Danny Glover Quotes - Page 3

President [Barack] Obama is a man who had certain advantages because of the civil rights movement.

Every day of my life I walk with the idea I am black no matter how successful I am.

In The Black Power Mixtape , you hear the voice of Angela Davis - not someone playing Angela Davis.

There are things that make me excited about what I'm doing: Trouble the Water [the 2008 documentary Glover executive produced] on New Orleans, or something like Soundtrack for a Revolution, about the power of the music of the civil rights movement [which he executive produced in 2009]. Or Bamako, about the African debt crisis, a platform to discuss the experience of people who actually live it. All of these are important ways we can use film as a forum inviting people into a dialogue.

[The strike in 1968] brought us together with teachers and also with progressive whites. All of us came from diverse backgrounds, but at the same time the reasons why we were at San Francisco State in the late sixties was because of the agitation and movement building that had occurred within our communities. We saw ourselves not separate from the community but intimately connected to it.

There is a lack of leadership outside the Beltway, outside of politics.

My theatrical background was in the great work of the South African playwright Athol Fugard.

I didn't elect [Barack] Obama because he's a black; I voted for Obama because he was the right person at the time.

Today's cinema is a proliferation of comedies, which are in some ways creating caricature images. They're one-dimensional.

We're trying to tell stories. We're a company that's concerned with global change and the effect of global cinema. We're not simply tied to the very limiting framework of U.S. film-making.

The exceptionalism of a black U.S. President is not important to me. It's what he does - and who he has at the table.

What he [Barack Obama] does to change the world - that's what's important.

My Toussaint [Louverture] film is in limbo. We still hope after all this time that we can find another way to get this film done.

Some of the most amazing stories are happening on the global scene. My extraordinary producing partner, Joslyn Barnes, she's just virtually changed my life with the way she constructed this company and how we go about telling the stories we want to tell.

Lethal Weapon 2 used the platform to talk about the apartheid system. That was a very important moment for us.

The strike and its outcome had an enormous impact on the system of education and on our lives as well. The strike began as a response to the college's refusal to hire Professor Nathan Hare [the so-called father of black studies], and certainly unified the college around issues of justice. These issues were reflected in many communities: the Asian American community, Hispanic community, Native American community.

Remember, we're talking [in The Black Power Mixtape] about 1967, the year before [Martin Luther] King's assassination. We're talking about the emergence of black power, which is a discussion King mentioned in his last book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? We're talking about the meaning of black power and the possibility that it alienated our supporters, both white and black.

The Black Power Mixtape is a documentary, first of all. It brings us closer to the voices we heard at that particular point in time.

I remember when Langston Hughes used to write a column in black newspapers around this character Jesse B. Semple. He always used that as a voice, sometimes in comic ways, of having everyday people's voice come through this common folk hero, who was an ordinary working guy. He would talk about anything from police brutality to the Korean War. Those kinds of expression and identification are no longer prevalent in our popular culture.

The progressive movement against the war of occupation in Iraq is a reason for hope, as is resistance to free trade agreements in Latin America. Those are moments that we have to celebrate: that people still find the resolve and energy to resist

In 1967, the students at San Francisco State invited the poet Amiri Baraka to the campus for a semester. He attracted other influential black writers such as Sonia Sanchez, Ed Bullins, Eldridge Cleaver. What emerged was something we called the community communications program. That's how I got involved; I got involved in a little play

It's also important for those who promote those issues within the white community - the somewhat privileged community - to talk about issues affecting people of color.

New Orleans is a city whose basic industry is the service industry. That's why it makes its money. That's - it brings people to the city. People come to the city and experience the wonders of this extraordinary city and everything else. The question is that, how do we create jobs which are the jobs that have pay, that - living wages?

But I think it's very key that there's a plan for Haiti. And we have to begin to - as progressives and people who are concerned about Haiti and have been concerned about Haiti, we have to begin to build some sort of consensus, a movement around the Haiti that the Haitians envision.

I was able to do To Sleep with Anger, a very powerful film about African Americans, their spirituality, and the things that happened within a small community and a family.