I can be all pissed off at the oppression of the state, but what does that really mean? Well, it's the tacit consent of a public.

I felt like there wasn't a political discourse. I felt like there was just one set of values, and any one set of values was wrong that there should at least be room for conversation.

We're just trying to figure out what being a good citizen is, what participating in a democracy is, what taking responsibility for being an American citizen in a global context means to us.

I would like to start a discussion about ending solitary confinement. I'd like to start a discussion about the removal of MO wings - an MO is a Mental Observation inmate - from Rikers Island, to be set up in mental health institutions. You can't put people in jail for having mental disorders.

I think in short order all of us need to act like we are citizens with not only rights, but also duties.

Jail is just another micro-society. It just happens that here, the problems are far more out in the open, we don't live with the facades of lies that democracy or capitalism creates for us.

You can't put people in jail for having mental disorders. You can't do that, and they should not be held there. They need rehabilitative therapy.

I think the big turning moment was when I joined the student political action club and started studying nonviolent civil disobedience in response to the Iraq War. The first anti-Bush protest in Atlanta was the first protest that I'd ever been to, and I helped organize the school walkout when I was a junior. It was a really solidifying moment.