BRIAN LAMB, HOST: Adonal Foyle, what is a National Basketball Association center for the Golden State Warriors doing running a Web site called Democracy Matters?

ADONAL FOYLE, CENTER, GOLDEN STATE WARRIORS, FOUNDER & PRESIDENT, DEMOCRACY MATTERS: Well, I – you know, I came to the United States from Canouan, a small island in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

And my kind of entry into politics was obviously back in the islands. And I think people there, they say that, you know, from the moment you go onto any island, you can kind of talk politics with a cab driver to a person in the house or the – you know, the prime minister of the country because everybody is so vested in what goes politically.

So they always are kind of aware. So once I was in the United States, I got the opportunity by two college professors from Colgate University. They were doing research in the Caribbean and I had just started playing basketball at age 15.

I was terrible. They thought I looked pretty good because I can do a very good outlet pass. I – in retrospect, looking back at the tapes, I was terrible. But they offered me the opportunity to come to the United States and use my mediocre basketball skills to get an education.

And in the process of doing that, I happened to really excel at basketball a little bit better. But the politics came once I was in at Colgate University where I went to. I turned down a lot of different schools to go to Colgate because I wanted the opportunity to really be engaged both from a basketball perspective, but also in the classroom.

I wanted to have both choices. So while I was there, I had a lot of conversation with young people at the time. And we were fighting about the apathy of my generation and whether young people are apathetic and really why is that?

So after I left, you know, Colgate to go to the NBA, and I was – finally I had the opportunity to kind of do some of the things that I wanted to do, and, you know, the first thing that came to my thought, well, I wanted to do – I wanted to put an organization together that kind of covers all my passion.

And I care about civil rights. I care about the women’s movement. I care about, you know, all these different things. And so I wanted to find a way to talk about all of those different things under one umbrella, and to find a way to do that, and really to answer the question as to whether or not my generation is apathetic and why, and be able to at least try to garner some kind of knowledge, glean some kind of understanding of what was going on.

But at the time, when I look back at my college days, I find that young people, it wasn’t that they were apathetic as they were doing soup kitchens, they were working for Habitat for Humanity, so they were doing all of this interesting stuff, very service-oriented, but they weren’t very political.

And the question is, you know, why? And my take at the time was that the reason that they weren’t being very political is not that they don’t like politics, but because there was a sense of hopelessness related to the political system as it stands because of the influence, I think, of money in politics.

Young people have no money, they have a lot of college debt and they have a lot of bills to pay and they don’t have a lot of money to make contributions, you know, to the elected officials. So as a result they feel that the political system doesn’t speak to them and therefore they, instead going and trying to fight the system, they opt out of it and throw their hands in the air.

LAMB: Well, let me just ask you about your current job in life. How many years have been with the Golden State Warriors?

FOYLE: Nine years.

LAMB: And where do you play? What city?

FOYLE: We play in Oakland, but we say the Bay Area.

LAMB: In what position do you play?

FOYLE: I’m the center for the Golden State Warriors.

LAMB: How tall are you?

FOYLE: Six-nine on a good day.

(LAUGHTER)

LAMB: And how old are you?

FOYLE: I am 30 years old.

LAMB: What year did you graduate from Colgate?

FOYLE: I was class of ’98, but I graduated in 2000 because I came out early and then when back to Berkeley (ph), finished my undergraduate then and transferred back into Colgate. So I graduated in 2000.

LAMB: What was your major?

FOYLE: History.

LAMB: What kind of history?

FOYLE: I think more – it was a concentration more in the Tudor-Stuart period in Great Britain.

LAMB: Why?

FOYLE: I’m fascinated by the fact that, you know, so much of what in religious circles today – you know, that what we – Henry VIII had so much to do with how we perceive religion. And so much of politics got done in such kind of brutal way at that time.

And I’m very fascinated by that period because I think we see remnants of it to today and it’s very intriguing for me. And I think being one of the colonies of Great Britain is also very much a source of conflict for me and also a source of interest.

LAMB: Now are you an American citizen?

FOYLE: Not yet. I’m still working on my citizenship.

LAMB: You are going to do that?

FOYLE: Yes, I would like to do that some day.

LAMB: Why?

FOYLE: Because I think that, you know, the United States is a great place. And I think that you have the opportunity to do so many things, but also is that they have their hands so far in everybody else’s business, so to speak, that I think being an advocate here could change a lot of lives in a lot of different places, because the United States has such a far-reaching influence in almost every part of the world.

LAMB: So where do you vote now?

FOYLE: Nowhere. I don’t vote. I can’t vote here and I’m not back there, so I’m not really involved in the Caribbean politics that much. So really I don’t vote at all until I figure out my own citizenship.

LAMB: So what does it take to become an American citizen?

FOYLE: A lot of waiting. It’s a lot of waiting. And I kind of went through the system of being a student, then studying to work, and now I am finally apply for my citizenship. And I think that will take at least five years of residency, or six years, and then you have the application process for citizenship.

LAMB: Go back to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Where are they? Where are these islands?

FOYLE: Saint Vincent and the Grenadines is located in the Caribbean Sea. It’s part of the Windward Islands. So if you think of places like Grenada, Dominica, Saint Lucia, Barbados, Windward, Leeward, you know, Saint Vincent kind of falls between Grenada and Saint Lucia. So in that geographical region.

LAMB: So if you left the United States out of Miami, how long would it take you to fly there?

FOYLE: Well, actually, the easier place to do it is like you can go from Puerto Rico to the island that I grew up, Canouan, is about probably and hour-and-a-half. Because there is one of the most – the biggest hotel in the Caribbean is now located on that small island of Canouan called the Carenage Bay Resort.

And I think they are going to have a golf tournament there with Tiger Woods in a few months and stuff. So it’s a very popular island. I think Trump has just – has I think the opportunity to build about 100 to 200-plus condominiums, and that he is also running, I think, a casino there.

LAMB: Now you spell Canouan how?

FOYLE: C-A-N-O-U-A-N.

LAMB: And how often do you get back there?

FOYLE: Every summer. I have just – actually just started to walk in a program trying to go back and do basketball camps, but really using that as a guise to talk about the issue of AIDS and talk about the issue of literacy back in the Caribbean, and using the NBA programs and trying to make contact with UNICEF and trying to deal with some of the serious issues they have, because there is a lot of AIDS there right now and I’m trying to bring more awareness to the young people back there.

LAMB: Go back to the beginning. When you read about your life, you read that you didn’t even own any shoes in Canouan and – explain, by the way, is it Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, is that what it is called?

FOYLE: Yes. You have to think of it like Hawaii. Saint Vincent is like the main island and then the Grenadines is just a group of islands, very small. The island that I grew up on had about 500 people, and it’s about three miles long, about one-point-five miles wide. And it’s all of them are a little smaller than that or a little bigger than that, but not much.

So Saint Vincent kind of – we call it the ”mother country (ph).” I think it’s 150 square miles.

LAMB: And were you born on Canouan?

FOYLE: I was born on Canouan and I stayed there until I was 15. In Canouan we didn’t have like any electricity. We didn’t have any telephones and no running water. And I grew up with my grandmother. So she…

LAMB: Where are your parents?

FOYLE: My parents, my dad went to the United States very early to look for jobs, which is what most of the men do. They either go and sail or they kind of go to the United States or someplace and try to find jobs to take care of the family.

My mom, after my dad left, they kind of weren’t together, so then she left and went to a neighboring island to kind of make ends meet to help support us.

LAMB: Do you have any contact with them today?

FOYLE: Yes. My mom is very much a part of my life. My dad died. I never really got to know him. But my mom is very much a part of my life.

LAMB: Where does she live?

FOYLE: She still lives in Union. She has kind of built her own house and has really taken care of herself and taken care of us. And in retrospect she is very much my hero. You know, I think growing up, you know, she wasn’t there, I will say, oh, you know, she left. But she always made sure that there was food on the table for all four or her kids. And she was always there for us even if she couldn’t be there in person. She always provided for us.

LAMB: Now when did you meet – I know, the Mandles, who – did they adopt you?

FOYLE: Yes, well, my first year in Union Island, which is where I went to meet my mom because that’s the only way I could afford to go to high school was to go stay with her.

So my first day there, my first day of school, I was like, I was going to school. I had long black pants and blue shirt on. And I was tall, skinny, but tall. And I remember my first day of school I was walking up to the school and this kid just out of nowhere just starts screaming, you have got to play basketball! You have got to play basketball! You have got to be on our team!

And I’m like, I don’t even know what basketball is. And it’s my first day of school. It’s hard enough, and you know, he’s screaming that, you know, and bringing attention to me. I’m already like, you know, six-three, six-four and now he is bringing all this attention to me.

And I remember he pestered me to go onto the basketball court for the whole first week. And I said, all right, fine. I will just go try this stupid thing and then you will just leave me alone after that.

And I went out to the court and he explained all the rules to me. And, you know, this is how you play. Pass me the ball. And I make lay-ups and other stuff. So I was, you know, doing it for a while.

And then I decided to, you know, do a little bit of my own. So I grab a rebound and I run down the whole length of the court and I lay it up. And I was looking back – and I thought I did very well, I was looking back to get some – you know, some respect. And what I got was just laughter of all the kids on the playing field.

Apparently I had forgotten to dribble the ball the court. So that was like my entry into basketball. And I was like, I have had enough of this stuff, you know.

(LAUGHTER)

LAMB: And how old were you right there?

FOYLE: I was about 15 then. That was – my first basketball was at the end of my 14th year right into my 15th.

LAMB: And you were on the island, it’s called Union?

FOYLE: I had just moved to Union, yes.

LAMB: OK. Just jump ahead, though, so people know why we are going there. The Mandles are now – I mean, they are…

FOYLE: They are going to be – probably another six months they are going to come into my life.

LAMB: But Joan Mandle runs your foundation.

FOYLE: Yes. Democracy Matters now she runs. But when I – at 15, after I had come to Union, I had finally got on one of the teams and went to Dominica to a tournament to represent my island. And it was there that I met Jay and Joan Mandle. There were right from…

LAMB: What were they doing?

FOYLE: They were doing – they were refereeing basketball games. And Joan was managing the table and Jay was doing the refereeing. And they decided that the way to study economic development in Third World countries is to be partly spent in what is happening.

So they became kind of like participation-observation. They became part of studying kind of the dynamics of how you view economic growth or how you look at economic growth in Third World countries, you have to kind of be a part of it.

So they had been doing this for years and years before they met me at that – Dominica.

LAMB: And this was just 15 years ago.

FOYLE: This was just 15 years ago. So they saw me and they thought, wow, you know, this is a young person who is about 15 years – that doesn’t happen, you know, because in the Caribbean most people play cricket, they play soccer.

So by the time they come to basketball, which is a relatively new sport, they are like 30-something, you know, in late 30s, early 40s. So I was a young person playing basketball, which is very rare, with all these men. And I was 15 years old.

So they thought that this was strange in and of itself because they have been doing this now almost 20-something years and they had not seen any young person like me playing basketball.

So they started to strike up a conversation with me. And the conversation goes something like, you know, have you ever thought about using your basketball skills to get an education?

And the team overhead it and they were like, Adonal is going to the United States. These people are going to take him. And they had no idea that they had no plans of taking me to the United States.

But we went back home very assured that they were going to take me to the United States. And it was the most ridiculous thing ever. But funny enough, they came about a few weeks later to the island and started inquiring about me and ultimately asked my mother and the ministry of education if they could take to the United States to try to find a school to put me in.

And they did. They finally actually brought me to the States and took me to Cardinal O’Hara where I spent my first year.

LAMB: What town?

FOYLE: In Springfield, Pennsylvania.

LAMB: Springfield, Pennsylvania.

FOYLE: Yes. My first year at the Cardinal high school, they play in the Roman Catholic League.

LAMB: And where were they at the time?

FOYLE: They were in Hamilton, New York, because they had just moved – they were teaching at Temple for a while and they had just moved up to Colgate. So they didn’t know any place in Upstate New York, so they decided to – you know, Philadelphia was a basketball environment, so they wanted me to be there and then to find a Catholic school that they thought I would be able to flourish academically.

And so they – we were in constant contact. And…

LAMB: But I do get the sense from reading, they were very political.

FOYLE: Extremely political. So after my first year, I went back home and they were starting to, you know, take note of trying to say, you know, are you ready yet for college? And, you know, being the typical professor they started being worrywarts.

They started worrying about whether or not this school was up to par. And they started, you know, giving me tests and trying to figure where I was. And they realized that I was way behind where I should have been.

And they started getting very worried. So they decided that the best thing to do, I should go back to Hamilton with them and I should come and live with them. And that was a decision we made. And that’s kind of where my political itch went from just being here to just kind of out of control.

Because they – in order to get me ready for college, they set up a regimen which, if I knew I had to go through all of that, I probably would not have gone to live with them in the first place.

(LAUGHTER)

FOYLE: Because there was – for the two years I spent living with them in Upstate New York, there was no weekends. I mean, they had schools scheduled for me during the weekends. I studied all the time. I had to study at least 10 vocabulary words a day.

They – my brother – my stepbrother who is their son, who is a philosopher, taught me math. My dad was comprehension, my mom everything else, you know, that wasn’t covered, from writing to – I mean, it was just – it was crazy.

(LAUGHTER)

LAMB: Do you call them mom and dad?

FOYLE: I call them mom and dad.

LAMB: And it’s Jay Mandle and Joan Mandle?

FOYLE: And Joan Mandle. And John Mandle…

LAMB: And what does Jay do?

FOYLE: … who is their son.

LAMB: Is it Mandel or Mandle?

FOYLE: Mandle, Mandle.

LAMB: What does Jay do today?

FOYLE: Jay is an economics professor, a W. Bradford Wiley professor at Colgate University.

LAMB: And Joan runs your foundation.

FOYLE: And Joan just retired to run my foundation full-time.

LAMB: So before we leave, back in Union, did you really play basketball without any shoes?

FOYLE: Oh yes.

(LAUGHTER)

FOYLE: Basketball shoes were so expensive at the time. And even you were to get one for Christmas, which has to probably last you for the whole year, inevitably the bottom, because of the concrete, it was going to be so erased that at some point your foot is going to be just pushing out of the bottom of the sole.

And you could patch it up with tape, but you will only last like a few games before it starts getting ripped up again. So the best thing to do was to just play barefoot. The problem with that was, it works better in the evening than it does when we had recess.

Because recess is usually at 12:00 or, you know, high noon, when it’s hot. And the pavement gets so hot. So I was always very fast because you just never stand still. You just constantly keep moving. So the game just always seemed to be going, because nobody ever wants to stop.

So, you know, you just keep shooting at such a rapid pace because nobody ever wants to stop in one place for too long because you will burn your feet. I mean, if you go back home now, you still – there are kids still playing, you know, barefoot.

And if you could afford a shoe, you don’t just want to wear it for when you practice, you want to wear it for when you really have a game, because that’s your best shoe, and you have to save it.

(LAUGHTER)

LAMB: But you became political at what point, where you really felt strongly about any issue?

FOYLE: I think it was during college-high school. I really started taking an interest – as I was learning about the culture – the United States culture for the first time, I was seeing it for the very first time in a very fresh eye.

I mean, I didn’t grow up with it. So it was kind of new for me. I have always kind of been involved in Caribbean politics, but I haven’t, you know, really studied American politics.

But now I was learning it and I was living it. And I was – you know, I have some parents that basically I remember just sitting at a dinner table and they will invite different professors from Colgate to come to dinner.

And they would sit there and they would just argue from one period to another. And they would just jump to one thing. And I just remember never being able to get a word in. And it was just – they would keep talking.

They were talking, I’m like, these people like each other? And they would do this like almost every week, they would bring in somebody and they would be talking from economics and historical to current events.

And they would just keep going at each other. And I thought, they must hate each other. And then they would get up. They would drink coffee and then they would say, see you next week. And they would come again and do it all over.

(LAUGHTER)

FOYLE: And I remember just the first time just, you know, as a child you kind of – you are looking in and you are trying to figure out, OK, how can I make my contribution? How could I say something?

And I remember like the first time I got a word in and they stopped and they look at me. And then they just rip my head off and then they just keep going like there was nothing – you know, acknowledge that I did something and they just went along like – you know, and it was just part of it.

And as time kind of went on, I got two words, then I got three, then I could make a legal (ph) argument, and – you know, and it would just keep – it was kind of process where they would never kind of tell me that you need to get involved, they just kind of asked me to be at the table and to participate if I can.

And it was kind of there that I start thinking more critically about, you know, the United States and about everything in my life.

LAMB: Well, interestingly, you have a foundation that is involved in something called Democracy Matters, and we can talk about exactly what it does, and you can’t even vote, and then you deal with people in our country that don’t even care.

FOYLE: Yes. I have gotten that a lot. And, you know, I try to defend the people here – a lot of people, because I think that when you feel hopeless and when you are in a system that you think have no hope of changing or no way of changing it because you are so overwhelmed and you are poor and you don’t have the resources to compete with the people who can go in and get the ear of a congressperson or the ear of the president, then you are thinking, I have nothing that the president wants, I have nothing that, you know, a regular person who is running for office wants.

Because they want money and the way the system is shaped, that’s what – if you don’t have money, you are really not that important, unless, of course, you understand the system to such a fundamental level that you can understand how to change it and that it’s not going to get changed unless you get involved.

You know, so I think the first thing I try to do when I go in to talk to kids is that, you know, I understand the frustration, I understand you think you have no power. But you have a lot more power than you think. And the power that you have lies in the number of you.

So it’s that if – you know, you may not have power right now if you look at it just like in terms of a financial sense, but you have a lot of power in terms of your numbers.

LAMB: Now I’m going to mention something and you can – you don’t have to deal with this if you don’t want to because it’s personal. But if you go onto Google and type in ”Adonal Foyle,” up comes a lot. And including a Web site that’s devoted to you.

And somewhere in that Web site I read that you had signed a seven-year contract with the Golden State Warriors for $41 million.

FOYLE: Yes.

LAMB: True story?

FOYLE: True story.

LAMB: And the reason I mention that is because you have decided to spend money on Democracy Matters.

FOYLE: Yes.

LAMB: Do you know how much you have spent up until now?

FOYLE: A lot.

LAMB: In the millions?

FOYLE: Yes. Because I really was – initially, I was the sole founder of Democracy Matters and continue to be the major funder for the organization and putting my money into this organization every year, year-in-year-out.

And we will be looking at different ways of trying to support it through going through different foundation. But it takes a long time to kind of get funding. And it takes a long time to kind of go through all the waters. So I have been kind of the sole supporter of Democracy Matters since its inception.

LAMB: Why do you do that?

FOYLE: Because I think that, you know, one of the things that my grandmother taught me in truth is that the importance to give. I remember I used to be angry at the time because she didn’t have a lot.

And one of the things that she that always stuck with me is that the moment – everybody cooks in the Caribbean around 12:00. And my grandmother will complain, she didn’t have anything to cook.

And she would somehow make something in the kitchen, and by 12:00 there would be some pot of some food coming down after the thing. And she would have nothing. And wouldn’t you know it that you have at least seven, eight people will come by just at the time as that pot is coming down from the fire.

And she would feed everybody and she would still have food left over. And she would constantly – I kept saying, why would you feed people? You know you don’t have any food? And she just said, because you don’t know when you are going to look to those other people to give you something tomorrow.

And it was so profound. But that’s the way she always lived. She always felt that it was important to share what she had, even though it was very little, I thought. And so I think once I was give all of this money, I felt I wanted to do something to give back to my community in the most cliched of ways, which is, you know, you have a lot and you should be able to give back and to give in a positive way to help influence other kids who may not have the good fortune to have what you have.

LAMB: How many campuses is your organization working with?

FOYLE: We started off with about three campuses and now we are in over 85 campuses across the United States.

LAMB: So if I found Democracy Matters on one of those 85 campuses, what would I see?

FOYLE: Well, one of the things that we try to do is to kind of give the kids the autonomy to kind of shape the Democracy Matters chapter any way they want. The first time when we – the inception of when we thought about how we wanted to do this, we wanted to kind do projects at the campuses.

So come in and do like a project on voter registration or do a project on campaign finance reform. And what we end up getting is like all the kids wanted to have chapters and not just do projects, but wanted to sustain it. They want to have their own kind of executive board and they want to have their whole internal structure.

So we kind of give them leeway to do that. So if you go on a college campus, you will probably find a coordinator that we pay a stipend to to kind of run the organization, to kind of help form it and the campus.

And then you will find secretaries, treasurers, all these kinds of people. They kind of have their kind of own built-in structure.

LAMB: Fill in, what do they do?

FOYLE: What we try to do is that our mission is to first educate the campus about what is the issue of money and politics. And then we try to push them out into the college community to try to kind of bridge a coalition or form a coalition among other groups and try to get those groups to come aboard with them and say, OK, you know, this is an issue and this issue should be a part of your platform, whatever that is.

So they will go to the environmental groups, they will go to the gender issue groups and try to convince them or try to have an argument of why campaign finance reform or money and politics affects them as well, you know, this group or that group.

And then by forming coalitions we try to get them to do a project together with all of these groups. We try to teach them that you have to work with people that are – that don’t share your politics, that may be different from you.

And then once they kind of map the political terrain of the campus, we then push them out into the local community to start meeting with other groups again, carrying that message and in the process kind of building a grassroots movement of people who understand kind of the influence of money in politics and be able to go out and be able to change that.

LAMB: On your Web site you have a recommended reading list.

(LAUGHTER)

FOYLE: Yes. Well, I – one of the things I get a chance to do a lot in traveling so much is to read. And I started this little book club back in Oakland where we meet once a month, about 15 people, and we just discuss different books.

And it’s a way for me to keep reading and also to kind of like share something with people outside of the sporting world, because sometimes it can get a little bit lonely in the sporting world.

So I wanted to make sure that maintain a connection, you know, with my local community. And this is one way of doing that.

LAMB: What are you reading now?

FOYLE: I’m reading Al Franken, ”Lying Liars and the Liars Who Tell Them,” I probably butchered that title. But ”Lying Liars.”

LAMB: Why?

FOYLE: I don’t know. I’m curious. I’m always trying to get a different take. I also just – I’m also reading ”The Invisible Man” and I just finished reading ”Freakonomics” for my book club. So I like to read different things. I like to hear what people take. I like to see how it kind of holds up with what I believe.

I just like to be able to say that, you know, I agree with this person, I disagree with this person, and try to push yourself. I think that life for me is about the pursuit of knowledge. And knowledge, not so much to be right or to read a lot of books, but to keep growing.

I – the first thing I will consider is that I don’t know a lot of things. And – but the only way I’m going to be able to know more is to be willing to go out there and read. And I read stuff I like and I read a lot of stuff I don’t like. And I think that’s important.

LAMB: Now on your Web site, you actually can buy the books, as I remember.

FOYLE: Yes. Yes, I try to make it as easy as possible when people visit the site, you know, to be able to just go straight to the book site and get a book. So I try to – I think, you know, we have got so many excuses, I can’t go to the book store, I’m too tired, you know?

So when you go to my site, I try to make it as easy as possible so you can – there is no excuse why you wouldn’t pick up a copy of a book that I’m reading if you would like to read it with me and challenge me.

LAMB: By the way, Adonal, A-D-O-N-A-L…

FOYLE: …A-L.

LAMB: … is what kind of a name?

FOYLE: Well, it’s very interesting, because like when I was growing up, my – the lady who gave me my name is my godmother. And I don’t know how true it is, but my – I was told that she was drunk and she really meant to call me Donald, and she ended up calling Adonal.

(LAUGHTER)

But I don’t think it has any kind of value behind it except that they thought that she kind of slurred her speech and Donald became Adonal. I like it, it’s pretty unique.

(LAUGHTER)

LAMB: Have you ever met anybody else who has that name?

FOYLE: No, never.

LAMB: How about the name Foyle, where is that from?

FOYLE: Foyle is from my family on my father’s side. I’m not quite sure what the origin is, either.

LAMB: All right. The other thing you can find on your Web site is poetry. And I’m going to take a shot at it here.

FOYLE: Uh-oh.

(LAUGHTER)

LAMB: The name of this particular poem is ”We Too Can Build Computer Chips”?

FOYLE: Uh-huh.

LAMB: When did you write this?

FOYLE: About three years ago.

LAMB: Why did you write this?

FOYLE: I was reading – I was kind of reading – I try to get the newspaper from the Caribbean and there was like some political debate going on. And though I like – I really don’t like to get involved because I’m absent, I try to follow what’s going on there.

And I felt that it was important to kind of make people know that, you know, there are other things that we can do besides the kind of way our country is run, be it the service sector or, you know, the tourism-oriented jobs, I felt that, you know, we have to invest in our community and we have to invest in our kids.

And the way you do that is to hold out the possibility for them that they can be scientists as well as…

LAMB: Go ahead. I was just going to hand you – why don’t you read it?

FOYLE: Uh-oh.

(LAUGHTER)

LAMB: I have circled it there. Just read it out loud.

FOYLE: ”We Too Can Build Computer Chips.”

”No one tills the soil Such proud people, Keepers of the land

”Bags of peanuts, Mountains of peas, Oceans of corn, Red sweet potatoes, Scarecrows with Big straw hats,

”Fishermen’s gum boats, Pulled to the shore, Hidden in the shade Of the tuckeryberry (ph) tree.

”Now we scrub, White man’s floor, From seven to four, For pennies.

”My beaches Sold to strangers, My gardens Golf courses with tiny carts.

”Farmers, fishermen, Independent contractors, Now are waiters, Laundry specialists, Toilet engineers.

”What will we do, When the beaches Gone? Damn you beautiful beaches, I curse the day you were born.

”You brought the tourists, Charmed them with your Caribbean breeze, Golden sand, Diamond sparking water.

”I am no hater of tourism Nor of Green gold. But must we live a hurricane Away from poverty?

”My people, Turn the bananas to drinks, Make tourism work For our children. We beat colonization, Even slavery.

”We are smart. We want Doctors, Professors, Engineers, Scientists, Man me want education man.”

LAMB: So what are you really saying there?

FOYLE: Well, I just – I felt that, you know, we have to really instill in our youths the notion that we can make things work. We don’t have to accept things the way they are. That we can somehow take what we have and try to push it further.

So it’s like, you know, trying to take, for example, a primary product, like banana, trying to turn it into a secondary and tertiary level of production. And that we don’t have to just be at the bottom being the person who is producing the goods.

We can also market it and we can also take it, you know, to the marketplace to other people. And – but for us to do that we have to really try to get our young people to believe that they can do that, that they could become scientists, that they could become doctors and they don’t just have to be the fishermen, they don’t just have to be, you know, the farmers.

That they can be the farmers and be other people. They can actually, you know, follow-through with the production process.

LAMB: What kind of things are involved with in the islands to help people down there? In other words, did I read that you helped put your sister or your brother through school?

FOYLE: Yes. Well, one of the first things that I did is that for me, given such a tremendous gift of being one of the very few people on the island who got the chance to go to college, I felt that it was important to be able to give that back.

And actually my first – second year into the league I brought my younger brother to the United States and sent him to private school and eventually sent him on to college, and brought my sister and I sent her to the Culinary Institute to become a chef, which she graduated last year, and my brother is about to graduate in about another few months.

So my first kind of thing was to try to give the gift back to somebody that was given to me.

LAMB: You also – there is also some guy running around this country by the name of Alexis (ph) Foyle, doesn’t look like you. Has got more hair than you have got.

FOYLE: Yes, he has a lot more hair than I have and I’m jealous about that. But…

LAMB: And who is he?

FOYLE: He is my cousin. And he has been playing basketball. He played in Hawaii in college and now he’s going around playing in some of the different ABA leagues and then trying to get in – make his way to the NBA. And I wish him really a lot of luck.

LAMB: Where does all this go do you think in your life? I mean, you are only 30. You know, where will you be in 10 years?

FOYLE: Hopefully I will be – right now I’m doing my master’s in sports psychology and I probably definitely will be out of the league in 10 years and hopefully be on my way to my second career. And whatever that is, I’m not sure yet. But I’m trying to set myself up to give myself to give myself a lot of options.

I believe that that’s one of the most important things you can do is to allow yourself the option to have choices. And I think choices is always a good thing.

LAMB: Is an option to become an American citizen and run for political office?

FOYLE: The option is to become an American citizen. I really have no aspiration to run for office. I believe that advocacy outside of government is also extremely important. And I think that there are a lot of good people in politics.

I think the problem is is that we are hampered by a system that rewards wealth rather than rewards good ideas and rewards – you know, if a person is trying to run for office, it shouldn’t be that the banker comes and determines whether or not they get elected.

It should be whether or not they have something that can save the world or whether or not they have something that can help their constituencies. And I would like to see that that changes.

And if the playing field was even, I think that a lot more people, good people would end up being in political office and that will be a good thing. And hopefully I will be retired from advocacy and Democracy Matters could be squashed and I will gladly do that and we will have a country that is just and system that works.

LAMB: What does it cost a year to run Democracy Matters?

FOYLE: Probably – we probably run at a budget of $600,000 to a $1 million.

LAMB: Where is it headquartered?

FOYLE: In New York.

LAMB: City?

FOYLE: New York – no, Hamilton, New York.

LAMB: Hamilton, New York. And how many people work it?

FOYLE: Well, we pay our coordinators, so assuming that we have (INAUDIBLE) we have 85 coordinators, and we have regional directors, and we are getting ready now to hire, you know, people to help raise money for the organization.

So we probably have about 10 to 15 people working for us.

LAMB: Is it a partisan group?

FOYLE: We are very much bipartisan and we believe that this is an issue that affects everyone within the political system, you know, because, I mean, the McCain-Feingold legislation, John McCain is a Republican.

And, you know, so I think that this is an issue that really transcended party politics. It’s really an issue about fairness, about equality in our political system. And anybody who cares about that, this should be an issue for them, it shouldn’t be a Democrat or Republican issue.

LAMB: What do your adopted parents think of this? I mean, here they found the guy playing basketball in Dominica, and today they actually work for your foundation?

FOYLE: Yes, it’s a trip, you know, because I often say that, you know, they’re great parents because they allowed me to grow, and we were able to kind of move from a parent-son relationship to, you know, me trying to get my say into – we have an equal partnership, and we are able to talk and be frank about any kind of conversation. And we don’t take it personal if somebody take a head off here, take a head off there.

But we have created a great space where we can really debate with each other and fight with each other in a constructive way and know that it’s not attacking that person, but is attacking ideas. And we have tried to impart that to the young people that is involved in our organization, that it’s OK to debate, and it’s OK to have heated conversations. There is nothing wrong with mixing politics and religion.

LAMB: Let me ask you about money, though. I’ve got a quote that I found, you said, ”I do not hate money.” But yet, if you think about what happened to you, you didn’t have any money. You didn’t have any shoes. And now you’ve got a seven-year contract for $41 million, and there’s a foundation that wouldn’t exist without your money.

So, money has allowed you to be involved and make a difference.

FOYLE: Money is a good thing. And I think that that’s the thing, you know, is a lot of people feel guilty. You should not feel guilty about the fact that you are successful. I mean, the issue is not money. The issue is how money is being used. And the issue is that, you know, everyone is entitled to make a living and try to make as much money as they possibly can.

But you have to put that in context. I think that there should be spheres in our system where money should not be the determinant of who gets health care, who gets a college education.

There are certain spheres that should really be – we have a marketplace, and we all could agree that what happens in the marketplace, that’s OK, because it’s a place that we set aside where you could compete and be competitive. But we cannot take that model and transfer it to other spheres in society. I think that that’s really immoral. And I think that, to really say that you could apply to, say, OK, you know, well, if somebody – two people come to the hospital and you’re going to take the person who has more money even though they have a less severe wound, that is not – that is not how good, moral society works.

You have to say, who needs the most help, and that’s the person should get treated first. Money shouldn’t dictate what happens in that space.

So, if a poor person and you have Donald Trump go to hotel – to a hospital, Donald Trump shouldn’t get treatment because he has a less severe wound but he has more money than the poor person. It’s – the person who needs it most should get it. And that’s how certain of our system should work.

Now, if you have a marketplace, it’s another story. But education, healthcare, you know, our political system that we go and fight around the world to protect and instill in others, should not be determining who gets elected to office, should not be determined by wealth.

LAMB: With all of your success – now, you’ve been in the league nine years and you have made a lot of money. What’s your own philosophy about the future? Are you ever going to have to work again?

FOYLE: I hope not. If I do a good job, and my financial consultant do a very good job, I shouldn’t have to work again. But I will definitely work for the rest of my life doing something or the other, because I think that one of the things that – my grandmother work until she was about 87. And she tilled the soil. She work in the garden almost five, six hours a day in the garden. And I think it made her strong.

So I, hopefully, like to work for the rest of my life. Not that hard, but certainly definitely work for the rest of my life.

LAMB: Do people in your family and people that you knew come after you now for money?

FOYLE: Constantly.

LAMB: How do you deal with it?

FOYLE: That’s one of my Achilles heel. I am not very good at it. I have been learning, and I have been better. But it took me several years to be able to say no, and it’s a word that has changed me in a lot of ways. And I get – I think being a good guy, sometimes it’s a bad thing when you have wealth, because it – you feel guilty. You feel that you should help everybody, knowing that you can’t.

And – I will say that that (INAUDIBLE) definitely one of the areas in my life that I am constantly working and becoming better at. And I – it’s difficult because, if you’re compassionate, it’s hard to say no to people that you think need it, but also who will squander it and who would not use it necessarily for things that you believe in.

LAMB: So, how do you do it?

FOYLE: Slowly but surely, I say no.

LAMB: But, I mean, do you ever have a situation where the phone rings and somebody says, ”I need some money,” and …

FOYLE: I say I can’t do it. And, you know, most of the time it would be probably a person I have given to before, which makes it a little bit easier to say, you know, no, I really can’t do this. And I – if you value my friendship, I know that this is just going to be bad.

Because they never come and ask and say, give me money. They always say, could you lend me some money, and then, of course, you know, there’s never any intent to repay it. So, it’s – once you understand the cycle of how it works, then it becomes easier and easier to say no.

But I will say, it comes with a cost, which is, you know, the relationship is never going to be the same, and you are going to get called some really bad names.

LAMB: So, how do you deal with that?

FOYLE: I become more of a hermit. You know, I have always kind of been kind of reserved. And I think more and more you become that way, and you kind of retreat to your sanctuary where you kind of hide out and you lick your wounds. And then you come back out again and, you know, inevitably you’re probably going to get put down, and you keep going back home.

But I find that you kind of rely on your privacy and your space a lot more, where you can just kind of be yourself and lay the guard down. But you find yourself putting (ph) up a lot of arrows (ph) and, you know, you kind of have your guard on high alert when you are out in the public a lot, or when you are, you know, dealing with certain family.

LAMB: I know you have been asked about this a lot, but you are not the normal basketball player in this country. There’s a lot of – there are not many that have a foundation that deals in politics. And the image of an NBA player is one that wouldn’t be terribly interested in being a history maker.

Do you get a lot of stuff from your own players and your own colleagues?

FOYLE: You know, it’s quite surprising. What I find among professional athletes, clearly some people – some of them don’t care about what I do. But I find a lot of them who do.

And one of the things that has been very fascinating over the last nine years – when I first come into the league, I really thought that I would be more isolated. But one of the things that was very intriguing for me is that how much the players in the NBA actually want to know, and that they want to know, but they are afraid of the consequences of knowing, or the consequences of coming out and say something that doesn’t quite go right.

When you look at, you know, what Steve Nash did during the anti-war thing, saying something about, you know, shoot for peace and not for war, and how people came down on him. I think athletes see that. My peers see that, and they say, you know, ”Why would I want to do this?” I mean, why would I want to go out on a limb like that and just get absolutely railroaded and get beaten up.

But what I find is that a lot of them want to talk to me. They don’t necessarily want to be on the record, but they want to talk. They want to hear what I am doing, and they want to see how they can help. And there has (ph) been a lot of that.

LAMB: How did Bill Bradley inspire you?

FOYLE: I mean, he is an amazing man. To be able to make the transformation from basketball so successfully to politics, but to be able to do it at such a level, to be able to running for president, and to be grounded in such good politics and good philosophy.

I – you know, there’s a lot of people who go there and try to make their way but do it dishonestly, and I think that Bill has been so amazing in trying to advocate for the people at the bottom and to really create a moral society. And I think anybody who can do that and stand in politics and risk losing in order to be – to have a moral voice, I think, is definitely going to be hero …

LAMB: Do you know him?

FOYLE: I wouldn’t say that I know him, but I have met him. I have been – I spoke with him at – I spoke at Colgate with him, and I have talked to a lot of people that deals with him directly, and I have met him on several occasions, and I have always kind of been in awe of him. And I think he’s an amazing guy.

And – but, insofar as being a personal friend of him, I wouldn’t say that. But I would definitely say that I admire him.

LAMB: Is there a politician that you admire the most?

FOYLE: I think I admire more ideas as they become available. I think that a politician have moments when they bring something that may be important. Like, I never thought that, you know, necessarily that Senator McCain would have been a hero of mine in terms of his advocacy for accounting and finance reform. But I think he definitely has been.

And Senator Bradley has done the same thing as a senator. He has advocated for full public funding of election. And there are a lot of people who has done that and, you know, it makes you kind of say, OK, you know – but I think it – more than, necessarily, a person, I think of the ideas, a – kind of the policy they support.

LAMB: Can you remember, though, where the money in politics, when it first bugged you?

FOYLE: Yes. You know, I think it was – I mean, if you were looking at the – I think it was the second Clinton race. I mean, it was ridiculous the kind of money they were talking about, like, for running. And I kind of remember the number. Or you can go to opensecret.org and find a lot of those numbers.

But I remember just, like, being mind-boggled by the kind of money that more and more it taking to run a presidential election. And you are thinking of, like, you know, homeless people. And you are thinking of all the issues that we have and where that money can go. And you are thinking, we, as a public, should have access to our own airways, and instead, you know, we don’t have that.

And we spending so much money to run ads and stuff like that. And you thinking, this is so inefficient. And this is such a waste. And I think it was just like – you just constantly see, year after year, it’s getting more and more expensive to run for office.

LAMB: So, where should the money come from?

FOYLE: Publicly. I think we should finance election. Election should be a public good.

LAMB: Now, do you and your adopted parents, the Mandles agree with this? Are you in total agreement on this?

FOYLE: We – I think the disagreement – we go from being – some people in some states, they have partial funding of elections, in some places they have full funding of the election. I think that elections should be (ph) a public good. And I think we all probably generally agree that, if election is seen as a public good, it should be funded by the public. And if we think that democracy, our democracy, is what – the finest from everybody else, then we should protect it with everything we have. And if there is a number, I would say there would be no number too great to pay to protect our most sacred treasure, which is our democracy.

LAMB: If there is a young person watching this in college, or even in high school, how can they get a chapter of Democracy Matters?

FOYLE: I think the first thing you do is just go on our Web site, democracymatters.org, and kind of just write us a letter. Tell us, you know, where you are and what you want to do, and we will call and interview you, and we will try to give you all the resources you need to set up a chapter, and we will help you book speakers, and we have – we may have a regional director. We will try to get you in touch with them.

LAMB: When I get on your Web site, it almost sounds like Adonal Foyle, Inc. You’ve got books and poetry and speakers, and you can buy Adonal Foyle things – I mean, you know, jerseys and all that. What is your number, 31?

FOYLE: Yes.

LAMB: You can buy an Adonal – well, what’s it feel like – and you’re not a starter now, are you, with the Warriors?

FOYLE: I just back in the starting lineup. I was …

LAMB: Last night …

FOYLE: … yes, I started last night. I was demoted for a while, but I am back up in the starting lineup, which is a good thing.

LAMB: What was it like when you were demoted? What was …

FOYLE: You know, it was – the coach needed to – he said he needed to make a change, and I felt that it wasn’t – it shouldn’t have been a change. But at the same time, I am a professional, so I said, you know, I’ll go along with it. And I went out and, you know, play as hard as I possibly can, as I always kind of do. And, you know, it happened that way, they decided to change it back.

LAMB: When you sign a contact for seven years, are they committed to you for seven?

FOYLE: Yes.

LAMB: No matter what happens? What happens if you get injured?

FOYLE: It’s still a seven-year contract.

LAMB: So, you’re going to be – when did you sign that contract?

FOYLE: I think two years ago. I think it was a five-year with an option for six.

LAMB: And what is it like traveling? What are there, 82 games a year?

FOYLE: Yes.

LAMB: And you’re on the road constantly. I mean, you’re here in Washington just for a night or two, and then you go on to Indianapolis, and – what’s – I mean, how do you keep your spirit going?

FOYLE: Exhausting, but my dad taught me, when I was – when I first got into the league, he was like, you know, the way I do it when I travel, you know, go for lectures or whatever, is that I carry my home with me. And I am like, what the heck does that mean?

And so I started thinking about that, and then I realize, you know, the things that I do home – I read a lot, I, you know, have movies that I watch, I have an iPod, you know, I start bringing, like, a bunch of stuff when I travel so it feels like I haven’t really left home, because I can just make anyplace that I’m at my home in a way.

So, you bring all the things that kind of reminds you of home. So, you bring your iPod. You have your music. You put your music on. You have your books that you’re reading and you have your movies, and you just kind of, like, kind of make it the best way you can to let the time go by.

LAMB: And you promote the Caribbean in San Francisco.

FOYLE: Absolutely. I’m always going to kind of be a Caribbean person at heart. You could just put on any Caribbean music, I’m just going to start dancing, so that’s never gong to change.

LAMB: And you promote that tourism to St. Vincent?

FOYLE: St. Vincent, because I think St. Vincent is a beautiful place, and I think more and more, if people go there, they are going to recognize that. I keep pushing our leaders to be better and to do more and to kind of promote more higher education for young people. And I think that, you know, they are going to continue to do that. But in the meantime, you know, it’s a beautiful place to go and visit, and I still want a lot of people to do that.

LAMB: And just a little bit about the Golden State Warriors. They haven’t been winning for a lot of years.

FOYLE: Yes.

LAMB: What is that like?

FOYLE: Well, you know, the first – being on a team that you knew you were going to go home in April and – it was hard, because you never got the chance to kind of go to that next level. And everybody keeps saying, you know, well the playoff is a whole new breed. You know, when you are in the playoffs, it is amazing.

And to not be able to experience that, and to finally, this year, to at least have the opportunity to be in the playoffs, it is truly amazing just to kind of have the turnaround.

You know, last season, at the end of the season, we brought in Baron Davis, and he’s been a great catalyst to kind of spring us up to the next level. And, you know, we are, like, three or four games out of the last playoff spot I think. And it’s really wonderful to be a team that now has the potential to be in the NBA playoffs.

LAMB: Have you ever been in the playoffs?

FOYLE: Never.

LAMB: And what do you think it will be like if you do? How many more games will you have to play?

FOYLE: If we keep winning, at least the best of seven. So, if we keep winning the different rungs, you can keep going to a while. So, it’s a good thing. I mean, I think it would be such a high and such a rush that just getting there will be amazing, and just to be able to play seven games, the opportunity to be in a seven-game series, I’m kind of excited to see the same team and to be able to make adjustments. Those are the time when the game gets real interesting, because everything has to be so carefully orchestrated that you just can’t get along on the athleticism. You have to become smarter than the other team. And you have to find ways of getting things to work. And I’m kind of looking forward to that challenge.

LAMB: Last question, about your Democracy Matters and your politics. When do you get satisfaction out of all of this?

FOYLE: I think when we have full public funding of elections in almost every state, and also at the federal level. I think it will be truly a great day when we can have a debate with the two most regular person that have the most brilliant ideas to save our world. I think that would be a great day indeed, when ideas dominate political discussion.

LAMB: Adonal Foyle, center for the Golden State Warriors, and president of Democracy Matters, thank you very much.

FOYLE: The pleasure is mine. Thanks for having me.