Deray McKesson
I am mindful that the goal of protest is not more protest, but the goal of protest is change.Collection: Change
The difference between equity and equality is that equality is everyone get the same thing and equity is everyone get the things they deserve.Collection: Equality
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.Collection: Environmental
Justice that is not rooted in equity, in social welfare, and in community is not justice at all.
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.
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.
I think of protest as confrontation and disruption, as the end of silence.
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.
Social media allowed us to become our own storytellers. With it, we seized the power of our truth.
I think my imagination about jobs was pretty limited. There were so few jobs that I actually saw people who looked like me in, that I imagined myself in, that I think I just stopped imagining.
Bowdoin was the first place that I fell in love with. When I visited, I just had never been to a place with that many resources and that much access to information. That was stuff that you saw in movies. I didn't know that existed in real life.
I think that I, because of student government and because of working in Baltimore, knew how to be creative with very little resources.
I wasn't a very good writer before college. I don't think I was a very good reader.
I have a platform, and I can help. I can be in spaces that reporters will never be in because I'm a protester.
The student newspapers are as important to me as the 'New York Times.'
Sometimes, the hate that I endure is not necessarily about me but about the space I'm in.
I just couldn't believe that the police would fire tear gas into what had been a peaceful protest. I was running around, face burning, and nothing I saw looked like America to me.
When I tweet, I'm mostly preaching to the choir.
I'm not desensitized to death.
I take statements that portray untrue statements about me seriously.
You're not born woke. Something wakes you up.
People are not as imaginative as they think they are.
Protest is political. It is as political as what our conception of America is.
I love Baltimore. This city has made me the man that I am.
What we choose to do today and tomorrow will shape our future and build our reality.
Too often, the elected individuals we put our public trust in disappoint us.
I am running to be the 50th mayor of Baltimore in order to usher our city into an era where the government is accountable to its people and is aggressively innovative in how it identifies and solves its problems.
I think about freedom as not only as the absence of oppression but also the presence of justice and joy.
I think about freedom and the urgency around our imagination. If you can't imagine it, you can't fight for it.
So many of us don't know what we want; we just know we don't want what we have. We spend 99% of the time talking about how bad it is, but only 1% of the time talking about how we can do something about it.
There will always be a rule. There will be people who break the rules. There will be consequences. We fundamentally think these things will be true for a time. The question becomes, What are the consequences? Who enforces the consequences? What are the worst consequences?
I am excited to return to city schools... and to continue doing the work to ensure that every child in Baltimore City receives a world-class education.
I've never been a surrogate for Bernie, Hillary, or the DNC.
I have a big following on Twitter, and Twitter has been invaluable for mobilizing and quickly sharing information. But I'm not really sure that people are learning deep content on Twitter.
Find an issue that's important to you, and be as curious and close to it as possible.
I think hope is the belief that tomorrow can be better than today, and I don't lose hope.
A lot of organizers are trying to figure out how do we create entrances for people so they can be involved in the work in a way that makes them feel is aligned to the things they're interested in and not the things the organizer is interested in?
Activism in the street is truth-telling, and organizing is talking to people for a specific goal.
We have to create a world where people can show up as whole people every single time.
As a gay black man, it's important to me to show up - that I'm able to show up as my whole self, in every space that I'm in, because that's how I'm able to be the most true to who I am.
Twitter is half me trying to live in the world and half me processing and sharing the world. I share a lot, and some of that is to keep me honest.
There are very few things that I don't talk about - even my relationships.
I'm not ashamed to be gay.
Expressing and loving myself is often so much more complex than 'out' affords me.
It is not a new tactic for people to use any avenue they can to silence black activists.
Baltimore is a city of possibility, and we've got to challenge the traditional pathways of politics and politicians who lay those paths.
There is nothing romantic about teargas. Or smoke bombs or rubber bullets or sound cannons.
I will never forget the first time I was teargassed or the night I hid under my steering wheel as the SWAT vehicle drove down a residential street. I will never forget that it was illegal - in St Louis, in the fall of 2014 - to stand still.
I am often asked what it is like to be on the 'front line.' But I do not use the term 'front line' to describe us, the protesters. Because everywhere in America, wherever we are, our blackness puts us in close proximity to police violence.
I'm not convinced that stealing an iPhone is a felony or stealing a bike is a felony.