I think Twitter is an incredible platform. I want to see it succeed.
— DeRay Mckesson
A cacophony of whispers is also noise. There are many ways to be heard, and there are many ways to be visible. There are many ways to be seen.
When Trump says, 'Make America great again,' he is referencing an era when people were singled out and harmed because of their race and religious beliefs, and when violent enforcement of Jim Crow masqueraded as the will of the people.
The first time I was ever impressed with Patagonia as a brand was when they released the 'Don't Buy This Jacket' campaign. That campaign highlighted their understanding of their role in a larger environmental justice space.
I'm a black, gay man, and I should be able to live in a world where I'm able to live in the complexity of my identity in a way that is safe and secure, like everyone else.
There are people who have demonstrated their willingness to challenge systems and structures, and then when it comes to elections, some of those same people - I don't know where their fight went. What's interesting to me is to see people lose the revolution when it comes to elections.
I grew up in a world of Officer Friendly. It was just the image I had.
Laws on hate speech and hate crimes do important work in a world that has been rooted in racism and bigotry since the inception of this country, which was not founded on ideals of justice.
Asking people for money is really different than asking people for their support.
My father and mother deeply loved me and my sister.
People often confuse visibility with a lot of other things. Sometimes I become a proxy for things that just aren't true about me. People will say, 'DeRay got millions of dollars in grants.' That's just not true... I'm broke.
Systemic change rarely comes overnight.
Most of my life's information is public. I got a text one day from a hacker who texted me all of my credit card information.
I think about Twitter as the friend that's always awake. It's why I tweet so much.
Justice that is not rooted in equity, in social welfare, and in community is not justice at all.
Everybody has told the story of black people in struggle except black people. The black people in the struggle haven't had the means to tell the story historically. There were a million slaves, but you see very few slave narratives. And that is intentional.
Some people are more interested in fighting than winning.
What we know to be true is that comfort isn't always freedom. People confuse the two.
Black people have always been more than our pain. The joy is so much a part of how we have survived and thrived.
Politics is compromise, by its very nature. But we never compromise on our values and beliefs.
If Trump is president, I think that his administration will do real structural damage that will take years or decades for us to undo.
Music helps shape the way people think about the world and act in the world.
When I reflect on the Colbert interview, it moved so quickly that what we didn't do was define white privilege, and I wish we had done that. White privilege is the benefit resulting from white being seen as the standard, regardless of gender and income.
If City Hall started projecting swastikas, no one would say 'You know what? Free speech.' People would say that is wrong.
I've worked in two public school districts, Minneapolis and Baltimore, one as a senior leader. And while we might not always have agreed with the union, and we might have had deep differences, they came to the table.
It is one thing to talk about fundraising and another to do it as a candidate, and I have learned so much about how much money it costs to run a campaign and what it means to raise money.
I think about all of my students who were math-phobic, who didn't believe they could learn math, who didn't understand, who didn't think they were smart enough, and by the end, they understood that they already had the gifts, and my job was to help them access them, and I believe that.
People are more afraid of black unity than black rage.
If you close your eyes and think about where you feel the most safe, you're probably not going to tell me it's in a room full of police. You feel safe where you're around people that love you, when you have food and shelter, when you're being pushed to be your best self and learn.
I think that Silicon Valley and technology can play a huge role in redefining what community looks like and how people come together and what authentic relationships look like, but that is not only their burden.
People like to act like we don't have a legacy of racism here. I think people get really uncomfortable with it. We know that we can't change it unless we address that.
We question these issues of race and struggle and white privilege because we know that those issues are real and because those issues have real implications in black communities. And white supremacy is not only dangerous, but it is deadly.
The history of blackness is also a history of erasure.
Skills acquisition is really at the heart of what it means to learn.
The activism of marginalized people often comes with visibility and being heard. Which can lead people to believe that recognition and awareness is the actual end point. And it is not.
Trump wants to take us back to a time when people like him could abuse others with little to no consequence, when people like him could exploit the labor of others to build vast amounts of wealth, when people like him could create public policy that specifically benefited them while suppressing the rights and social mobility of others.
I am not naive enough to believe that voting is the only way to bring about transformational change, just as I know that protest alone is not the sole solution to the challenges we face.
The arts scene in Baltimore is really rich and very vibrant. It's one of the untold stories of the city.
For our kids to go to school, they must be alive, and for adults to work, they must not be in jail.
People in power make the path to power. It means that we will always get the same system, and it's one that is not necessarily in the interest of people's lives.
It's important to acknowledge the danger when we provide an academic venue for racism. It's interesting to hear people push the, quote, 'free speech' narrative in this way. They deny the speech of the people who disagree.
Being mayor is about offering a vision for the city, putting the right people in the right place, and executing that vision.
If anything, any success that I have ever experienced has been because people who didn't have to care about me did, and they pushed me to see things in myself that I did not see in myself at the time.
The police, at their best, do three things; they prevent crime, they respond to crime, and they solve crime. In all three of those buckets, they need the trust of the community to do it, so I believe that if we restore the trust that we will change the way police are experiencing communities and ways that will preserve life and make everyone safer.
I actually get very little phone calls. I get way more tweets and texts. My phone rarely rings.
I'm not a politician. I'm somebody who knows the world can be better, and I'm willing to fight for it.
I think the reality is that there's a role for everybody to play in the work of social justice and that we have to organize everybody. That means that Silicon Valley has to be organized, the fashion industry has to be organized, the formerly incarcerated have to be organized, the teachers.
I think people are uncomfortable talking about the racist history of this country and what we need to do to undo the impact of racism.
You are enough to start a movement. Individual people can come together around things that they know are unjust. And they can spark change.
As a protester, I protested because I had to, not because it was exciting. I don't want to get tear-gassed again.
