Harry Belafonte.

Unless You Have Had the Experience of Sitting in a Village in War-ravaged Guatemala, or a Humble, Box-like Room in the Wretched South African Township of Alexandra, or in a Dust-covered Hovel on a Native American Reservation, or in the Tin Shacks That House the Thousands Who Live Desperate Lives in East Kingston Jamaica, or in an Overcrowded, Below-poverty-level Dwelling in a Ghetto in New York, Chicago, or Detroit, Among People Whose Lives Are Dominated by Their Bitter Struggle for Existence and Some Bit of Dignity, Unless You’ve Seen from These Places the Looks on the Faces of Small Children as They Watched Sesame Street or the Muppets, You’ll Never Really Understand What Jim and His Colleagues Have Done for Millions of Children All Over the World, Children Who Have Never Smiled, nor Dared to Dream, Had It Not Been for Jim Henson. I Come from Those Places; I Know These Faces. Through Them I Came to Fully Appreciate Jim.

No Matter What the Greatest Tyrant in the World, the Greatest Terrorist in the World, George W. Bush, Says, We’re Here to Tell You: Not Hundreds, Not Thousands, but Millions of the American People Support Your Revolution. – Remarks Made to Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in January 2006

I’ve Always Looked at the World and Thought What Can I Do Next? Where Do We Go from Here? How Can We Fix It? and That’s Still How I Look at the World, Because There Is so Much to Be Done. the Whole World Is Caught in Human Suffering. and Those Who Professed About Making Change Have Not Come up with Answers. We Have Failed in Terms of the Moral Side. We Have to Do More.

People from the Caribbean Did Not Respond to America’s Repressions in the Same Way That Black Americans Did. We Were Constantly in a State of Rebellion, Constantly in a State of Thinking Way Above That Which We Were Given. My People Were Gangsters and Lived in the Underworld. and I Don’t Mean Major American Crime. I Mean, as an Immigrant, If You Can’t Find Work Within the Law, You Find Work Outside the Law. Running Numbers and so On. Which Is, of Course, a Characteristic of the Poor, Who Find Ways to Break the Rules, Since the Rules Are Always Stacked Against Them.

I Wasn’t an Artist Who Became an Activist. I Was an Activist Who Became an Artist. Ever Since My Mother Had Drummed It into Me, I’d Felt the Need to Fight Injustice Wherever I Saw It, in Whatever Way I Could.

Knowing I Was Playing to an Influential Crowd, I’d Snuck a Little Politics, with New Lines for Old Songs, Like Michael, Row the Boat Ashore: Mississippi on Your Knees, Hallelujah!/ Another Bus Is on the Way, Hallelujah..

To Me, Faith as Practiced All Around Me Was Blindly Tied to Religion, and Religion Was Preachers in Harlem and Jamaica Passing the Hat for Jesus and Driving off in Fancy Cars. It Was Nuns Invoking the Christian Spirit and Rapping My Knuckles with Sticks. It Was Priests Blessing Italian Troops on the Newsreels, Sending Them off to Slaughter Defenseless Ethiopians. I Failed to See Any Good in the Hypocrisy of That.

In the Days of Slavery There Were Those Slaves Who Lived on the Plantation, in Shacks Out Back, and Those Who Lived in the Master’s House. You Got the Privilege of Living in the House If You Served the Master Well. When Colin Powell Dares to Suggest Something Other Than What the Master Wants to Hear, He Will Be Turned Back Out to Pasture.

I Was Good as a Singer, but I Wasn’t the Best, and I’d Known That from the Start. I Had to Rely on My Acting. and in the End I Could Make a Case That I Was the Greatest Actor in the World: I’d Convinced Everyone I Could Sing.

I Believe That My Time Was a Remarkable One. I Am Aware That We Now Live in a World Overrun by Cruelty and Destruction, and as Our Earth Disintegrates and Our Spirits Numb We Lose Moral Purpose and Creative Vision. but Still I Must Believe, as I Always Have, That Our Best Times Lie Ahead, and in the Final Analysis, Along the Way We Will Be Comforted by One Another. That Is My Song.