke out one of our editors at the nation magazine editors are supposed to sit at their computer and not look up they wear those little green visors one of our editors at the nation magazine he just couldn't resist he had to go out there and cover the hell out of it because we don't have editors that just sit there we have editors that get into the thick of it because they love the story and they love the struggle ladies and gentlemen i am honored tonight to introduce to you as the first of a number of speakers who will do both readings from classic nation articles but also some comments of their own i'm honored to introduce you to you the person who edits our web pages and has brought the nation into the twenty first century in so many ways but has never ever forgotten the one hundred and fifty year core mission of this journal of peace and economic and social justice ladies and gentlemen please welcome richard t thank you seattle i'm going to be reading from an essay written by the great american writer tony  it's called socialism of the skin and it was first published in the nation on july fourth one thousand nine hundred four and i read this essay as a college student for the first time and it was probably the reason i applied for an internship at the nation magazine  and many years later i dug up that internship folder and i saw this sort of notes on it had said wait list so i guess some people turn down that internship and that's that's how i ended up at the nation  all these years but seriously i make an effort to go back and read this tony kushner essay every few years because it poses a set of questions to me that i have not done answering it it's a very challenging text and i think it's a really rich one to this day is there a relationship between homosexuals liberation and socialism that is  fashionably utopian question but i oppose it because it's entirely conceivable that we will one day live miserably in a thoroughly ravaged world in which lesbians and gay men can marry and serve openly in the military and that's it violence guns drugs child abuse underfunded in bad education itself a form of child abuse these things are key to the successful functioning of the free market homophobia is not the system could certainly accommodate demands for equal rights for homosexuals without danger to itself but are fishley sectioned homosexual marriages and identifiable homosexuals soldiers the ultimate aims of homosexuals liberation clearly not if by homosexuals liberation we mean the liberation of homosexuals who like most everyone else are and will continue to be oppressed by the depredations of capital until some better way of living together can be arrived at so then our homosexual marriages and soldiery the ultimate which is save the only achievable aims of the gay rights movement a politics not a vision but of pragmatic such a politics of homosexuality is dispiriting like conservative thought in general it offers a very little in the way of hope and very little in the way of vision one of all the other things gay men lesbians have to fear one of the things gay children have to fear in common with all children what of the planetary disappointment that kills us or the financial necessity that drives some of us into unsafe insecure stupid demeaning and ill paying jobs or the unemployment that impoverishes some of the racism some of us face or the rape some of us fear what about aids is that enough to say not our problem of course in politics is a progressive politics it depends on progress for the accomplishment of any of its goals is there any progressive politics that recognizes no connectedness no border crossings no solidarity or possibility for mutual aid perhaps the far horizon of lesbian gay politics is a socialism of the skin our task is to confront the political problematics desire and repression stonewall was a sixties thing part of the top in project of that time honoring the true desire of the skin and the connection between the skin and the heart and the mind and the soul is what homosexuals liberation is about gay rights may be attainable an overbroad or limited a basis but liberation depends on a politics that goes beyond not anti politics our happiness scared queer children doesn't only isolate us it also politicizes us it includes kates in us a desire for connection that is all the stronger because we have experienced its absence our suffering teaches us solidarity or it should when this essay was published in one thousand nine hundred four same sex marriages are legal not just in every state in the country but in every country in the world twenty five states in america made gay sex punishable as a making the united states the twenty third nation in the world to do so so what are we to make of toni's us say today what are we to make of it here's one way of looking at it on that day june twenty and fifteen four people including two women and a toddler were found dead in a home in green acres florida it was the hundred sixty fourth mass shooting in the united states this year on that same day president obama delivered the eulogy for reverend clemente pickney who was shot and killed along with eight other people in his church in charleston south carolina earlier that month since june twenty sixth there have been one hundred thirty six more mass shootings bringing the total to three hundred this year so far to one thousand mass shootings in america since the sandy hook massacre that killed twenty children between the ages of six and then on june twenty sixth police shot and killed twenty eight year old joseph narrows in san antonio texas he was among the eight hundred ninety six people this year have been shot and killed by police in the united states more than half of those shot and killed have been people of color in almost twenty five percent of them have been african american men on june twenty sixth six months after the president declared the end of combat operations a u s drone strike killed six allege militants and nursed on province it was among the at least seventy eight drone strikes in afghanistan this year so far we learned today that the u s intends to keep thousands of troops through the end of twenty seventeen it june twenty six was like any other day in over one hundred million americans and that day below or near the poverty line thirty million americans were out of work on their employed one in nine people around the world went to bed hungry that night so yes one way to look at it is that tony was right the day the supreme court legalized same sex marriage was a day filled with much violence and fear and want as any other day but i don't actually think that's the point of socialism the skin and i had to read the essay many many times to arrive at a different way of reading of it tony wasn't trying to paint an unchanging stand here today and say that we're anywhere near that utopia socialist or otherwise and i don't know if i will ever be to say ever be able to say that but here are a few things i do know i know that as tony was writing these words in  four a group of inconceivably brave and staggeringly young men and women were literally fighting for their lives they call themselves act up and they use their bodies and their words and their art to disrupt the callousness and cruelty of business as usual they storm the n h they storm the c d c they storm st patrick's cathedral they scatter the ashes of their loved ones on the white house lawn because that is where the blame ought to rast they refused to be disposed of they were beautiful they taught themselves science and medicine and law and how to navigate the maze of arcane federal bureaucracies and i know that because of those people the development of drugs that saved millions and millions of peoples of lives around the world was accelerated and i know that some of those people some of those who are still alive are still fighting because there are still millions of people in sub saharan africa and other poor countries that need access to these lifesaving drugs to survive and they are also fighting to stop the tran pacific partnership agreement because they would  because they would bestow on giant pharmaceutical companies patents would kill millions more around the world from diseases that are like aids entirely preventable and entirely treatable i know that two days before the supreme court ruling  raising the plight of other undocumented immigrants in ice detention centers and for doing this she was shouted down by her fellow advocates and squirted out of the oval office but later her protest went public and went public it went viral i know that so many of the leaders of the immigrant rights movement are clear and they are coming out again not as lesbian or gay or trans but as undocumented an attempt to weaponize their own personal stories in the mold of the gay rights movement to assert that immigrants to have the right to form a family i know that the success of the movement wouldn't have been possible if it weren't for women's liberation if it weren't for the anti war movement if it weren't for the civil rights movement and i know that just because we have marriage equality doesn't mean we are done fighting as we tell the story of how gay marriage was won in so many books and movies and t v specials i believe it is even more important that we keep telling the stories that aren't done yet the stories that don't fit just inside one movement i know that none of us are as alone as we think we are none of our communities are strange from each other as they seem to be and i know that if your politics only makes you comfortable with your own misery then you are doing your politics all wrong so here's to solidarity here's to m aid and to border crossings here's to unexpected and unlikely connections here's to utopia in all it's unfashionable ness and here's to being brave enough and you know it hard enough to listen to those utopian longing enjoy the rest of this wonderful evening thank you you know we did this couple nights ago in portland and we had a similar sized crowd come out they had to skip the democratic presidential debate to be with us in the democratic campaign they're actually saying you know it would be pretty amazing if america elected a woman as president and i said well you know in seattle they elected the first woman mayor of a major metropolitan city in nineteen twenty six so seattle did that a long time ago brokaw's berry then some other people are saying well maybe baby america could elect socialist president am pretty much figure we just come to seattle to see what's going to happen and we're going to have a little what's going to happen conversation now we have two remarkable people with us who are members of your city council came here from cleveland union man organized with the steelworkers got a little bit of got a little bit of training he sighed i'm definitely on the left i want to go to the left coast of america moved to seattle got himself elected to the city council here and a couple years you know everybody talks about seattle city council now but a couple years ago i looked across the entire united states i said who is the most progressive member of local government in any community in the united states we do an annual honor roll at the nation magazine and mike my selection that year was really there wasn't enough competition it was the guy who has formed local progress the national group of local progressive he serves on the city council with the woman who has sort of redefined what we think of local government now just in seattle but nationally and i could do a lot of interaction but the fact of the matter is i think we just like to say fifteen dollars an hour minimum wage and the nation magazine we actually interview people and so we want to give you a sense of that here and nick i want to start out with you how did you get political well i was a very slow learner learning how to read i didn't read into the ninth grade actually until one years old i had dyslexia so and the first book i read was citizen the galaxy's me you know it as an off and it was really interesting i think i became political because i realized here's someone who's a citizen who could do something and then my dad had a barber shop and he would bring home these pamphlets for the first political pamphlet separate from the john birch society didn't take so and you know it was this conspiracy of communists running the country actually corporations too so i said to myself what is this all about so i went out searching for the people of the world at the you know i think was   i helped start students for a democratic society which i in bowling green going to university and it was due to actually a book by  basically to make sure that people were basically have the right to vote and have the right to live in peace and i was called a communist and so i just go to work communists were i was one i'd even know that i thought i was just in favor of a more vibrant democracy and so through those experiences i began to realize more and more that politics in this country is really shaped by by either people who are willing to do something or people who are just passive and have things done to them and i recognize that my family is the family that basically things were done to them and neither of them graduate from high school they always worked in factories and when they could and i realized i was getting older and went to college i said i was the first ever to go to college my relatives i want to do something to basically help people have some control over their wives and that's how i became political mean this in an oriental a sense because i will come to my next point about how i came to the us and experienced some of the similar things but i feel that when you grew up in this kind of world if you are not politicised then you're either unconsciously or consciously repressing your political instincts because it is only human to question why there should be so much misery when you can see that the human society has achieved pinnacles of technology and other kinds of achievement which should mean that there shouldn't be any poverty why why is there poverty when there is so much wealth and of course you know later on i understood the mechanics of capitalism which really means that inevitably under capitalism extreme concentration of wealth meaning extreme concentrations of poverty they're not unfortunately juxtaposed to hurt each other they are consequences of each other but you know when i came to the us i in my naivety i thought ok india is a poor country there's a history of colonialism and imperialism but when i come to the wealthiest country in the history of humanity they must have figured out how to not only solve the power problems of poverty and homelessness and lack of access to food but also what i consider you know coming from  i basic things like mass transit and reason mumbai had good mass transit i mean there is lots of problems now because of new liberalism but the reason we had it was because there was very conscious into tensional investment in public services which came about because of that influence by socialist didn't feel the same way as we did as i did really these problems are not going to be solved under capitalism and we have to go to a different future as richard said you know richard was talking about how we we might sometimes reject these ideas because they  in most of america if somebody said as you did a moment ago you realize you're a communist so he said well you know something about socialism that would pretty much be the point at which he decided not to go into electoral politics and yet eighteen years ago you decided to go into electoral politics so we often have this challenge in america the question of you know the non elect overseas electoral what made you what made you representatives unfettered with proper information and actually begin that process in college because i realize when i was in college i went bowling green with a very concerted college all the while going to hell and they did a poll that showed that seventy five percent of  people supported nixon in one thousand nine hundred sixty eight humphrey you know humphrey lost the election by one percent by the way and when literally the head of the nazi party showed up at bowling green state university two thousand people showed up townspeople students and they went to the protests they sat and listened intently how he told basically this is a country for white people and so on that campus i felt that i had to do something to change it to open up people's eyes that there was something better and two things happened actually one was attended a rally of george wallace and i saw the people that i grew up with in the stands clapping and pounding and just out of their minds with supporting him and i realize this is dangerous and then i went to campus and had the opportunity to listen to norman thomas literally years before he died socialist ran for president five or five times or more you made so much sense he was such a peaceful person he understood the problems that this country faced and i said this is what i want to do i want to reach out to the other students and try to find common bridges and in that process i ran as a former s d s of chapter for student body president again such a fraternity guy who is the fair to his were big and i want and it was amazing i could look at myself but  but but i won because i was talking about that time student power how we had to be able to control our environment had a controller cost control our dorms just practical things and so from there when i when i came to seattle i became actually very involved in a and government is power and if you ignore it someone else you can run that government so i decided i was going to run for city council with the track record of their city living in a commune for twenty five years i still was so i knew i wasn't going to get a lot of support from certain fall so but what i really tried to do is reach out to a lot of folks on the basic idea that government has to be responsive has to be transparent has to be effective and has to be fair very simple concepts that would cut across the political lines and basically say this is your government you have to control it because if you don't someone else will and that's what i basically believed in and that's what i've been trying to you come along and you say you know now i'm i'm just going to put social a style turn it over right out there on the sign and and get electoral try the electoral thing to really try it outside of what just about everybody understands is the the current limits of politics what made you decide to do it that way but there's a couple of things to this one is why  a grassroots campaign and anti corporate campaign as an open socialist that's one question and i think the answer that question is just from our analysis you know just look at you john you mentioned the occupy movement the occupy movement really brought to the fore a lot of the anger and frustration many of us were feeling on an individual level but especially something really important about the occupy movement was it was one of the first in this generation it was one of the first expressions by young people and there was so much anger and we know poll after poll opinion polls that are showing that american people are so fed up with corporate politics and  ideas you know that a peddled by the corporate media the american public is not right wing the american public is very much to the left of the options that they're offered in terms of you know who's in the u s congress who's on the city council who's in the state legislature and so we and i when i say we i mean socialist alternative which is a nationwide organization of social and economic and environmental justice activists we are a democratically organized organization movement call it what you well and we thought that it was high time that we tested the ground that we believed that there was a huge opening for the left to begin rebuilding itself and not does every campaign every left campaign in every city is going to be a carbon copy of what we did in seattle but i think we've been proven right in in shovelfuls that young people especially are so ready politics if we are to succeed against the wall street juggernaut and the way we we conduct our politics in socialist alternative it's not like i wake up one day and decide i'm going to run for for the most part what we see is individual politicians you know furthering their careers and willing to give out make any kind of compromise that they need that is needed for political expediency when we don't do it that way and it's a model for what we should do going forward for an alternative to the two democrats and republican establishment is very decided to make sense to run a campaign and then who would be the best candidate and i have to say just between you and me and fortunately for me  dichotomy between inside and outside it's too simplistic you know inside strategy versus outside strategy the success of the fifteen dollar movement shows do you need to build a grassroots movement that genuinely incorporates the labor movement and workers themselves and students but you need your own voice in the corridors of power because otherwise we don't bring down into you know onto the table where we can fight for our rights as so often happens when we do interviews we have to cut all the good stuff out and we're close to where we have to finish up here because we have so many other good things but nick she just said your she complementary toward you which is very very nice and you know what i think part of the part of what happened there was that you were somebody who had been on the inside and you welcomed somebody from the outside in how did she do how she done i think without a doubt that  first name basis i think that schama as president on the city council i could only wish you could be duplicated across the country because which she brings is now an energy and passion because people can have that but also practical skills and organizing skills you need to basically give something the general public not just something they believe that a vision how to get there and on the city council she's been very effective even though with grumbling from some of the council members moving them to adopt policies they would not necessarily have adopted in the past although they tend to adopt more of them around electoral time noticed that and i also think that we complement each other very well because you know my background is in organizing not to the level that yours been but also i think the critical elements what you get is elected office you still have to think as an organizer still have to think as an activist you still have to think about how he's going to bring people to bear pressure  the majority them oppose me and left a bad taste and i've seen the same thing happen with seven of the consul members came out opposed to her i thought that was ridiculous i mean i think it shows a mentality of fear of change and i am totally tonight and going forward obviously come out and we always like to make a little news when we do interviews ladies and gentlemen i apologize for having so little time to talk to these two remarkable people but you have them in your city all the time and before we leave though we also wan display the power of electoral politics because nick what do you get to do when you're on the city council among many things but there's always your vote for this resolution or is it has published is one hundred fiftieth anniversary issue to showcase of legacy has championed the grassroots now therefore the seattle city council proclaims thursday october fifteenth two thousand and fifteen the nation day in seattle you the nation covers culture the nation covers music for a long time though we did a pretty lousy job of covering sports we knew it was important but we didn't quite know how to do it luckily we started to notice that there was this guy out there who was doing this incredible writing and radio programs and writing books and making documentaries and seizing mohammad ali and jackie robinson and all of these other figures out of just the mythology and making them and just whole beings incredible athletes but also incredible political figures the man who helped not just the nation magazine but america to see sports in a dramatically broader light person i am so very proud to call the nation magazine sports writer thank you so much john nichols john nichols everybody please a lot of people don't know that john has a hobby as a big game hunter very shocking for the nation he's recently just mounted ahead of scott walker it's very  exciting it's such an honor to be a town hall the only place i can imagine that could host an event like this and simultaneously down below at the other venue it's hosting elisia garza from the black lives matter movement and i want to garza and her amazing work as we're here tonight it's also an honor to be in seattle as the nation sports writer i mean it to be in this amazing city where seattle seahawks players debate the black lives matter movement in dueling press conferences that doesn't happen in every city please don't think that's normal n f l behavior and also to be in the kind of place where teachers go on strike not merely for higher wages not merely to  standardized testing but so all children can have access to re because as much as they try to make play a privilege play is a right for every child in this world i not just for bill gates as kids we get to play too so i'm just also so happy one of my dear friends is here tonight one of the teachers in seattle he was mentioned earlier jesse the gobi and and i just want to recognize jesse for his work with the strike i had lunch with jesse today and i said what was it like to be walking around seattle wearing your strike colors while all the schools were shuttered and he said it felt like the mariners won the world series and the seahawks won the super bowl on the same day it is it's great to be somewhere where solidarity is more than just a slogan but it's a way that people actually live and interact so yes i do write about sports for the nation that's not a punchline or a joke or a set up that is my job and it's an amazing game luckiest dude in the world because i get to cover issues that the corporate sports media frankly just does not cover issues like the public funding of stadiums issues like greedy sports bosses issues like the ripping of the teams away from communities just because fans are not willing to pay billionaires for the privilege to watch i'm sure you in seattle have no idea what that feels like and for me i mean that was a great radicalizing issue for me at the intersection of sports and politics i went to college in minneapolis st paul any twin cities folks here by chance right on and when i was in college i would go watch the twins at a stadium called the hubert h humphrey metrodome yes named after a liberal hero and yes the most disgusting stadium you've ever seen i mean it was like watching a baseball game inside a large green condom  it was such a kind of gross environment that when billy martin was hired as manager of the twins he looked around and he said jesus why would you bring home for his parents name after this dump and  so the twins needed a new stadium as a twins fan i believe they needed a new stadium but was so shocking to me was that even though the twins had the richest owner in major league baseball carl pohlad he was devoting his life to making sure that fans paid for the new stadium and even though in six separate referendums the people of minnesota said they did not want their tax dollars going to a stadium he still won that funding and they did build a new billion dollar stadium completely on the public dime and that's why we need political sports coverage because we in when it comes to sports which is supposed to be about play and fun in community we have to stop having socialism for the sports bosses and cutthroat capitalism for fans we have to stop i having this arena in american life where debt is socialized but profit is privatized i'm sure that just in sports and get sounds familiar and it is terrific to be here tonight with two city council people in missile in consequence so wanton and nick who stand with that principle that billionaires should have to pay for their own stadiums and i'll tell you something that's rare on city councils around this country so it might be normalized for you but for me i'm just like wow so thank you both for standing strong on that issue and that's how john nichols jibes aside that's actually how the nation has always covered sports it's a myth it's fascinating looking back at their sports coverage over the last one hundred fifty years because the corporate sports media in the moment is wrong all the time it's unbelievable looking back it 's seriously it's not you take the corporate sports media's brain and you put it in a hummingbird boom it flies backwards they have no idea at different points in history what they're supposed to be doing so it's like you go back in corporate sports history it's like integration in baseball food for all should never happens women playing sports who will have babies you know and that's the generalized way sports has been covered and yet you look back at that when the nation did talk about sports granted very sparsely it was on the side of integration in baseball on the side of title nine and women having every right to the athletic field on the side of not staging the one nine hundred thirty six olympics in hitler's germany believe it or not something most of the sports media got wrong and and i'm on the side of muhammad ali's brave stance to stand for peace instead of war in vietnam  and that goes to the short reading i'm about to do because it involves muhammad ali and it also involves the great victor nevada ski's wonderful theory about what the nation is supposed to be victor navasky former editor publisher of the nation he had a theory that he said we need to have a magazine where liberals and radicals can do get out and and this to me shows that so beautifully as a former nation editor carrie mcwilliams he wrote into the magazine on july twenty second one thousand nine hundred eight and his letter was called muhammad ali for congress and this is what kerry mcwilliams wrote he said at thirty six ali's fighting career is about over but then what will he do he's not a man who would be content with being a celebrity he would soon be bored with a career as a media personality one gets the feeling he would not like oh that he would like to be socially useful but not in the philanthropic philanthropic route so why not congress more than a celebrity he's a man of character and charm his stand on the draft alone stamped him as a person who has the courage of his convictions put him down as a person of remarkable gifts intelligence perception and goodwill w i'm extremely flattered by your appraisal of me you sure have done your homework it isn't often that i am quoted so accurately but to get down to the nub and i am interested in politics i mean like running for office i'm a world man my fellow man is not just an american in my race is the human race i'm shook up when i see a child that is going hungry or a mother who is out without medical attention these are the things i'm interested in and of course peace peace for all people and all nations at all times and i would argue that the spirit of muhammad ali particularly this past week where we learned about the continuance of a u s military presence in afghanistan the spirit of muhammad ali absolutely lives on everywhere where people fight for peace and people fight for principles that they're much better things to do with lives and resources then put them into the machinery of war and and i'm very i'm just so proud to work for a publication that lets me talk about sports like that