"Power is scary. With it comes responsibility. As with leadership, if you don't acknowledge that power is necessary then you won't do anything about re-imagining it. I think leftists have gotten very comfortable being critics of power. Criticism on the road to power may be useful, but criticism by itself, in our day and age, is actually an attendant to dominant power.

'Look,' the powers that be argue, 'we have critics, that means you have freedom and democracy, right?' Criticism, by itself, is just self-serving politics: it makes the critic feel better about their non-compliance but changes nothing. Therefore I'm interested in moving past criticism and really thinking about what is necessary to win power. For without power you can't change things. And I'm in this game to change the world, not just comment about how bad it all is."

-- Stephen Duncombe, Associate Professor at New York University